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Attachment Parenting : You're Mom Enough Without It

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The latest cover of TIME magazine (5/21/12) with the beautiful 20something mom breastfeeding her 3 year old son had me shaking my head. What WAS she thinking taking that picture, and having her full name on the magazine cover? Ten years from now her son is going to have to face his friends when they ask him what it was like to suck his mother's breasts. Because they have proof. A million covers of TIME magazine, internet pages and downloads later. Really. The social insensitivity of that photo takes my breath away. As for the topic, the so-called Attachment Parenting style advocated by Dr. Bill Sears, well. That, too, has it's serious problems. Let me be brief: Attachment Theory describes the emotional or relational attachment between a developing infant and mother. It was first studied in depth by John Bowlby (and later by Ainsworth, Main, Cassidy, Hazan, Shaver, and others) in the 1950's. It posits that the emotional attachment between mother and child is the main

College Mom: I'm Trying, But It's Hard

We dropped our first born off at university this week. We have spent the last year plus supporting him as he got ready. From taking AP classes and exams, to doing half of his senior year of high school at our community college, our son was looking forward. We thought frequently about how the transition to college would be for us all, and he and I often would tell each other that we would certainly miss one another and that it would, yes, feel very weird. Well, it does. I didn't even shed a tear until I walked into the house after we drove home without him. Our house, minus one of our children, just doesn't feel like our home. Walking into his bedroom brought me to tears. The boy is gone, at least until Thanksgiving break, and I have to get used to the change. We left him seeming excited and confident, and for that, I am deeply grateful. He is competent to meet the academic challenges ahead, and has support for everything else. I've been comforted by the texts we have

Fear and What's Possible

Today is 9/11. The bells toll, and the wars continue. In an email from our school district, we have been informed that the H1N1 virus is up and running. Several children have tested positive, and we are all encouraged to be alert and aware. NPR reported this morning that a single vaccination (instead of two) may be all that is needed to immunize adults, allowing more vaccinations to go to more people this fall. In listening to the media coverage of this story, I've learned that in an average year, fully 36,000 people die from the seasonal flu virus. That's an average of 720 people per state. Do you know any of them? The predictions for this winter imagine up to 90,000 deaths from H1N1. That would be an average of 1800 deaths per state. The primary difference being many of those deaths are predicted to be our healthy, robust children. I want to be ready. I will get my family immunized. But in the meanwhile, in the midst of the preparations, I have been wondering: what