I am so thankful to be able to homeschool my children!
Today I had the displeasure to hear from a public school teacher who reported on how many of the retired teachers she talks to believe all of societies ills are because of attachment parenting. She talked about her 3 year old and how difficult parenting him is, how all attachment parenting books are lies, and how she thinks her son needs to hurt, fear, and feel guilty for things he does and how she has to teach him those things rather than using quiet corners, books, talking, and other coping tools to help him regain his emotions so he can think clearly and make better choices.
I have heard other teachers talk about how students must be forced to fear authority and how parents are failing their child and society by not making their children afraid of authority. Some truly believe children need to hurt to really learn anything. I don’t of course, being a peaceful parent believe those things.
This was my comment to the teacher who believes attachment parenting can’t work:
I have to say, with teachers who think like that I am very glad that we homeschool…. my children are all peacefully parented and while age 3-4 have always been the hardest for us (4 kids) in the long run we know for a fact it works, for us at least. Our oldest is 15 and flat out amazing. She is not like so many of the teens we know. She is her own self, more responsible than some adults we know, and we trust her. The most annoying thing is that she is struggling with the farm life we are trying. Her idea of defiance is going vegetarian and we support her, even if we don’t specially cook for her. She is old enough to cook special meals for herself if she wants. In any case, it seems that the older generations always blame the younger ones for making things worse or yadda yadda. I don’t tend to just blindly believe those things though. Sticking with AP (it changes as the children get older) never gave us a huge backlash, in fact I think it was harder when the kids are young, specially at first when learning new parenting skills as it is so easy to fall back on how we were raised. It got easier, so much easier. I watch my parenting peers who didn’t do AP or veered off at age 3-4 and they are really struggling with their older kids now and I do not envy that hardship and relationship struggles. I think anyone who does real AP will tell you natural consequences go hand in hand with it.
