Did AP come naturally to you?

[mamakay]

This is sort of a spinoff of the "AP is on it's way out" thread.
I wasn't AP'd at all as far as I know, but I really went into mommy-auto-pilot when ds was born. I had no idea what AP was till he was almost one, but I ended up being AP (for the most part) without ever knowing the name of my parenting method.

I *had* read child development books, and heard about attachment theory, etc.
And although I thought the "What to Expect" books sounded reasonable enough, I vowed while I was pregnant to just go with my gut and not just do what books said was best.

What about you all? Do you think being raised mainstream hindered your AP instincts? Why do you think AP comes easier to some people?

[starlein26]

oops i hit submit twice.
see below.

[starlein26]

i like your question "Why do you think AP comes easier to some people?"
i personally think that any parent who practices ap is very introspective (or they were lucky enough to be raised ap). they have analyzed their upbringing, seeing the good and definitely the bad, in a way that the mainstream hasn't. i think that parents who choose more mainstream methods probably use denial as their coping mechanism. they choose not to see the link between who they are as adults and how their parents raised them, thus they parent the way they were parented almost accidently, simply due to a lack of deep thought. parents who choose ap, a more intimate and challenging style know that their children will benefit because they know what destroyed them and what worked.

does that make any sense?

[jaye]

In my late teens and 20s, the only people I knew having children were my sisters and a few friends who were all AP - although I didn't learn that term until after I had my first. Breastfeeding, slings, co-sleeping, no circ, etc was the norm. We all knew my mother hadn't breastfed but the reason was always "it was discouraged in those days" (50's and early 60's). Now I realize how lucky I was to have such cool older sisters!

[johub]

My oldest dd was 10 before I Ever heard the words Attachment Parenting.
But I was always one of those people. Some people are dog people, some people are cat people. I have always been a baby person.
Even as a kid I would talk to babies at the grocery store go help them stop their tears, and I played in homes with babies rather than kids my age.
When I had my oldest daughter I couldnt afford books. I did not have a single one, so all I had was my experience and my gut.
I never heard of a sling, but I had a Gerry tummy pack (way before the Baby Bjorn days) and I would wear her while I shopped, and I would push the groceries home in the stroller while I held her.
The sound of a baby crying has always been agonizingly painful to me, even as a child. There is no way I would ever have been able to let a baby cry if there was something I could do to stop it.
I breastfed because I was poor, and that's what they're for.
I thought I "invented" cosleeping (had never heard the term either) when I realized what a miracle nursing lying down was.
As a single mom I slept with my dd for most of her first 8 years.
I wasnt a perfect mama.
I weaned her too early because I had to start working, and she cried the whole time. (in hindsight I might have found another solution if I had looked further, but I had never heard of LLL either)
For years I just did what made life easier. I called myself a "lazy" parent.
Now I know that there are very good reasons why these solutions worked best and it is not laziness at all.

joline

[trmpetplaya]

I could never raise a child in the detached way. I was lucky enough to be breastfed (and see my mother breastfeed my siblings) and my parents kept us in a bassinet by their bed for at least 6 months though that's about where the AP ended. I'm not much into making bottles when there's already food heated to the perfect temperature that's almost free made to order. I'm not much into getting up out of a nice warm bed in the middle of the night to pick up a baby who is lonely and frustrated because I couldn't get there sooner. I'm also really not into strollers and not being able to walk up stairs and getting the wheels stuck :

I could go on and on about that...

love and peace.

[Leatherette]

I was doing AP things before I ever heard of the term. I had a sling because they sold them where I did prenatal yoga, and I thought it seemed much cozier and more portable than a stroller. Co-sleeping just happened. Breastfeeding was difficult for me, but I really wanted to stick it out, and did. I could never listen to a baby cry and not respond. The tougher part for me is some of the finer points of gentle discipline. I wish I had the patience to always respond gracefully, as the zen earthmother I aspire to be.

I was not raised AP in any way. I spent a lot of time with babysitters while my parents partied, and was at the recieving end of a lot of shaming discipline and silent treatments (and only a little spanking).

L.

[onthemove]

thankfully I have my best friend to thank for being ap. she grew up with no mom(chose booze and left when she was 3) and she was determined to be the best mom to her children. she is ap and her children are amazing kids and I know her style of parenting and being so in tune with them is why they are so amazing. it really is about doing what comes naturally.

[Llyra]

Certain aspects of AP came naturally. As a matter of fact, until I started reading parenting books/websites I had no idea that there was any such thing as CIO sleep training, for instance, and I just took it for granted that babies should be held as much as possible. And co-sleeping was just one of many options for me, not a controversial thing at all. Those are the things I was raised with. My mom and grandma both believed in holding babies and responding quickly to their needs.

There was no babywearing in my family till I started it, but it just seemed like the natural extension of holding a lot, so that was pretty easy too.

The aspects that did not come naturally were, interestingly, the ones that are less common in my family. Breastfeeding is not something many people in my family had done, and I struggled with it myself. I had very little support for what I was doing. My cousin who nursed her toddler was treated like the family freak for doing it.

So I really do think that we tend naturally to emulate the kind of parenting that we've seen. How our own parents did things, and how other parents we lived close to did things, tend to be our natural impulses with our own children. To do things differently tends to be an effort, something we have to be conscious about.

[dharmamama]

To be honest, I thought it did until I came to MDC and discovered that some people are a lot more inflexible in what they consider to be good parenting. I always parent with certain principles in mind but am flexible in my approach, whereas here I have found people who seem to parent with a list of AP rules in mind and who have preconceived ideas about how to handle things. So, while I think AP came naturally to me, others would probably say I am not AP at all! :LOL

Namaste!

