[ SECRET POST #2718 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2718 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Mayim Bialik]


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[Pacific Rim]











Notes:

Might be another 12 am day. Response time will be slow, sorry.

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 016 secrets from Secret Submission Post #388.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - this is getting spammy now ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

Inspired by all the people on #3 talking about it like it's anathema. I was raised with attachment parenting 20 years before it even had a name (my mom just said she was too lazy to do things that people told her that contradicted her own instinct or were just too much bother, like making children sleep alone). We did long-term breastfeeding, co-sleeping, homeschooling, the whole shebang. My sister and I are both healthy, well-adjusted adults who love our parents and make good choices.

(As far as the vaccination question went we weren't anti-vax per se, but my sister had a severe allergic reaction to an MMR shot and my mother wouldn't risk it happening to either of us again.)

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

How do we know you're actually healthy and well-adjusted tho? You could be a loon for all we know...

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[kallanda_lee]

Well to be fair the rest of us could be loons as well, attachment parenting or not.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[rubbertea]

for me it's a simple knee-jerk reaction because i've always been independent and it'd drive me crazy to always have my parents around like that.
my upbringing was pretty much the opposite of yours: no breastfeeding, both parents working late, public school, etc. i like to think i'm also a healthy, well adjusted person.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[diet_poison]

I got the sense it was only for babies? like once you got past a few years of life it would be more like normal parent-child interactions

idk tho

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[seventh_seal]

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just wondering if it's necessary.

That said, I also know literally nothing about babies.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

The problem right now is that there's a lot of peer pressure from young hip parents who have taken it up. They start screaming at you for the smallest "violation". This is pretty much missing the entire point because attachment parenting involves you acting on your own instinct and making your own choices. You have trouble breastfeeding? Giving your child formula isn't as good as breast milk, but you shouldn't be vilified for making that choice as long as it works for you and the baby. The same goes for using cloth or disposable diapers, cosleeping, etc.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[seventh_seal]

And that said, and obviously not trying to discount your positive first-hand experience, my only experience with home schooled kids was a really bad one: when I visited a family with three children who were kept exclusively in the house and in the garden and never went anywhere because of diseases and non-religious people (their mother was a doctor so they didn't even have to go to a GP or anything and their dad was stay-at-home). They had everything at home, even a miniature movie theatre.

They were all below the age of ten and I'm just wondering what happens when they grow up?

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

I did homeschooling, too. I grew up, thinking it was the reason I was damn awkward but it turned out that everyone else was just as awkward, so there's that.

I also slept in my parents' bed until we were like, what, 3?

In another weird parallel, my sister's kid also had a bad reaction to an MMR vaccination and he had to be hospitalized. Everyone else I know reacted just fine, though.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[diet_poison]

your sister's kid, and OP's sister, are really good examples of reasons why it's important for everyone who can get vaccinated to do so, because some people can't. And if you can't, then nothing wrong with not doing it, obviously. /tangent

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

I had to Google it to find out what it meant, but what I'm seeing is pretty much that in practice it's just... being affectionate with your baby? I don't even know why that would be considered unusual or specific enough to need to be a debatable philosophy.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like kids so the thought of having them attached to me is really gross. I don't really care what other people do though.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

If you're not having kids, what does it matter? (Please be safe and make sure you never have children because it would really suck for a kid to grow up with someone who has no patience for them.)

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

Attachment parenting? Like, using a lot of physical affection with a baby/toddler? Is that what it is? Nothing wrong with that (though some organizations warn of dangers against sleeping with infants, mainly accidentally killing them iirc)

But homeschooling? Yes. I am anti-homeschooling unless the actual schools available are somehow dangerous or unaffordable. Homeschooling is actually illegal in several countries, and frankly, that's fair. It doesn't mean every homeschooled kid is abused or whatever. But all kids should have access to a common curriculum (especially one that includes the sciences, which religious homeschooling often ignores) - not to mention access to their peers and community.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

In my state, everyone who homeschools has to administer a state-standardized test to their children to make sure they're educated properly.

I'm not sure if it's a law or not, but I also know that it's at least HIGHLY encouraged that all homeschooled kids have some sort of peer community involvement -- team sports, or something along those lines. I'm not sure about the specifics because it wasn't in my own family.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

I was friends with a homeschooled girl who knew a shit load more than I ever learned in public school.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

As one who was homeschooled and whose many nieces and nephews were homeschooled, I get your point about homeschool because most people who do it are not qualified to teach. However, I have to disagree with your assessment that making it illegal is fair because I think that it's important to retain as many rights as one can, even if that means you have some jackasses making stupid choices.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[ex_mek82]

With all due respect, your ignorance is showing on that last part.

