Respect Part 1

The words we here so often today from the older generation go along the lines of “The children of today just show no respect to their elders”

Wouldn’t it be nice to receive respect from a person out of love rather than fear?
Wouldn’t it be nice to show some one how much you respect them because you feel that they are a really wonderful loving caring successful person.

Over the past 100-150 years, parents more often have been gaining respect from their children through fear or in short bulling. But is that really respect? How does that sit with you?

You cannot make someone like you through neglect, belittling, manipulation and control. You will have a halfhearted friend who will drop you and the first chance of meeting someone who shows them love and caring listening and understanding.

We are creating children that either need to be belittled and manipulated to feel loved or we are creating children that need to bully put down and abuse to show their love.

How mixed up are thoughts feelings?

Why do we not from the start show a child that we love them through love?
How about we start holding our children when they are hurt, listening to them when they try to talk and explain. How about we treat them, as we would like to be treated ourselves.

The respect and mana we would gain from our children, friends and family would be far greater and longer lasting.We would be remembered with love not fear.

Bring about World Peace

Holding your child when they need it is one of the most wonderful gifts we can give to our children. They feel safe, loved, wanted and respected. As parents we learn to respond to their actions and they to ours.
Attachment Parenting will give the world more Gandhi of loving strong and bonding and less Hitler a product of sever abuse violence and humiliation.
Pam Leo’s book Connection Parenting “Parenting through Connection instead of Coercion, Through Love instead of Fear” helps us to understand ways to do this. The Sears family have written many books with wonderful suggestions, which we can try.

Look at James Prescott PhD Article How Culture Shapes the Developing Brain and the Future of Humanity.

http://www.kindredmedia.com.au/info/how_culture_shapes_the_developing_brain_and_the_future_of_humanity/57/1

Here is an extract from that article if you don’t want to follow the link.

Ten Principles of Mother-Infant Bonding to Change the World

The following changes are essential if this new cultural brain of the infant/child/teen is to be developed. These changes would provide for a greater comprehensive structure of cultural change for the assurance of peaceful individuals and cultures.

1. Every pregnancy is a wanted pregnancy.

2. Every pregnancy has proper nutrition and prenatal care — medical and psychological — and is free from a toxic womb of alcohol, drugs, tobacco and other toxic agents of stress.

3. Natural birthing.

4. No genital mutilation (circumcision).

5. Breastfeeding on demand for two years of age or beyond.

6. Intimate body contact — babywearing during first year (and co-sleeping for the first two years and beyond).

7. Immediate comforting is given to infants and children who are crying. No infant/child should ever be permitted to cry itself to sleep — day or night.

8. Infants and children are for hugging and should never be physically hit for any reason or humiliated.

9. Infants and children are honoured and should never be humiliated nor emotionally abused for any reason. The emerging sexuality of every child is respected.

10. Mothers must be honoured and not replaced by any institutional day care because it harms children under five years of age.

James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

Sites of intrest 1

Some more interesting sites that I’ve found last night

Dr Allan Schore http://www.allanschore.com/bookandtape.htm#

“Dr. Schore is a pioneer in integrating social, biological, psychological and psychoanalytic theory. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of his work he has published extensively in the neuroscience, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, pediatric and trauma literatures and is on the editorial staff or reviewer of 18 journals including the Journal of Neuroscience, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Attachment & Human Development, and the Journal of Analytical Psychology.”


Kindred one family one world http://www.kindredmedia.com.au/

“Articles are drawn from an internationally diverse team of writers and professionals on the front lines of their fields, exploring issues that impact our children, families and planet, ranging from education, natural birth, optimal child development, medicine, psychology, healing, spirituality, politics, relationships, family dynamics, natural parenting and global and environmental issues. We translate evidence-based material from neuroscience, genetics, biology, psychology, economics and sociology into practical and understandable framework for making the best choices possible for you and your family.”

Co Sleeping Part 1

I’ve been looking at the web site for “The University of Notre Dame Mother-Baby Behavioural Sleep Lab”

Very interesting and totally recommend a good look.

I love the questions like - Why We Never Ask “Is It Safe for Infants to Sleep Alone”. This article talks about “poor quality data to generate sweeping public health recommendations”.

I know from our own experience of having Ara in the “Family Bed” it has defiantly made a big difference to our life.
My observations of having Ara in the cot or her own bed are she is more restless and will wiggle around a lot in her sleep. Also once she was able to roll over her self she would always be sleeping on her tummy (not the best thing to prevent SIDS so we’ve been told). But while she sleeps with us she seems to sleep deeper and move less. Every so often a little hand or foot will reach out to check that we are there – in her sleep – and she settles back into a deeper sleep. Ara also spends most of her time sleeping on her back or side while in the family bed which so we’ve been told is the best.

Also the benefits of Co-sleeping on breast-feeding are great. You don’t need to get up and wake up fully to get a baby out of its cot to feed it so you feed more often. This helps to keep your milk supply up, your sleep levels up, your baby well feed in the right amounts and times and also keeps the attachment levels up as well so the baby is not so needy during the day.

Dr James McKenna from the “The University of Notre Dame Mother-Baby Behavioural Sleep Lab” talks about the history or Co-sleeping and also the reasons why it fell out of the norm.

I suppose it cuts down to...if you’re feeling pretty shaky in your relationship with your spouse that you can’t have a small child between you (one that you made) then your better off with out your baby in your bed.
If you are a strong Catholic – the church talks about starving mothers over laying their children. If you’ve been watching too many movies with romantic sex scenes you’ll never see a baby in the cot or bed in the room as well.
You’re worried about the child’s independence (check out http://www.nd.edu/~jmckenn1/lab/ to learn more on that angle)
Or is it germs, which are keeping you from your baby.

BUT we must be careful there are still safety issues.
Parents should not be smoking, taking drugs, heavy drinking, heavy sleepers or very obese.
Sleeping areas should not be waterbeds or couches or beds with too many pillows.

If you really cannot sleep with your baby in your bed it is recommended that you at least sleep with it in the same room.
J. McKenna PhD, J. Sears PhD, P. Leo....and many more just ask and I’ll give you more to read if you need.

Holiday with Kate

I'm feeling a kind of success.
We’ve always wanted to keep light in our gear – must be a hang over from our tramping days.
On new years we did ok but still had Dad’s car pretty full in the boot.
This time we just took a wrap...no backpack, no pushchair, no baby bath, no port-a-cot....but of course I always seem to pack too much clothing.
And it worked out really well...we just need to work on a bit of a holiday routine and we’ll be sweet.
Great thing Attachment Parenting you cut down on all the gadgets.