LOL - YES. I remember getting together with some of my online mom-friends when our kids were around 18 months old. I hardly got to talk to any of them cause Dakota kept making a beeline for the boundaries of the park just as he always did, at a dead run. Over and over and over. Later back online people were like, Ya know how she jokes her son is worth about 4 toddlers combined? SHE WASN'T KIDDING :P
Yeah, Positive Discipline/Positive Parenting is the natural segue from attachment parenting, and both are conceptually intuitive - though actual practice often really REALLY requires research and teaching :D It's one thing to say, "I'll never spank/shame/use fear/manipulate because that's clearly a stupid approach since adults who treat eachother that way are considered abusive...plus it won't result in an ongoing relationship that works for adolescence, nor will it prepare my child to be an emotionally healthy adult which is the whole freakin' goal, isn't it?????" and quite another thing to actually maintain your sanity while setting healthy boundaries and limits that are developmentally appropriate for your kiddo! It's enough to make your head explode, cause it's not like they slow down their developmental foibles while you're trying to figure out how the hell to manage them without doing what your parents did or what conventional culture does! Nooo, they don't :D
I love teaching (currently I have exactly one phone client....how did that happen? :D). It's fantastic to help a parent be able to ENJOY their kid again :D Helping parents who *want* to parent without using fear or emotional manipulation? I figure that's one of the most profound changes I can bring to the planet :) ....well, after parenting my own children, at any rate!
There's TONS of books out there that purport to be PD - most of them are fairly lame and fall into two categories: "Punishment Light," and, "Emotional Manipulation by Another Name." Barbara Coloroso's books tend to be excellent. I've heard good things about the author Dr. Gordon Neufeld (people often assume I'm working from his model - in actuality at the point I was developing my model, we had crap for resources, so a group of us alternative parents hammered out our own version). Because it's a philosophy rather than a set of gimmics and because it has its roots in emotional intelligence which is based in the structure of human social psychology rather than an abstract set of concepts, PD is pretty much infinitely flexible. It can be applied to any parent/child relationship and there's *always* a way to help a child be emotionally capable and socially appropriate, within the restrictions of that child's developmental stage.
One thing that's really lacking is resources that help parents whose child is in the transitional age range from 2.5yo to about 7yo. That's the most critical time to really teach emotional intelligence and establish healthy boundaries, and by far the hardest time to parent - but because you can't use reason as your main tool with the child, books kind of flail about, gloss over that age range, and focus on parenting from about 6-7yo on. Because of that, I've ended up informally specializing in that age group. People contact me when their child hits about 3.5 and they realize that they don't *like* their kid right now....and really need to do something about that. Once you get your child to about 7yo while using positive discipline, things get soooo much easier, because you've got an in-tune relationship already firmly established....but getting from toddlerhood to there, that's hard! Anyhoo, I've got some articles on my site if you have any interest in reading more From The Mind Of Ecaterin on the subject :P http://c-3.nu/howtoparent/
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Date: 2012-08-06 05:22 pm (UTC)Yeah, Positive Discipline/Positive Parenting is the natural segue from attachment parenting, and both are conceptually intuitive - though actual practice often really REALLY requires research and teaching :D It's one thing to say, "I'll never spank/shame/use fear/manipulate because that's clearly a stupid approach since adults who treat eachother that way are considered abusive...plus it won't result in an ongoing relationship that works for adolescence, nor will it prepare my child to be an emotionally healthy adult which is the whole freakin' goal, isn't it?????" and quite another thing to actually maintain your sanity while setting healthy boundaries and limits that are developmentally appropriate for your kiddo! It's enough to make your head explode, cause it's not like they slow down their developmental foibles while you're trying to figure out how the hell to manage them without doing what your parents did or what conventional culture does! Nooo, they don't :D
I love teaching (currently I have exactly one phone client....how did that happen? :D). It's fantastic to help a parent be able to ENJOY their kid again :D Helping parents who *want* to parent without using fear or emotional manipulation? I figure that's one of the most profound changes I can bring to the planet :) ....well, after parenting my own children, at any rate!
There's TONS of books out there that purport to be PD - most of them are fairly lame and fall into two categories: "Punishment Light," and, "Emotional Manipulation by Another Name." Barbara Coloroso's books tend to be excellent. I've heard good things about the author Dr. Gordon Neufeld (people often assume I'm working from his model - in actuality at the point I was developing my model, we had crap for resources, so a group of us alternative parents hammered out our own version). Because it's a philosophy rather than a set of gimmics and because it has its roots in emotional intelligence which is based in the structure of human social psychology rather than an abstract set of concepts, PD is pretty much infinitely flexible. It can be applied to any parent/child relationship and there's *always* a way to help a child be emotionally capable and socially appropriate, within the restrictions of that child's developmental stage.
One thing that's really lacking is resources that help parents whose child is in the transitional age range from 2.5yo to about 7yo. That's the most critical time to really teach emotional intelligence and establish healthy boundaries, and by far the hardest time to parent - but because you can't use reason as your main tool with the child, books kind of flail about, gloss over that age range, and focus on parenting from about 6-7yo on. Because of that, I've ended up informally specializing in that age group. People contact me when their child hits about 3.5 and they realize that they don't *like* their kid right now....and really need to do something about that. Once you get your child to about 7yo while using positive discipline, things get soooo much easier, because you've got an in-tune relationship already firmly established....but getting from toddlerhood to there, that's hard! Anyhoo, I've got some articles on my site if you have any interest in reading more From The Mind Of Ecaterin on the subject :P http://c-3.nu/howtoparent/
:D