To being, first and most importantly, any method of parenting must fit the parents and the childs needs, PERIOD, to raise a child in a positive environment essential for their development.
It has to work for the parents as well as the child.

One side says Kool-Aid, the other says that the moms who are anti-Dr Sears are self-centered New Yorkers. I don’t drink anything that isn’t water. juice, diet soda, or cystal light, and I don’t live in NY. Where do I fall here?

Low calorie drinker who like to get a mani and pedi here and there?

There is no right or wrong style of parenting but insulting each other for developing parenting techniques that is a good fit for our familes is childish and immature. It’s like the five year old on the playground who when their frenemy pushes them on the playground and calls them a stupid head, they push back, hurt and angry, calling the aggressor a “stupid head!’.

That being said, there are undeniable facts and reoccuring events that support anti-Dr. Sears view.
Just like Dr. Spock, Baby Whisperer, Deferberization, or Dr. Sears, there is no one size fits all style of parenting. Parents are supposed to do what’s best for the family as a whole, and what works individually with each kid.

My story and our resistance to anything that rhymes with proctor-shmears is because of the follwing:

I went full terms with my two adorable twins. My good friend who used Dr.Sears Baby Book as her bible bought me one as a gift a day after we came home from the hospital. She used it for her ten month old son, and said is was incredible. After a few days home from the hospital, my husband and I said thanks, but no thanks. My friend is wonderful, her husband is wonderful, and her son is a cutie but an absolute nightmare. He was waking through the nigh, fed different times a day, and demanded a lot of attention. Their lives were a day to day of stress, aggravation, frustration, and guilt. Now they have another boy, and the older child is not only aggresive towards his brother, but to any child his age or younger he deems a threat. I am sure looking back they realized that the Dr. Sears method wasn’t working for him, but by that time, it was nearly impossible to try to parent him any other way. My friend is a devoted mother, always putting her kids needs well before her own, but she became a frazzled mess.

I thought it was just my friend. Unfortunately, anyone I know who swore by attachment parenting has experienced the same fall out, and I know quite a few people. My boys are alseep from 8-7, have regulated play, snack, lunch, and nap routine. We were a lot more strict in the beginning and people either called us too strict, militant, or downright dictator like. Undeterred, my husband and I stuck through it and had the babies sleeping through the night at six months and routined from 4 months (With obvious setback of teething, illness, vacation, or alteration to due age, etc).

Another close friend, Stacy, avid Dr. Sears follower, allows her son to sleep on the couch, goes to sleep when he is “ready”, and eats what is “good for him according to him” and he is nine years old!!!!!!!!!!!!
The worse case I ever had was when I ran a baby sitting group with a woman who I think had a pocket version of the book. At first I didn’t realzie, but her unhappy and stressed out infant should have been the dead give away. The transition of the other baby in the group in comparrison to her child was like two kids from different solar systems, and her kid seem resemble a black hole! I couldn’t put my finger on it until I was discussing how I don’t hold her daughter all the time because I don’t use the Baby Book, and defensively she looked toward her book case, and low and behold, there it was, with its pages and bind clearly worn as signs of hours of read through and consultations. Her daughter was underweight, had to be fed the rest of her bottle with a syringe (which I refused), cried for hours for every day for A MONTh when her mother left for work, and was a very high strong and unhappy child. The mother had a serious problem with her kid getting upset. I, coming off my development course work, knew that she is just communication and demonstrating that she is unhappy either her play scene, diaper situation, hungry, wanted some one on one time, etc. This woman could not handle her child crying for a moment. It was so out of hand that one time she came home one freezing cold November day with groceries after work, and left some of them in the car while she greeted her daughter. Needing to get the rest of the groceries, she started for the door, which of course, set her daughter off into the pre-crying sounds and expressions. She then decided rather than let her daughter be upset for ten seconds, she held her one handed, took her out in the below 32 degree sans coat, hat, or scarf, grabbed fistful of groceries, and came back in the house. Time her daughter would have been upset while I comforted her: 15 seconds. Time her daughter was exposed to the early winter weather (she already had a bad cough that day): 5 minutes.
All the while, she was having some marital stress because her fiver year old sone had been sleeping in their bed for nine months straight!
Hmm, attachment parenting or simply way tooo attached?!?!?!?

