attachment parenting
Find a Conversation
| Mon, 08-14-2006 - 3:17pm |
A woman I know (I used to work with her dh) practices "attachment parenting". Here is a definition (for those who don't know what it is):
"Attachment Parenting includes respecting your child's needs, feeding on demand, and answering your baby's cries. Other parts of Attachment Parenting include co-sleeping, nursing on demand, sling or other baby carrier wearing, and cloth diapering. Not all Attachment Parents practice all of the above, but never the less love the idea of Attachment Parenting and comforting their children.
Attachment parenting uses mild discipline methods and avoids all physical or emotional punishment, such as inflicting shame on a child for inappropriate behavior. Children are encouraged and allowed to sleep with their parents, and you treat your bed as the family bed. Meeting your child's needs according to the child's time frame during the early years of development is an essential part of attachment parenting. Children will be allowed to grow and learn at their own pace and not according to standard time frames."
What do you all think of attachment parenting?
I don't see attachment parenting as something a WOH parent could do, or could they? What do u think?
I am also curious to see if SAHPs vs/ WOHPs will have different opionions on this topic.
If anyone here practices attachment parenting - was your decision to do so closely linked with your decision to be a SAHP?
josee

Pages
"You can NOT compare the IQ of two different children. There is no way of knowing that one's IQ is higher or lower with BM or formula. You can NOT compare children that are fed formula and children that are fed BM. The IQ factors can vary from all sorts of things."
It would seem scientists believe they can control for these other factors:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/70/4/525
"Of 20 studies meeting initial inclusion criteria, 11 studies controlled for 5 covariates and presented unadjusted and adjusted results. An unadjusted benefit of 5.32 (95% CI: 4.51, 6.14) points in cognitive function was observed for breast-fed compared with formula-fed children. After adjustment for covariates, the increment in cognitive function was 3.16 (95% CI: 2.35, 3.98) points. This adjusted difference was significant and homogeneous. Significantly higher levels of cognitive function were seen in breast-fed than in formula-fed children at 6–23 mo of age and these differences were stable across successive ages. Low-birth-weight infants showed larger differences (5.18 points; 95% CI: 3.59, 6.77) than did normal-birth-weight infants (2.66 points; 95% CI: 2.15, 3.17) suggesting that premature infants derive more benefits in cognitive development from breast milk than do full-term infants. Finally, the cognitive developmental benefits of breast-feeding increased with duration.
"Conclusion: This meta-analysis indicated that, after adjustment for appropriate key cofactors, breast-feeding was associated with significantly higher scores for cognitive development than was formula feeding."
"Breastmilk and IQ. A convincing case for a strong link between breastmilk and superior IQ was presented in the February 1 issue of The Lancet. Previous studies linking breastmilk to intelligence have caused considerable controversy; many of us wondering whether benefits attributed to the milk were in fact due to mothers' motivation and education, or bonding during feeding. But in the new study, investigators from The British Medical Research Council's Dunn Nutrition Unit in Cambridge were able to isolate and assess the effects of the milk itself because both groups (breastfed and formula-fed infants) had been fed via tubes. They had been born prematurely and unable to suckle. The study found that 193 children who had gotten either breastmilk alone or breastmilk plus formula scored significantly higher on IQ tests than the 107 children who had gotten formula only, scoring 103.7 points versus 93.1. The IQ tests were given at age 7 1/2 or 8. After taking into account the mother's social and educational status, children who were fed breastmilk still maintained an IQ advantage of 8.3 points. Although not definitive proof, The Lancet reports the study to be "very strong evidence" that an as-yet-unidentified substance in breastmilk affects mental development."
http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/hnp/nutrition/nnn/nnn16.htm
"The results, published in the January 1998 issue of Pediatrics, indicated a direct correlation between the duration of breastfeeding and higher mean scores on tests of cognitive ability."
http://breastfeed.com/resources/articles/breastfeediq.htm
"Breast Feeding Best For A Higher IQ
Full-term infants who are born small score an average of 11 points higher on IQ tests if they are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life compared to those who are given formula or solids early on, according to findings published in the March Acta Paediatrica. The study was conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology"
Better write the NICHD and tell them you, mbanc17, feel that they are not conducting proper research.
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20020225014449data_trunc_sys.shtml
"At the age of 18 months, developmental scores were obtained for all 300 toddlers, and at the ages of seven to eight, IQ was assessed in the children using the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children. Developmental scores were higher at 18 months, and IQ was greater at seven to eight years in the children fed breast milk. In fact, IQ scores were eight to 10 points higher in the breast milk-fed kids!
