There’s a lot at stake with how we raise our children, with how our communities view and treat children. We, as a society, are slow to put into practice what research solidly shows as the most effective, and healthiest, way to parent. We, as a society, still struggle to see how the parent-child relationship and the home environment it creates translates not only to that child’s happiness as a child but also as an adult, as well as the lives that person will touch, especially his or her own children.

Many of the mothers and mothers-to-be that I talk to are young—teens and early 20s—a challenging group to promote healthy parenting practices to, as they are still growing and developing themselves. We know this anecdotally. We also know this scientifically. This 2010 UK study is among many that show that the brain doesn’t reach maturity as once theorized until people are at least age 30. Executive functioning, such as planning and decision-making, social awareness and behavior, empathy and other personality traits, are the last bits of cognitive functions to fully develop.

This is also why it’s most important to educate these young mothers’ personal support networks. Unlike older mothers and mothers-to-be who look more to professionals and evidence-based resources for guidance in their choices, overwhelmingly young mothers seek and follow advice from their peers, significant others, and family members regardless of whether they are “with the times.” These young mothers’ own mothers are especially influential. This is also a challenge in that the older generation raised children differently than what is now recommended.

We really have to be careful with what terms we use, when we refer to our children. Even if not spoken aloud, the labels that we put on our children in our own minds can influence the way we interact with them and consequently how they grow up thinking of themselves.

Recently, a woman told me that she’s glad that she held her babies when they were younger and coslept with them and breastfed them on demand, even though they were clingy, because it was only for short time that they are that small and want to be that close to Mom around the clock. Another woman in my position might have smiled and nodded, knowingly, or if she disagreed, might have rolled her eyes. Instead, I smiled and told her that her babies weren’t clingy: They were normal!

Biologically normal babies—babies who are developmentally right on track—want to be held all the time, they want to be breastfed on demand, they want to sleep in Mom’s room at night, they want to learn from the world from Mom’s physical and emotional safety. Clingy is a term that is only used for babies when their normal child development isn’t taken into consideration.

In the last post, I introduced a situation between my daughters that required parental intervention: My daughters had been playing on the bed when one fell off. My older daughter immediately apologized, but my younger daughter would not hear of it and lashed out angrily.

I had asked you to let me know how you would’ve dealt with it. This was to be an exercise in looking at this common situation in a new light – instead of thinking that child needs a timeout, considering what else might be going on to contribute to the situation.

I’ll admit, sibling rivalry is difficult to deal with. But, I’ll give you a hint – the unmet need in this case had nothing to do with her sister, the bed, the fall, or their father. It was a basic need for attention.

My kids yell at each other. One of them is yelling at the other right now. My husband is dealing with it, although by the sound of it, I may have to step in.

Last week, I posted something on my Facebook page about my parenting style:

“I do parent differently. I don’t spank, I don’t punish. I don’t use reward systems. I guide, I teach. My kids are happy, loving, and I often get compliments on their good behavior. I breastfed on demand, I coslept. I base my parent on individual relationships with each of my children, I base my parenting on that children have equal worth as adults. And, when fully embraced, it works. For me, for my kids, and for my husband. Especially for my marriage, because the attitude I take toward my kids is the same that I take toward my husband. I accept, I love unconditionally, I love our differences. It’s a different way of looking at kids, at parenting, at marriage, at the world. And it has a name: Attachment Parenting.”

I got 11 likes. But that wasn’t the point.

There are many ways of raising children. Of course.

Some parents breastfeed, some don’t, and for the most part, kids turn out fine. Some parents stay at home with their kids, some parents put their kids in daycare, and for the most part, kids turn out fine. Some parents enroll their children in public school, others homeschool, and for the most part, kids turn out fine. There certainly are parenting styles that are in need of improvement, to say it lightly, such as those that tend to be so strict that they could be labeled as abusive or those that are permissive enough to border on neglectful. But there is no one right way to parent, if your goal is to raise children who are functioning members of society.

So, what does Attachment Parenting look like in older children? Here are some ideas of differences between babies/toddlers and older children, using the Eight Principles of parenting with attachment:

1. Preparing for Parenting, Pregnancy, and Birth – Obviously, this has to do much more with babies, but one part of the principles, “preparing for parenting” has to do with all ages. This is the principle that charges parents to learn how to overcome challenges in parenting any age child. I use this principle often when I am learning how to adjust my expectations to match child development. Included in this principle is continuing education for parents, in books, DVD courses, local classes, parent support groups, visiting with friends who are also parents, etc. in an effort to learn to be a better parent to our children.

There is a pervasive myth that Attachment Parenting is done once the child has left the baby stage, when breastfeeding and babywearing are no longer appropriate or even possible to do. This is related to the same myth that prescribes only certain parenting techniques – namely breastfeeding, babywearing, bedsharing, and others – to parenting with secure attachment in mind.

Actually, Attachment Parenting – being an approach to childrearing – knows no age barriers, and while this approach has to look drastically different in older children than it does with babies and toddlers, it is still vitally important to a child’s optimal development to continue to parent with attachment well beyond the early years.

Right now, I have a baby, a preschooler, and a school-ager in the house. I am using an Attachment Parenting approach with all three of them, but the techniques that go with each child development stage are very different. They have to be.

What works for the baby just plain will not work with older children – as anyone can tell you. When someone mentions Attachment Parenting for the older child, that person isn’t so dense as to think that the same strategies used with babies can be applied to an older child.

This isn’t a matter of breastfeeding a six-year-old. Rather, what can be applied to all age groups are the Attachment Parenting principles.

It’s important to remember that the relationships established and maintained through Attachment Parenting are healthy parent-child relationships; any relationship based on secure attachment is healthy, but it can seem to require more energy than a relationship developed out of unhealthy patterns.

A common misconception of Attachment Parenting is that it is time-consuming and a child-centered approach that neglects the needs of the parent. In fact, Attachment Parenting may be different, sometimes very different, from other approaches to childrearing, but the level of difficulty is a matter of subjectivity.

Providing for a child’s emotional, as well as physical, needs requires time and energy as any healthy relationship does. The difference between a parent-child relationship and an adult-adult relationship, such as marriage, is that the child is at a dissimilar developmental stage and is psychologically unable to provide equal relationship give-and-take.

For this reason, Attachment Parenting can seem more intense than other parenting approaches.

Attachment Parenting is an approach to childrearing that promotes a secure attachment bond between parents and their children. Attachment is a scientific term for the emotional bond in a relationship. The attachment quality that forms between parents and children, learned from the relational patterns with caregivers from birth on, correlates with how a child perceives – and ultimately is able to experience – relationships.

Attachment quality is correlated with lifelong effects and often much more profound an impact than people understand. A person with a secure attachment is generally able to respond to stress in healthy ways and establish more meaningful and close relationships more often; a person with an insecure attachment style may be more susceptible to stress and less healthy relationships.

A greater number of insecurely attached individuals are at risk for more serious mental health concerns such as depression and anxiety.

How parents develop a secure attachment with their child lies in the parent’s ability to fulfill that child’s need for trust, empathy and affection by providing consistent, loving and responsive care. By demonstrating healthy and positive relationship skills, the parent provides critical emotional scaffolding for the child to learn essential self-regulatory skills.

Attachment Parenting International’s Eight Principles of Parenting are designed to give parents the science-backed “tools” – valuable, practical insights for everyday parenting – that they can use to apply the concept behind Attachment Parenting.

These tools guide parents as they incorporate attachment into their individual parenting styles: