The natural aging, also called parenting with attachment, is a way of educating children somewhat different from the standards known for a few decades.
To define it in some way, in the usual education, the one that we receive the majority of adults of today, the child is considered as a being with capacity and intention to take control of everything that surrounds him, and above all of his parents, and the goal is to control, limit and bend you to avoid it.
The natural agingOn the other hand, he has a less catastrophic vision of the intentions of babies and children and tries to understand their emotional world, treating them in a more respectful way, often from you to you, in order to allow children to be them. themselves (and not exactly what parents want them to be), to be free (but respect the freedom of others) and to be responsible, kind and honest because they believe they should be.
Although the objective could be considered in some aspects similar (logical, we all want our children to be good people), the methods are very different and, as natural parenting is minority and more "modern", it is usual to receive criticism and free advice of people who believe that, by not maintaining exhaustive control and denial of their desires, often incoherent ("so you don't know you can have everything in life"), you are raising (creating) a person without rules , without values, spoiled and who believes that everything should revolve around him.
Converted dads and moms
We are many, I would say that the majority, the fathers and moms who defend a more respectful upbringing with our children, whose knowledge (or whose ignorance, as we look at) led us to educate our children in the same way that our parents and teachers did with us.
In my personal case, the fear of losing control, or the fear of being controlled by a son of mine, made some methods that seem to me a true aberration seem good or necessary to me.
As I said in his day, following the instincts to raise a child can be dangerous, since instinct, a word that sounds like innate behavior, is "contaminated" on many occasions (almost always) by personal experiences and so that observes and is heard to say in the environment.
Then, at the birth of my first child, I started reading books and collecting information about babies and my false instinct and the fears of having children to control me vanished to make way for a new I, more aware of my baby's needs, more respectful of their rhythms and their growth, with more desire to get involved in their upbringing and accepting the challenge of trying to educate my children making them feel loved.
This transition that I lived can be signed by many fathers and mothers who, heirs of a more or less authoritative parenting model decided a good day, for whatever reason, to break the chain and start a new path in dealing with children.
Natural parenting motivates being a minority
One of the almost defining characteristics of natural breeding is that it is a way of raising minority. People continue to educate their children in the traditional way and they continue to be accepted as good phrases like “children have to sleep in their bed because they need their space”, “now they say it is forbidden, but a good slap in time solves many things” , "Let him cry, he'll get tired", "When you have a tantrum, what you have to do is pay no attention to it" or think that babies "tease" or "take your measure", among other things .
And in these appear a few fathers and mothers, whose scale of values gives an incredible turn at birth their children, putting them above all, dedicated to study and understand the behavior of babies to raise them in a respectful and conscious way and realize that the way they have been educated and the world in which they live made it normal for adults to treat the most fragile people in society as if they were the most resistant, making use of physical and / or verbal violence and other methods that no adult would allow for himself.
Then these fathers and mothers feel (we feel) that there is a new truth, a new option, another way of doing things and the logical need to show the world appears, in one way or another, that you can educate without hurting, that you can raise with hugs and kisses and that all this can help end the epidemic of low self-esteem that affects, I would say, most of the western population (the problem is that increasing the population's self-esteem would decrease consumption needs and the system would wobble ... but this is another issue).
They want to show what they learned to the rest
With the motivation to see that the world could change if I wanted to, that the sick society in which we live could improve with a new generation of empathic and respectful people and with the desire to show others a new way to go, parents and Mothers start their particular “information campaign”.
Instead of sneakers No. 16 and instead of earrings, these parents begin to give away books by Carlos González and Rosa Jové, print studies for the pregnant sister-in-law or for the friend who says that as soon as she can return to work and explain what It is important that in the first hour they are not separated, how important it is for the baby to keep the cord beating once it is born and how good breastfeeding is (all true, no doubt).
Then, some realize that their personal circle is very limited and decide to create a personal blog in which to explain their experiences, their concerns and their anger and in which to disseminate those articles related to this style of parenting (some even do through Babies and more, ahem).
To be continue…
From now on parents are experiencing a series of changes since not everyone wants to hear a new truth and because the free tips also come from people related to the more traditional parenting style, but this we will see at another time with the second part of this entry.
Photos | Flickr - christyscherrer, N.R., oksidor
In Babies and more | Attachment parenting, On neomachism and attachment breeding, The chemistry of secure attachment, The attachment theory of John Bowlby
