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The Unique Challenges of Being 3 1/2 Years Old

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Tuesday, July 6, 2010

I have quoted Slow Family Living founder and early childhood parenting coach, educator and speaker, Carrie Contey numerous times on Attachment Mama over the last year. She never ceases to amaze me with her thoughtful insights on parenting babies and young children. Parents inside or outside of Austin can benefit from Carrie’s wise counsel. I’ve really enjoyed the number of workshops I’ve attended over the last three years and out-of-towners really appreciate her e-handbooks, tele-classes and phone consultations. Check out her web sites for options!

My husband and I recently reached out to Carrie for advice on our 3 1/2 year-old and her frequent intense emotions over the last few months which have felt like too much for her age to my husband. With Carrie’s permission, I’m sharing her brilliant response in hope that it may serves other parents:

3.5 is a monumentally challenging time to be a little person and subsequently the parents of a little person. Even if conditions are ideal (slow pace of life, super resourced happy parents with tons of emotional, financial, physical support, minimal changes and transitions, plenty of exercise (but not too much;) …she would still be having a hard time because that’s what 3.5 is all about.

It’s halfway between 0 and 7 and it’s fraught with the desire to stay a baby and feel extremely felt by the main people around her and to be completely independent and not need a thing from you. It’s crazy making for her and for you. And, add in all the changes, stresses, new stuff, good stuff, hard stuff… that your family is going through and yes, she’s going to be challenging. A lot of the time.

All that said, I do believe 3.5 is a golden opportunity for:

1) helping her understand how to feel all these big feelings AND know that other people can have their feelings and can set boundaries so she can be safe. Both are true. And she’s learning this. And she needs patience and compassion and love and presence in monumental ways right now. And so do you. For yourselves.

2) doing some digging into your own early experiences. She’s pushing big buttons that are rooted in that time of life for you. Did you get to tantrum with support? If not, what happened when you expressed big feelings? How do you relate to yourself now when you are feeling those kinds of feelings? It’s all in there and it’s all up because she’s so emotional at the moment. Which is really exactly where she needs to be. It’s your work to get really well resourced, look at what’s triggering you, be clear with your boundaries and ride the waves. Think of it as learning to surf. (more…)

Posted in Attachment Parenting | 2 Comments

Responding with Sensitivity

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Thursday, April 8, 2010

This post is for the April “Respond with Sensitivity” Blog Carnival hosted by API Speaks. Since February, the Attachment Parenting International (API) blog has hosted a monthly “carnival” — a blog event in which writers are invited to post about their experience with the designated topic. Each month they are focusing on a different Attachment Parenting principal. According to API:

“You can build the foundation of trust and empathy by understanding and responding appropriately to your infant’s needs. Babies communicate their needs in many ways including body movements, facial expressions, and crying. They learn to trust when their needs are consistently responded to with sensitivity. Building a strong attachment with a baby involves not only responding consistently to his physical needs, but spending enjoyable time interacting with him and thus meeting his emotional needs as well.”

Responding with sensitivity is one of those super touchy subjects with a wide range of opinions among parents — especially when parenting infants. Within the AP community, responding with sensitivity essentially means tending to your baby whenever he or she cries and not engaging in sleep training.

Some of my closest friends are all about sleep training and I do not want them to feel judged by me because we’ve chosen a different path. I think as parents we all essentially want the same thing: we want our children to be happy, healthy, and emotionally secure. We just have different ideas about how to reach that objective. Some parents believe that guiding a baby toward this security means learning to self-soothe and cry-it-out. Others, like me, believe that the emotional well-being comes with establishing trust.

And you know what? It’s likely that all of our children, regardless of our efforts to care for them in the best way we know how, will have their own issues to wrestle with when they’re older that they will blame us for. And we can just hope they forgive us and know that we parented with love in our hearts that they won’t be able to comprehend until they are parents themselves. On that note….Mom, if you’re reading — I really get how much you loved me as a baby, a child, and now as an adult — and I do not feel bad about having cried myself to sleep a few times learning to sleep through the night.

Despite my pragmatic view of the big picture reality, I remain committed to following AP principals in a way that works best for our family because it feels right to me. So how does “responding with sensitivity” play out in our home currently? In a way that will likely remove us from any kind of Orthodox AP-er label. (more…)

Posted in Attachment Parenting | 2 Comments

Feeding My Family with Love and Respect

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Friday, March 12, 2010

This post is part of the 2010 API Principles of Parenting blog carnival, a series of monthly parenting blog carnivals, hosted by API Speaks. Learn more about attachment parenting by visiting the API website.