I get frustrated, annoyed, and sometiems downright frazzled. Heck, when I get a bad grade back from school, a good yell or shry (obviously not in front of my kids) is just the way I need to blow off some steam before I can get to the gym or yoga class. I am, afterall, a human being. If I had my husband hovering above me, consistently and naggingly, asking “Are you ok? What’s wrong? Can I help? There, there, it’s ok. Oh honey, it will all work out. Shhh, shhhhh (rock rock)!”. not only would I probably have punched him in the nose from being so annoyed by his persistent concern, I would never learn how to deal with these mild setback myself properly when he isn’t around.

Unlike what some of pro-attachment parents may believe, I read that book cover to cover. I know all the methods, the B’s, the bonding, the co-sleeping, etc.
I also read in the Baby Book about all the wonderful examples of kids who could play independently, and how confident, calm, smart, well adjusted they are. I also know about how Dr. Sears very much pushes his agenda as well as makes the mother/parents feel inferior if they don’t use these methods. This to me is a way that he pushed his message and downplays or scares parents that another way just simple ‘ins’t right for a child’.
Some of my favorit excerpts to demonstate are as follows:

Thursday, February 02, 2006
The Shutdown Syndrome

The Shutdown Syndrome: Sears Sucker-Punches the Maternal Guilt Complex

Welcome back to the crying game! To continue our discussion, I found an anecdote at askdrsears.com that I found worthy of deconstruction. Anyone care to join me?

Dr. Sears writes:

Heather had previously been a happy baby, thriving on a full dose of attachment parenting…The whole family was thriving and this style of parenting was working for them. Well-meaning friends convinced these parents that they were spoiling their baby, that she was manipulating them, and that Heather would grow up to be a clingy, dependent child.

Parents lost trust…They let Heather cry herself to sleep, scheduled her feedings, and for fear of spoiling, they didn’t carry her as much… Heather went from being happy and interactive to sad and withdrawn. Her weight leveled off, and she went from the top of the growth chart to the bottom. Heather was no longer thriving, and neither were her parents.

His example doesn’t end with Heather. It continues:
Babies who are “trained” not to express their needs may appear to be docile, compliant, or “good” babies. Yet, these babies could be depressed babies who are shutting down the expression of their needs. They may become children who don’t speak up to get their needs met and eventually become the highest-need adults
Baby lost trust. After two months of no growth, Heather was labeled by her doctor “failure to thrive” and was about to undergo an extensive medical exam. When the parents consulted me, I diagnosed the shutdown syndrome…They unknowingly pulled the attachment plug on Heather, and the connection that had caused her to thrive was gone.
Babies thrive when nurtured. We believe every baby has a critical level of need for touch and nurturing in order to thrive…We believe that babies have the ability to teach their parents what level of parenting they need. It’s up to the parents to listen, and it’s up to professionals to support the parents’ confidence and not undermine it by advising a more distant style of parenting, such as “let your baby cry-it-out” or “you’ve got to put him down more”.

What parent (who is on little sleep, food, or has barely said anything to their patner in the first couple months of being a parent that didn’t include the words “diaper” or “bottle”) wouldn’t start to panick that if they didn’t wear their baby all the time they were causing mental damage?!?!?!

Again, PLEASE READ CAREFULLY- I am not saying that the idea that attachment parenting is wrong, or you are nuts if you drink Kool-Aid, nor I am saying that Dr. Sears doens’t have some good ideas and means well.

I raised my kids on the Baby Whisperer Method: Her message is simple and E.A.S.Y. Love your kids, love yourself, but you be the PARENT, and you child is THE CHILD.

Quite honestly, his method is simply not practical. I would love to meet some well adjusted kids (perceived by their day car provdiers, siblings, relatives, but NOT THEIR PARENTS who only see the good in their kids) brought up on this method.
Until that day, the Baby Book is banned from my house until further notice.

