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.

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Everyone loves babies. We’re programmed to. It’s biological: A 2008 research study at Baylor showed that the happiness centers in our brains light up when we see a baby smiling at us.

Conversely, a 2012 study at Aarhus University showed that a baby’s cry elicits a unique, lightning-fast response in his parents to soothe the baby. We want that crying to stop. We’re wired that way.

So, it’s puzzling why there seems to be a surge of entertainment centered on crying children, particularly infants. The quiver of the lip, the shaking of the chin, the miniature pout, the glistening tears. Apparently, it’s quite adorable.

And as the child grows and those crying sessions become tantrums, these big reactions can seem downright hilarious to a lot of people. “You’re having a fit about what?!”

Making sport of crying babies – from Parenting.com’s “They’re mad, they’re sad, they’re so darn cute!” crying baby pictures to YouTube’s swarms of “cute baby crying” videos to talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s challenge to parents to feign eating all their child’s Halloween candy to Japan’s crying babies festival (what!?) – seems to be taking this fixation with baby cuteness one step too far.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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Maybe you never knew there was a name for it – the unique way you raise your child – but it’s in tune with your child’s needs and with your own needs, and your family lives it out daily. Or, perhaps, you do know there is a name for it, with many synonyms and variations, but you live it out without being defined.

My six-year-old daughter announced today that she had a made a rule and that Daddy wasn’t following it. He was “supposed to” wait inside for her before going outside to play with our other children.

She had just finished her breakfast but wasn’t yet changed out of her pajamas and needed to brush her teeth and comb her hair, morning tasks the other children had already finished. Daddy had told her that she could come outside when she was done and that they would delay going on a walk until she came.

But she was angry because he wasn’t doing as she wanted and she ran to me to tell me so, in hopes that I would back her up.

What would you do?

Some parents would say that in no uncertain terms should this little girl be getting her way, or talking with disrespect toward her father, or tattling on Daddy to the other parent. That she was being manipulative and should be punished.

What did I do?

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I’ve been reading some of John Rosemond’s work lately, and I have to say that I’m a bit shocked that he is as well read as he is. Well, maybe, I shouldn’t be. After all, he’s not the first parent educator to advocate physical punishment and shaming and ignoring children.

It seems his parenting philosophy is centered on making children feel as worthless as possible. That, he says, is the key to their happiness.

He believes that self-esteem, which he says is opposite humility, is a bad thing. That parents need to put kids in their place, back to the dark ages when children “were seen, not heard.” He also believes that ADHD is a product of poor parenting.

Self esteem and humility can co-exist, and they should. Perhaps Rosemond is getting his vocabulary confused, because what he’s referring to instead of self-esteem is arrogance, which is not at all the same. Self-esteem is belief in one’s worth. Humility cannot exist without self-esteem. Humility allows a person to be teachable, to seek out advice, to be open to others, to empathize. Someone with low self-esteem cannot be these things, because they are preoccupied with their unhappiness.

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Parenting with attachment, whichever label you choose to use (I use Attachment Parenting), comes in all shades. Just because some parents use techniques that you wouldn’t necessarily use doesn’t mean that they aren’t creating a secure parent-child attachment.

The truth is, the majority of parents do at least a little attachment parenting already. They just don’t call it that. Parenting advice, for the most part, is slowly evolving to include more attachment-minded principles.

For example, years ago, the mantra for caring for babies was scheduled feedings, cry-it-out sleep training, and warnings that holding a baby too much would spoil him. It’s well accepted now that babies should be fed when they’re hungry, it’s OK if you want to hold your baby, and even the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends rooming in with baby so that parents can attend to them quickly.

These are all ways parents use attachment parenting without even thinking about it!

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