The research team, a group of distinguished British paediatricians, was able to remove most of the problems associated with this kind of research. For example, the breast-fed children received mother's milk through a tube, eliminating the likelihood that the close bond between mother and child associated with suckling had provided the IQ bonus. And even when the higher social status and educational backgrounds of the mothers who chose to breast feed were adjusted for statistically, the intelligence advantage associated with breast-milk intake remained."
This study corrected for SES and maternal bonding factors.
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0057.htm
"Your Child will have a higher IQ
"In long intervals I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to be so bad and infortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity."
- Albert Einstein
Children that are breastfed have a higher IQ than children that are fed formula? Is this some sort of unsupported statement by radical breastfeeding supporters? Has our support of breastfeeding outstripped the facts?
Nothing could be further from the truth"
This link cites seven different studies that backed up their findings.
http://www.breastfeeding.com/all_about/all_about_iq.html
Do you need more studies? Or do you think their just may be some truth to the connection of BM (and especially through extended BF) and higher IQ? Oh, just wanted to add none of theses studies cam from the "militant LLL's" or "that kelly chick", so maybe you will give them the attention they deserve, or maybe not...
Well, what did you think formula was being compared to in a conversation about breast milk and formula?
And when discussing infant feeding options between formula and breast milk, there is no need to pretend that formula is not inferior to breast milk. It is. And women who feed their babies formula gave them inferior food.
I understand that women choose not to feed their babies what the babies are designed to eat. But the only reason to pretend that formula isn't inferior, when it clearly is, is to try to make women feel good about their decisions. But if the decision was reached for a legitimate reason, then the woman should be able to acknowlege that she chose to feed an inferior food, but she is fine with that.
Do you think the majority of adoptive mothers breastfeed their adopted babies?
A statement of fact is not a broad generalization. It is a statement of fact. The majority of adoptive mothers do not breastfeed their adopted children. Period.
Another example is a woman who is undernourished and has a diet lacking in vitamins and minerals. Another example is an excessive caffeine drinker. A mother who smokes passes on nicotine to her baby via breastmilk. Certain women who take medications for chemotherapy, arthritis and kidney disease. Certain other medications that women take could be a cause for concern.
So, not all breastmilk is superior to formula."
Oh please. These are women with serious issues. They are the exception, not the rule.
The rule is that breastmilk is superior to formula, period. Breast milk mixed with PCP, or cocaine, clearly is no longer comparable, anymore than *formula* mixed with one of these substances would be.
There are many instances of defective formula, or formula mixed with contamindated water that kills infants. Its more common than a mothers breast milk harming a child.
Its one of the reasons the WHO strongly recomends BF...
MM
I've never said formula wasn't superior to breastmilk.
But "substandard" as a word carries a lot of connotations that I find objectionable, from a purely language-oriented perspective. "Suboptimal" would be a better, and more accurate, description.
I've also never bought the whole "trying to make a woman feel better about her choices" argument. Then again, I've never seen why there's a debate at all about bf vs. ff. BF isn't the holy grail of motherhood any more than SAH is.
Edited 8/20/2006 2:51 pm ET by taylormomma
"Yeah, only 10 IQ points aren't enough to be convincing of anything significant. Big whoop."
Tell that to the child who wasn't eligible for her school's talented and gifted program because she scored 115 instead of 125 on an IQ test. 10 points is not a huge difference, but it's enough to exclude a child from certain academic programs (in the public school system, anyway).
That suggests bm is optimal, as in, something even better than normal. But BM is the standard of what an infanty's body was meant to have. Formula is less than this standard--meaning substandard.
Part of formula advertising is to try to convince people otherwise.
I don't get the bf/ff debate either. We all do what we do for reasons that make sense to us. At least in this thread, it's the same old story of moms who want to pretend bm isn't so great, because they know they made a choice to use something inferior and they aren't confident in their own decisions.
My kids ate eggos waffles for breakfast yesterday. Completely nutritionally inferior to real waffles (also taste inferior), but I had something to do that prevented me from cooking breakfast, and at that moment, getting some work done meant I fed them inferior breakfast. Big whoop. (But I would sound like a fool if I spent 50 posts trying to argue that eggos are not inferior to homemade waffles, just becasue my kids thrived on them yesterday, or that I didn't choose work over making homemade breakfast yesterday.)
Pages