I was drawn to participate in this month’s API Speaks blog carnival because I find the topic so interesting in its subjectivity. I view myself as:

An advocate of breastfeeding for both its health and nurturing benefits;

Someone desiring to provide and model healthy eating for my children (today we had mac-n-cheese, veggie burgers and fries….some days are better than others); and

Someone with deep curiosity around the intensely personal, primal nature of feeding our young that exists cross-culturally among mothers.

I feel very fortunate to be alive today and part of a generation of women that can experience so much when it comes to equal rights with men. I’m all about competing with men professionally and earning equal pay.

AND at the same time, I like to acknowledge gender differences and embrace all that is inherently feminine. During this chapter of early parenting years, I personally feel a great sense of my own femininity when nurturing my children with their daily sustenance. I feel connected to all other mothers in the world through this practice — including animals — especially birds for some reason. Funny that one of my 20-something nicknames was “Monnie Bird.”

Guzer.com Photo

I think the highly personal aspect of feeding our children with love and respect is how we each define what that means a little differently. To tell a mother that she’s not feeding her child right — iye, iye, iye — that can be seriously offensive! It seems to cut to the core of a defining aspect of motherhood.

So without implying any kind of critique if yours is different, here’s a window into my family’s practice of feeding with love and respect:

Extended Breastfeeding. This is a relative term…some moms define “extended” to mean until a child chooses to wean which could be age four or five. Each to their own. My goal is two years for my littlest. (more…)

Posted in Attachment Parenting, Breastfeeding, Nutrition, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

When You Actually Love the Bedtime Stall Strategy

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Wednesday, February 24, 2010

“Mama – let’s have special time together, OK?”

“OK, sounds great!”

“Let’s snuggle and then you can scratch my back.”

“OK angel, let’s do it.”

“I want you to do five shapes, then five numbers, then five letters.”

“Sure.”

“No. How about seven shapes, then seven numbers, then seven letters?”

“How about five?”

“Mmmmm. How about three?”

“Excellent. Three it is….”

I then proceed to scratch variations of all of the above on her back while she delights in guessing what I’m doing. At age 3 1/2, she’s doing remarkably well at this little game. She consistently nails most shapes and certain numbers and letters (1, 2, 3, 4 and s, i, m, c, and x).

We’ve been doing this since I started working last week. It’s a bed time routine that feels fun and sweet for both of us and makes up for lost time together during the day.

Last night, it got sweeter. Her going-to-sleep stall strategy was unexpectedly quite brilliant. After a long series of “7 each” letter, number and shape back scratchings and two solid foot rubs, I said, “OK Angel Face, time to say ‘Good Night.’”

“Wait Mama! I want to scratch your back and rub your feet.”

(Um….ok!) “OK Sweetie, that sounds nice!”

I was already completely sold and wrapped around her finger when she enthusiastically scratched my back and rubbed my feet for 20 minutes straight. Then her sweetness doubled and I wished we could freeze time and snuggle up together in her twin bid forever.

She asked me to move my body so that my feet were more accessible to her for rubbing. I ended up rather contorted and she saw that my head was starting to fall of the edge of the bed.

“Mama, I need to hold on to you,” she said. “Because I really love you and I don’t want you to fall off.”

Call me Butter. I think I finally left her to sleep at 8:45 tonight.

Posted in Attachment Parenting, Toddler Bedtime | 9 Comments

Why Parenting Support is So Critical

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Monday, February 22, 2010

I read the Attachment Parenting International blog tonight, API Speaks, and the post really shook me up. I encourage you to check it out.

The author writes: “Parents and caregivers are not passive guardians of children in the earliest years; we’re active participants in building their learning foundations and we need support, not blame, in this extraordinarily important role. In the most simplistic view, spending on education can only be as successful as its antecedent: early care.”

He draws attention to the tragic recent child abuse case of Lydia Schatz, 7, and her 11 year old sister Zariah, who suffered at the hands of their adopted parents. Lydia died from her beatings.

The article from this family’s local newspaper reported:

“Both girls were allegedly whipped by the their adoptive parents with a quarter-inch plumbing supply line – the instrument suggested by Michael and Debi Pearl, founders of No Greater Joy Ministries and authors of the controversial religious parenting book ‘How to Train Up a Child.’”

I was reminded of a fellow AP Mama in Austin who shared a story a few months ago. She said a repair man came to her home and following his visit sent her a letter admonishing her for the permissive parenting style he observed while in her house. He went on to highly recommend that she and her husband read this same book. He claimed he parented 8 or 10 kids….can’t remember exactly….and that he and his wife knew what it took to raise respectful children.

THIS BOOK FLAT OUT RECOMMENDS CHILD ABUSE. According to reviews that I’ve read, there is a page that actually recommends whipping infants. Are you kidding me?! (more…)

Posted in Attachment Parenting, Empathetic Parenting | 8 Comments