If there is something that escapes me from the theory commonly known as attachment breeding is the name. I would have no problem if this educational philosophy were known as the Bowlby parenting in honor of one of its prescribers, or the Machupichu parenting, for example. What I don't like is the exclusionary factor that implies as a tacit judgment. It seems as if he wants to tell us this is the upbringing with attachment and everything else will be, by logical and inescapable consequence, upbringing with ... detachment? Every time I read something on this subject I can't stop wondering, If mine is not nurture with attachment, what is it?
You will see, due to circumstances of life and my supine ignorance when I became a mother for the first time, I have raised and raised my daughters without having attached myself to any known group, trend or current. Basically, from the day La Primera looked at me very concentrated with huge eyes changing my life forever, I have practiced the millennial method of “what the body asks of me” always combined with the practical exercise of “this does not work for me. to try something else. "
Babies, lactations and other necessities
With my babies, the body has always asked me to have them in my arms. I immediately realized that the ten minutes of each breast every four hours the pediatrician recommended in the hospital would not work with my daughter. She was more than a shot now, I fall asleep for another little while and in five minutes another shot. Or twenty. Thus, we established the breastfeeding of the shot in open bar mode that some time later someone had to call breastfeeding on demand. Nor did I give him a pacifier, mostly because knowing me as I know myself, I would have always been very guarded and I would have forgotten it two out of three times.
The night never bothered me, I understood without anyone telling me that when my daughter did the least, alas! I had to be there to fix the ballot, eat it with kisses or change those poops that came to the neck. I had nights of all colors and flavors until my daughter, with her own motu and no more food than the milk in my chest, decided to sleep her twelve hours becoming a minority of mothers who go back to sleep before their baby turns four months My second daughter repeated the feat again. Not so the third and fourth that have had me awake many more months.
Carts, nurseries and other giddy gadgets
As I say, I was not very separated from my babies, nor am I now that I am ready, if all goes well, to welcome our fifth girl. Not for nothing, but because the body asked me to have them close, almost always to the chest either out of hunger or comfort and long time in arms. What does not take away to have a great nap in their carts and take long walks separated by that half meter of unsurmountable distance between the mother and the cuckoo ride.
I have always taken care of the girls, on time and full dedication, saving those moments of extreme selfishness in which I have to take a shower, talk on the phone or write doubtful entries in the blogosphere. With each of them I observed there for the two years that they began to get bored and needed some more action. It was time to point them to the nursery in the morning. The only one who has cried in the successive adaptations I was very offended when they wanted to stay without looking back. My mother says that thirty years ago I made him the same ugly.
Education, discipline and other headaches
I think that few people, very little, spend more time with their children than me. I move through life and the world with the four. I go shopping with them, to the doctor, I usually take a shower with someone watching, I travel with them, breakfast, eat and have dinner with them, chat with them and take care of solving each and every one of their needs or problems. I clean every vomit, comfort every cry and stroke my temple when they have a fever.
It is also true that I am very sergeant with meals, schedules and obedience. Maybe we would all be much happier without schedules, obligations, or impositions but I try to educate my daughters so they can adapt to the real world and the school, social and family life they are going to have to live with. I believe that a certain order and discipline helps them to develop in these environments with more ease.
In my educating desire I sin many times of lack of patience, of nerves, of ogre and a thousand other things. I try to improve in what I can, within my possibilities, my level of fatigue and the general mood of the family. When I pass I apologize just like when they pass they accept their apologies.
As children grow and the number of them multiplies the problems get complicated. Babies must be cared for and loved, but children must also be educated and the questions that assail us are much more momentous and difficult to address. Everything is not so clear anymore and the line that separates the good father from the “bad one” (if this exists) is more diffuse, being of the good ones is no longer so easy, it may not even be possible.
Magic formulas and other utopias
That is why I concentrate on doing my best with the means available to me and I try to be flexible, adapt and change my theories or my methods if I see that they do not work or do not give the expected result. Sometimes I am wrong and sometimes not. But I think that my daughters will know how to forgive my imperfections and accept me as the fallible human that I am because there is one thing that they have very clear, regardless of the fact that sometimes they punish or scold them, they know that I am always there, for whatever they need. They know they can always count on me for anything, anywhere, and whatever. They know that their problems are my problems. They know that I am very ogre and very heavy as they also know that I will always want them regardless of what they do.
I call that attachment, to the union of some parents with their child above all and of all, to the unconditional love that is only possible between parents and children regardless of whether they are adoptive or biological, that the child spend the holidays with the grandparents, the mother has resorted to the support bottle or work full time.
The best compliment since I was a mother was made by the teacher of La Segunda. He asked me how I educated my daughters to what I had no choice but to answer "as I can, making a big mistake". Then he explained that they had been analyzing a study that collected the different syndromes, emotional or social deficits, difficulties in relationships, etc. that children of school age suffered and that, when I thought of a child who did not have any of these problems, who had normal behavior on all fronts and confidence to face the world with security and enthusiasm, I always thought of my daughter. He didn't tell me to be the smartest, nor the prettiest, nor the best. He told me he was normal and happy. I can't think of a better compliment.
So when I get existential doubts and I feel bad mother I look at my daughters, I see them happy and normal, very normal, and I wonder: If mine is not nurture with attachment, what is it?
