By Sonya Fehér, contributing editor for the API Speaks blog, leader for API of South Austin, Texas, USA, and blogger at www.mamatrue.com
Before my son was born, a friend gave me the book, Babyproofing Your Marriage. The book was based on very traditional gender roles and a husband who expected his wife to have dinner on the table when he got home and justify why the house wasn’t clean when all she had to do was hang out with a baby all day. The advice they were giving wasn’t for us.
Even so, it turned out our marriage did need some babyproofing. Decisions we made about parenting turned into unanticipated challenges to our intimacy and partnership. Continue reading The Marriage Challenge →
By Rita Brhel, managing editor and attachment parenting resource leader (API)
Q: Why doesn’t my partner love me a better?
A: In our dreams, maybe we imagine the perfect partner to be the one who we fall in love with, and it really is “happily ever after!” Why couldn’t we find that perfect partner?
There’s a reason why we fall in love with the partner who doesn’t seem quite able to match our dreams. We see in them an ability to love us, in a way that we learned from people who loved us in our earliest years. We recognize that kind of ability to love in the partner we choose.
But however strongly we were loved, there was always a little bit of love we didn’t get. And it turns out that this partner we choose isn’t very good at providing that bit of love either, just like those who loved us when we were children. That bit of love we didn’t get as children often goes back to some painful memories from childhood. When our partner can’t love us that way either, it touches some tender spots inside and can bring out some of our deepest fears that we may have tried for years to hide away.
**From GettingTheLoveYouWant.com
There is no doubt that parenting is the most fulfilling job in the world. But, it’s also hard work. While Attachment Parenting gives parents that warm, fuzzy feeling of following our instincts — not to mention, the wonderful emotions of having a close attachment bond with our children — it does require parents to be “on call” all day and all night. It feels good to fall into a full schedule of caretaking of our children, but we need to make sure we’re also taking time to care for ourselves and our partners. Continue reading Modeling Attachment Between Parents →
Connecting with our children for a more compassionate world.