Here's WWJJD to PL:
Attachment Parenting and Co-sleeping does NOT mean that you and your child are "Best Friends". In fact, I can't stand it when people say they are Best Friends with their children, you are a Parent, not a friend....you can be friends later when they are adults. I really think there is this huge confusion between being an Attachment Parent and a Helicopter Parent. All the children I have met that have had parents that practice some form of AP have amazing, well adjusted, wonderful kids. One couple we know says they do AP, but it is WAY more of a hovering and suffocating form of parenting. The mainstream parents that I know also have good kids, but they do seem to be the type of parent that hovers over their child instead of letting them just "BE".
I agree that Love and enmeshment are not the same thing and Attachment Parenting does not and is not about that at all.
I am going to look at your website because I like another well thought out opinion, but I really think there needs to be a clarification between AP and Helicopter type parenting, they are not the same.
Here's PL:
Dear WWJJD - Thank you for your very thoughtful responses to my posts. Ultimately, intention is everything, and the clarity and genuineness of one's intentions are always a function of how self-aware and connected the person in question is to their own feelings and inner life. That being the case, the essence of good parenting doesn't reside in a particular technique or theory, but rather in the above-mention state of being. "Attachment Parenting," or any other "method" of parenting, in the hands of a person who is not self-actualized will be a cause of later dysfunction in the life of the offspring raised under those circumstances. The problems may not show up in full force until adulthood when relationship, career, or mental/emotional issues appear, but show up they will. You may be right, WW, that AP is not in and of itself a faulty concept, but there are a lot of "as-if" parents out there, trying to superimpose an approach or idea over their own unmet psychological and emotional needs, and that is always at the expense of their children.
Thanks for checking out my blog. Love to hear more from you.
Best,
Peter Loffredo, LCSW
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