We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
Wednesday, May. 04, 2005 - (Mamma)
Maintaining Attachment Past the Toddler Years
I mentioned last week that William Sears' attachment parenting methods were strongly influenced by the continuum principles and Leidloff's observations of how people relate in the aboriginal culture she had experienced. Attachment is not a new study, though -- John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, was a pioneer of attchment research in the 1970s and by the time I had my older kids in the 1980s, the study was picking up steam.
What researchers have found is that attachment is an extrememly basic human need and people will go to any lengths to form and maintain attachments to other people. Humans aren't alone in their need for attachment, of course -- everyone knows that ducklings will follow the first large creature they see after they hatch, and almost everyone has heard about studies with various of the great apes.
Leidloff observed the way attchment works in an aboriginal society and describes it in her book. Sears picked that up and wrote extensively on how to build and maintain that attachment with our infants and young children within a 21st century culture.
Unfortunately, both authors tend to leave the parents of older children on their own to sort through the fundamentals and figure out on their own how that applies to older children and teens.
Ideally, we form our first attchments as newborns as we come to see our mother and then both of our parents as reliable, warm, and nurturing. Later we form attachments through our parents to aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, friends of the family, teachers, and other children. These early attachments act as physical protection for infants and children, shielding them from dangers in their world and seeing to it that they are fed and attended to, but they also act as emotional and intellectual anchors to help orient them and help them learn to make their own way in the world.
Ideally, as the child learns and grows, they begin to individuate and the primary attachment to the parent loosens slightly, and peer attachments are added to the family attachments. All that is as it should be.
But that's not the way it's been working in our society for the last half century. We have been sending out children out into the world on their own earlier and earlier. There is less and less contact between parents and the rest of the child's world and more competition for the child's "loyalty". All of this can loosen the primary attchment of the child to the parent long before the child is ready to stand on his own and make his own way in the world, and leaves an "attchment void" which is almost intolerable to the child.
The reality is that no matter how securely attached a child is, when they start school, they face a severe challenge to their attachment to their parents. In the last fifty years, our culture has lost its way in helping children remain attached to the adults who can best guide them and has fostered more and more attachment to their equally lost and vulnerable peers.
Attachment parenting and continuum parenting are an excellent start; but as children get older and our challenge changes from building the attachment to maintaining that attachment in the face of competition from outside, they provide less and less guidance.
I went looking for guidance on attachment and continuum parenting the older child, and I found some valuable information about the nature of attachment and the the way it works in a new book by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate', a clinical psychologist and a physician from Vancouver. In Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, they describe how attachment works, why's it's important, and how it's failing today. Then they explain how to maintain attachment to our kids without shutting them away in a cotton-lined box until they're adults.
I haven't finished the book yet, but even just the first section which describes what attachment is, why we need it and how it works, has given me a much clearer idea how to maintain my connection to Jack as he grows and makes friends outside the family circle. (It's also made it abundantly clear what went wrong between me and my parents when I was in my teens, and with my older kids and I when they were in their teens. It has helped me to see that it wasn't something any of us "did" or "didn't do" -- it wasn't our fault, but there are ways of avoiding repeating it with Jack.)
I highly recommend the book to anyone who has been using Attachment Parenting and Continuum principles and is wondering where to go now, as their children are getting older. I also recommend the book to every parent who is concerned about the influence of modern youth culture on his or her children. This is an extremely important work that explains why parenting has gotten so much harder than it used to be and, more important, what we can do about it.
Spotty Coverage
Last week I had hoped to get back to updating everyone on what Jack is up to. Unfortunately computer problems at work (the compuetr wouldn't respond to either the keyboard or the mouse) meant that first I was without a computer at all for two days, and then I was two days behind in my work for the rest of the week. The computer problems continue - but the problem has changed a little. I now have a keyboard but no mouse. While I can't get any of the software I need for my work to function without a mouse, I do know how to use a keyboard to get around in old software that doesn't actually require a mouse, so I can write this in notepad on Monday and will take a moment to post it as soon as I have a mouse again.
Jack turns two at the end of these week.
Every few weeks, I look at my amazing little boy, and wonder where those last precious remnants of baby have gone. Our Jack is walking, running, talking in three and four word sentences, and expressing increasingly complex thoughts. He can climb the stairs (both directions!) on his own, he can jump, he can throw a ball, and he can feed himself -- though he humours me occasionally and lets me feed him a few bites -- and then he feeds me a few bites.
Jack recognizes most of the alphabet, though he still confuses some similar letters (P vs. B, M vs W, E vs. F, etc.). He knows the sounds of most of the alphabet. He recognizes his written name and a few other words -- though he's not "reading" per se, yet. He has lost patience with "baby" books that have no plot, though he still likes "reference" books that have pictures with words underneath. He loves poetry, involved stories (as long as there aren't too many words on a page), and is beginning to be able to "read" his stories to me.
Jack loves to "sing", but he is nowhere near singing recognizable songs. His "singing" is still mainly tuneless and wordless. (Though he has begun to be able to sing three and four note passages from some of his favorite music.)