Recently, I started babysitting a niece (now 10 months old) who has been attachment-parented since birth. For the past few months that she has been coming to my house a couple days a week, it has been nothing short of a nightmare on the days she is here. This child has ZERO coping skills and cries constantly – sometimes to the point of vomiting all over the 2 of us – because she can’t deal with being away from her parents. On the days she is here, my 2 babies are distressed by her crying and are completely confused by the disruption and by my lack of attention to them. If I am not holding her, she will not stop crying – and sometimes holding her doesn’t even work. She doesn’t nap well because I obviously can’t nap with her, and her eating skills – both bottle feeding and solid foods – are very immature for her age. When I’ve tried to get her involved in group play, she has been extremely aggressive. She has tried to bite my 12 month old on the back, she has head-butted him when he has crawled next to her, and she has scratched my 2 year old’s face on many occasions.

Her parents insist that she is not like this at home, and I really do believe them. I have no doubt that when at home – by herself, with no competition, with no schedule, and with no limits on her demands – she is happy as a clam. But it’s painfully apparent that when she is outside of that cocoon, she can not deal. My husband has even stayed home from work a few of the days she has been here so he can see what’s happening and lend a helping hand. Because she’s family, we have a ton of love for her and her parents so it breaks our hearts that things are so chaotic. We have been trying really hard to make her feel comfortable and to work with her parents on finding a solution, but things are not improving.

She is the only child I’ve known who has been raised by the AP method, and she is the only child I’ve known who has consistently had issues interacting with others outside her own environment. It seems pretty apparent to me that this AP style has done this baby a great disservice when it comes to her dealing with new experiences and situations. While AP advocates are insisting that it’s “natural,” it seems completely unnatural that a child would be this upset on a regular basis. I really believe this method is doing more harm than good, and I’ve experienced the proof first hand.

My brother’s kids (all of ‘em) have all been raised normally. They sleep in there own rooms, they didn’t go through extended breast feeding, and they weren’t with their Mom and Dad 24/7 – yet they are turning out to be incredible human beings. How is that possible?

I hope the AP kids turn out fine, I really do, but I foresee problematic relationships that Sears hasn’t accounted for. For example, my gf’s kid when he reaches dating age. What happens when a girl says no. All of his life has been spent with his Mom 24/7 bonding, nursing, never letting him cry about anything, always acquiescing to his every demand – what happens when his girlfriends tell him no about something? That really worries me.

Every forum that I’ve read has the exact same comments, from some of the same commentators even. As a guy who is trying his hardest to love a lady and her kid – AP really sucks. My apologies for being so blunt, but it really truly does. AP strikes me as a fantasy land for hippies, hedonists, spoiled rich girls, extremely immature girls who don’t want to grow up, or some combination of the preceding arch types.

Raise your kid, but don’t forget to grow as a person yourself, because your kid is, at some point, going to grow up and he just may need you.

As the Editor and Founder of this blog, I should have suggested an alternative to the reference of “Kool-Aid”. I apologize.

As we all continue the path of parenting, there will be times we will diverge in opinion, disagree with Experts, each other and our spouses. I try and present differing opinions through my choice of Experts, articles and research. My goal has always been to present various pathways to parenting, some of which may interest you and others may not. Ideally, you will be informed and, combined with your instincts, find your own personal parenting style.

P.S.- I think Margaret’s comment above was excellent- balanced, well-written and offered insight. I would suggest reading it.

Of course, any one parenting style will not work for all families, or even all babies in a particular family. I am sure that Jean and Lisa know that. On the other hand, the mothers that come to see Jean and Lisa are self-selected because they are having problems — otherwise they wouldn’t be coming in for help, would they? So they hardly see a representative sample of all who follow Sears’s advice or believe in Attachment Parenting.

Oh, and my daughter has been no less independent , and I have been no more exhausted, than our friends who chose different parenting paths. So I respect that there are many valid ways of raising children. And I am glad that Jean and Lisa can help those mothers who haven’t found what works well for them yet. I also hope that they can agree that if it is working, there is no need to criticize.