OK, I am not an expert on any type of parenting.  Oh, you knew that?

I’ve only been a second-hand parent.  You know, the kind who babysits children who are primarily disciplined by their parents.  It’s a good role, in that I can be the good guy.  After all, they’re going home.

Probably the worst possible situation is being the oldest sibling and being “put in charge of the little ones,” in that they grow up thinking that you are also their parent, and they blame you for all sorts of things that you didn’t do.

Well, that’s not exactly true.  I was put in charge, so I became the expert boss girl.  Not a pretty sight.  I cringe to think of it.

I know attachment parenting has been around for ages, but I first learned about it, in exactly those words, last summer when I went to visit my sister Amy at Lake Forest Ranch in MS, where she was working for the summer.  There was an independent therapist working on the site, and when I was explaining to her how I wanted to raise Liliana, she said, “Well, you know, that’s attachment parenting.”

“Attachment parenting?’ I said.

“Everything you do is to strengthen the bond with your child,” she said.

“There’s another kind?”

“There are lots of kinds, but the one you’re talking about is attachment parenting.”

I looked it up when I got home and checked out all the library books that I could.  I was floored.  You mean somebody thought of this before I did?  You mean there are actually resources for something like this?  (Go ahead.  Laugh.)

Simple things like allowing them in your bed, giving them lots of skin contact by carrying and holding, game times which reinforce the bond, treating them like you want to be treated (the Golden Rule!).  So you know what I’m talking about, I’ll use an example from Dr. Sears’ book on discipline.  I’ll probably embellish it a bit, because I don’t have the book here in front of me.

Let’s say you are at a friends’ house, enjoying drinks and food, while your little Johnny is off having a heyday in the playroom with his friends.  Time flies by, and when you next look at your watch, you exclaim, “Whoa.  Johnny’s gonna be one cranky kid tomorrow.”  So, you go extract Johnny from the playroom.  You come in, say, “Hey, buddy, we gotta go.”  You swoop him up and exit the room.  Johnny starts crying, then he goes into a full-on D-day.  He doesn’t let up until he’s exhausted himself by crying on the way home.

None of us would have liked to have been pulled away from our friends so rapidly without warning.   Here’s how it might have worked better.

You go to the playroom and say, “We’re gonna leave in 10 minutes, buddy.  Then we’ll pick up the toys and have to say ‘good-bye.’”  Johnny nods, almost not hearing you–he’s having so much fun.

But in 10 minutes, you return.  You kneel down on the floor and say, “We gotta go.  But let’s say ‘good-bye’ to your toys first.  Here.  ‘Good-bye, truck.’  ‘Good-bye, tiger.’  Johnny joins in, and in a little bit, he’s a little more removed from his environment.  That’s not to say he won’t cry when you pick him up, but you’ve done to him what you want done to you.  Does that make sense?

A short story modeling this.  Our friends Joe and Michelle have four adorable children, of whom we’ve only officially met the first.  Their eldest girl Emily was about 2 1/2 at the time of this accounting.  We had had dinner, and we were in the living room, chatting.  Michelle went into the kitchen and set the timer.  She came back and said, “Emily, when the beeper goes off, it’s time for bed.”  Emily half-nodded, more excited in her cardboard box house that she’d made and painted.  Michelle explained that, for some reason, Emily understood the authority of the timer, and when it would go off, Emily would trot up the stairs after her parents.  Willingly.

Sure enough, the timer went off.  Emily looked up, as though in shock, “No beep-beep,” she said.  We all laughed.  She was so serious, but she went to bed willingly.  Besides being hilarious to watch, it was astonishing to see how well it worked.

Now I leave you with two other creative ideas, hoping you have some of your own to share.  The first is from my friend Clare.  She wrote me an e-mail at the beginning of the week, explaining a clever game that her kids loved to play with her.  She called it the baby chick in the egg.  She pretended to be the mama hen and covered her child with a blanket to signify that he was still in the egg.  Then she would talk about all the traits she wished that she could have in a chick–pretty smile, kind spirit, brown curly hair, blue eyes (whatever the child has)–then she’d pull off the blanket and viola!–just what she wished for!  Her kids wanted to do it over and over.

Another idea.  My friend Sara informed me by e-mail that my latest issue of Cookie magazine is waiting for me at home.  Mothers, have you heard of Cookie?  Sara gave it to me as a gift, and I can’t wait for it to come every month.  Get it, if you don’t already!  It’s chockfull of ideas–so many that it takes a while to read.  Anyway, Sara was suggesting that I open up a Gmail account (it’s free and very easy) in Liliana’s name, and whenever I think of something I want to say, or whenever I want to relate a story to her, I can log in and write her an e-mail.  Since Gmail keeps up to 2 GB of memory, it would act as a long-term diary, and some day, she’ll be able to open all those e-mails up from her mom (or dad).  Isn’t that a great idea?  Who doesn’t have time for 1 e-mail every once in a while?

Do you have ideas that have worked with your kids?  Do tell.