I know plenty of homeschooling families here in town who have social groups and even outside-the-home class meet-ups. The kids all run together in groups, and they get plenty of social interaction even outside of that, by participating in sports and summer clubs at the local university (that offer things like science and history) and museums, or things like church groups.

So don't make ignorant assumptions that all homeschooled kids have no access to peers and community.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[herpymcderp]

Psychologically speaking? Nothing, as far as we know. This is one of those things where you're bound to get a lot of commenting from other parents, but there's not a lot of evidence to show that it's a good or a bad thing in any psychological circles that I've ever heard of. Taking the grain of salt route, I can only say that there's a lot of evidence that parenting styles actually have very little influence over a child's adult behaviour and zero influence over their personalities, but every individual is different; the approach that works for one child may be disastrous for another.

I'm pretty sure the take home message is that there's no one who likes to criticize someone's parenting methods more than other parents, and very few of them have any evidence to back up their claims about the "best" way to parent.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[a_potato]

I wonder if there might be a conflation between attachment parenting (which doesn't seem so bad) and attachment therapy (which is kind of obviously bad. It involves things like sitting on your kid; forcibly tickling your kid; fucking around with your kid's food and water intake; etc).

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

OP of this thread:

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK THAT IS A THING?

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about that. I saw someone get into a real tizzy about "attachment parenting" on one of the Childfree communities, and it did feel like they were treating them like the same thing.

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[(Anonymous)]

Well nature vs nurture is the eternal debate, and you can have someone turn out well/poorly whatever their upbringing. I am grateful for the way my parents nurtured me, and ESPECIALLY for being homeschooled. (I think homeschooling gets a bad rap because by its very nature it happens at HOME...soooo if your home life is sucky it's gonna suck) Growing up I was never jealous of my public-schooled friends--you have to wake up HOW early?? And spend HOW long sitting in a chair?? And do HOW much busywork?? Tell me again about how being bullied is a part of life and 'everyone is scarred by highschool'??

I learned out of books, and went to mom if I didn't understand something; if something was easy for us we got to get through it quickly and we had extra time for things that were hard. I had no trouble doing independent study in college, and graduated Summa Cum Laude in Biology (DISSECTING LIKE A BAWWWSS) and--miracle of miracles!--interacted with other human beings with no problem. (for that matter, growing up most of my public-schooled friends were only 'socialized' with people their same age--often even just the same grade--whereas I could get along with adults and little kids equally well.)

*spongebob rainbow* HOMESCHOOL

Re: What's Wrong With Attachment Parenting?

[nyxelestia]

Well, in your guys' case there was a very good reason for not taking a vaccine. But this is also the reason why vaccines in general are so important: if you can get a vaccine, you should, because then that way even people who can't get vaccines are protected. It's herd immunity.

My issue with attachment parenting has less to do with the parenting itself and more to do with the culture it's attached to. Kids can be perfectly fine or total wrecks with and without attachment parenting.

But most of the attachment parenting types I've interacted with tend to have a superiority complex, that they are "better parents" and thus "better people", and that their kids will be better off no matter what and that everyone else's kids are condemened to a life of misery or something. It also tends to come with a lot of classist undertones, because attachment parenting tends to only work if you have enough money to be able to not work or have the kind of job that allows you to keep your kid by your side at all times (most don't). And while this isn't as endemic, a lot of them (or at least a good portion of the bloggers, anyway) seem to take it as an insult when other adults don't want to hang out with them because their kids are around.

If you want to be an attachment parent, go ahead. But don't insult other parents for either choosing not to do it or being unable to do it, and don't whine if your social life takes a drop because you don't want to hang out with your kids.

Also, there's nothing conclusive about this, but from skimming attachment parenting blogs, I've gotten strong vibes that attachment parenting was just to justify parents not wanting to admit to their own abandonment issues/projecting their anxieties unnecessarily onto their kids. While I don't see attachment parenting as inherently harmful, I do see a serious problem in projecting your personal issues onto your kids if it's not something that effects them/has to effect them.

Attachment parenting also tends to enforce certain strata of sexism in very sutble ways - namely that it reinforces the idea that mothers should sacrifice everything about their beings for their children and they're failures if they don't. (They're not, they are human beings and have every right to lead a life independent of their children, and no one should be labelled a bad person for wanting to spend some time away from their own children, but that's what I've heard from the bulk of attachment parenting proponents).