He knows how to turn his computer on, log in, and open the software he wants to use. (He has two choices at the moment.)
Did I mention that Jack can run? And run he does: everywhere! He has started to dance with me, too, to music on the stereo -- or to my off-tune croonings.
Jack has been able to take off his own socks and coat for weeks. He hasn't shown much inclination to take off the rest of his clothes yet. (In case you were wondering, I consider that a bonus. I will long remember answering the door to find a police officer at the door, holding a naked toddler -- Jack's older brother, whom I thought was taking a nap upstairs while I bathed his brother! No danger of that with Jack, yet.)
Jack likes to play with playdough and crayons -- and he can finally handle the crayon well enough to reliably get a mark when he "writes". (Until recently his grip was tight, but he hadn't mastered pressing down, so the marks he got were very, very faint.) We have recently added chalk and construction paper, which is also a hit.
Jack has gotten very good at imitation and that's become a favorite form of play for us -- he doesn't initiate very often but will imitate me readily. He has also introduced imaginative play -- he puts his cow and horse to bed and feeds his farmer doll. Nothing elaborate yet.
Life has gotten easier as Jack has learned to use more words and more complex sentences. "Jack nose runnin", "Jack wash (hands)", "Milk mess" (I spilled my milk) ... and last night, when Jack couldn't sleep until almost midnight, "Jack Pappa Song".
That one takes a bit of explanation. Jack has a book called Pappa's song about a baby bear who can't sleep. Granny sings him a song and falls asleep. Baby bear doesn't. Grandpa sings him a song, and says "Good night". Baby Bear doesn't. Mamma sings hima song. No luck. Pappa takes Baby bear out in the Bear boat and lets nature sing him to sleep -- Success! This was Jack's way of asking for Dad to take him out for a drive to help him sleep. He was, it turns out, quite tired. He fell asleep quickly once Dad gave in and took him out at about midnight. Since Jack often asks to go out in the car, this was evidently his way of distinguishing between his request for an adventure (which is waht he usually means when he asks for the car) and his need for help to fall asleep.
All in all -- where did my baby go? Jack is a charming companion and a very sweet young man, but there no sign of the wee baby who was born two years ago this week. It's bittersweet. I am proud and pleased with his progress. But he's the last baby I'm likely to ever have this kind of closeness with, since my grandchildren live so far away. I'll miss that.
Birthdays
Spring seems to be birthday party time in our social circle. Jack has been to two birthday parties in the last month. Both were large and relatively elaborate affairs.In April, Jack's buddy Ethan celebrated his second birthday with all his friends at Jungle Java, a local child's emporium with a climbing structure the size of a reasobaly large apartment, a toddler romp area, and great coffee and comfortable sofas for the parents. It made sense, becasuse Ethan is about to move to the West coast and this was a way to celebrate with the kdis he's known since he was born.
Last weekend, Jack was invited to another big party. The older brothers of his buddy, Herne, had a combined birthday party. It was a huge affair -- with a photographer, a DJ, a rented hall, and Mom acting as a very, very competant MC. It made sense. Neither boy has had much acknowledgement of his birthday in the last few years, because the families resources, physical and otherwise, were taken up by two extremely challenging pregnancies and two very premature babies. The kids finally got three years birthday parties in one!
However...
Jack has not yet been invited to a small "cake and iced cream in the backyard" birthday party and I am a little concerned that he's going to get it into his head that birthday parties are supposed to be huge, complex affairs. It's not a really big deal this year -- at two, I doubt that Jack will make the connection between those parties and his two, very small, very casual get-togethers. (On Friday, we're having a few of Jack's favorite adult friends over for cake and coffee. On Sunday, we're having a few of his playgroup and other little friends over for a light supper and a duck-feeding adventure. No DJ, no gifts, and music courtesy of Mozart and the Boston Symphony orchestra circa 1971. Mamma is definitely NOT going to be the MC.)
I am a little concerned that we may find that children's birthday parties have become the big deals the magazines have tried to make them for at least 25 years now.
That is so not my style. I'm not big on celebrating birthdays at all but when I do I prefer a quiet family and friends celebration.
I also resist the making of the birthday into an excuse to see how big a haul the kid can bring in. It's about the joy Jack's life brings us, not about "stuff".
Ah, well, we always have the option of not accepting invitations, I guess. (Yes, Mamma is a spoilsport. How nice of you to notice.)
Concern
One area of concern -- aside from Jack's frequent inability to sleep -- is that Jack seems to be getting a lot of headaches; as many as two or three a week. That seems like a lot, especially for someone so young. We'll be mentioning that to his doctor when he sees her in a couple of weeks.We've seen other signs that Jack doesn't see very well, and my best guess is that he is getting headaches from eye-strain. Certainly I get them when my glasses prescription needs updating, and that was the first sign that Rod needed glasses.
I really hope that's what it is. I can't think of any other "harmless" reasons a two-year old might get frequent headaches.