[lilylove]

There were a few different influences that led me to AP, my sis, my mom(she wasn't really very AP then, but is now ), a gift suscription to Mothering mag. But I know that the reason, that I followed the advice and ended up parenting this way is because it feels right. I don't think I could have been the kind of parent who does CIO, spanking, and so on. I certainly recieved enough advise urging me to go the other way "just let her cry", "you're spoiling her by holding her so much" But in the end the AP way felt right, so I guess it was there all along. As for why a person is or becomes AP, well maybe it's trust in themselves/thier babies, maybe they see parenting in a different light. Or maybe they have just had the good fortune to have stumbled on to a path that led them here. I do think some people parent in a more mainstreamish way, because they just don't know that there is another way

I have often wondered if the more researchy, and the more likely a person is to think outside the box, and think for themselves (as opposed to being spoonfed bad info), if that is the kind of person that is more likely to be the AP kind of parent.

[raleigh_mom]

I said came naturally. It was very much what was in my heart.

However, it was not what was common in my community. The difference for me was: education, education, education.... (and support).

By that, I mean I was super lucky after DD1 was born to become part of a mom's group sponsored by the hospital where she was born in Atlanta. The group was run by a nurse turned mom's educator/lactation consultant who believed very much in AP. Without her information, encouragement, and support, I don't know if I could have kept it up.

[Lucky]

I feel like I was AP before I knew what AP was.
Luckily, I was invited to join a playgroup where other moms were AP. i think that without support, I may have been swayed to be more mainstream. Society makes AP seem weird, IMO. AP feels natural to me.

[sweetest]

Luckily Im the type of person who researches everything to death, so as I read more while I was pg, the more AP I became. But I had to "unlearn" a lot. I knew I was going to breastfeed, my mom was a LLL leader in the early 80s, but the rest of it was foreign to me. My mom is one of those in the "brestfeeding but not AP" category (she cded because my parents were poor :LOL )

Especially in the area of gentle disipline I have to be very aware of not doing what my parents did. AP is getting harder for me as dd gets older

[Little_Ladybug]

I chose "for the most part". It came pretty natural, but don't get me wrong, I had those moments (mostly at 3am :LOL ) where I thought I could possibly be be "spoiling" her. But I'm glad I let my instincts take control, I have a beautiful, smart, and happy daughter today!

[Mothernature]

Originally Posted by sweetest

...
Especially in the area of gentle disipline I have to be very aware of not doing what my parents did. AP is getting harder for me as dd gets older

I also felt like I was AP before I had a name for it. It sort of fell into my lap so to speak. I met a midwife when I was thinking about TTC and once you start making those kinds of choices the rest seems like a logical next step.

The transition to gentle discipline has been a bit more challenging for me. I've read and read discipline books, but I really have a poor example from my family of origin and struggle to keep my cool.

[prmom]

I did not know what parenting style I was until I started researching things that I was doing. It apparently had a name and it was AP. I felt less ap once I visited mothering b/c I did not do cloth diapers, organic, and some other stuff like that. I naturally coslept and breastfed and did a lot of other ap stuff just because it came naturally. I remember attending a church and they were doing a session on ezzo before I knew what it was and watching a video and thinking it was all wrong. I was pregnant at the time and couldn't believe people would actually take this stuff seriously. At that time I was coming from a developmental perspective.

I am glad for MDC b/c for the most part I have learned ways to do what I want to do as a parent better. My basic feeling on parenting is to do what comes naturally. Of course not everything comes naturally for me here, but I do appreciate a community where I can go to for suggestions and support.

[soulsistah]

I didn't know that the way my mom had raised us was considered AP, until I started talking to other mommas about my hopes and dreams for my own son. :LOL They were like "Oh you're into AP! Thats interesting" :LOL I guess it came naturally, but I'm also finding it's a day by day, experiance by experiance to raise this adorable little man........Funny thing people immediately say "Oh he's gonna be a momma's boy or he'll be clingy or whatever" and me and my sibs came out very independent with realistic views and expectations of my mom.

[sunshinegal]

Well, I had older sisters that were having babies when I was a teenager and I saw firsthand how the things go bad from the beginning. At that point in my life I was also asking Why? to just about everything so that including their parenting. I saw how people can be so habitually selfish and not put their kids needs first. I saw how their need to look "normal" was more important than loving their own kids. I vowed never to be that way. I vowed that if I just followed my gut feelings things just couldn't go wrong. And so far, they haven't

[avivaelona]

I said it came naturally, but honestly I have no idea what natural would have been. I certainly wasn't raised AP and in most ways I'm not crunchy, and I'm not a naturally AP type person. I lost my first baby though and it made it monumentally hard to be seperated at all from my second born, and we were blessed with a second born who is more on the clingy side so I never really made a choice to be AP and I really don't have any strong belief in all of its principals, its just what works for us in practice. I sometimes say that I'm not AP, I'm just neurotic.

I DID make a choice to use gentle discipline, I was raised with hitting and yelling and it wasn't an effective parenting technique for me and I vowed years ago that I wouldn't hit my kids if I could help it, then I worked for years in a classroom and daycare setting with young children and I found that the more GD ways were just far more effective in the long run. GD doesn't come naturally to me at all, I wasn't raised with it, but years of practice have helped me use it more naturally.

Interesting poll.