r/AttachmentParenting

Hello, my husband and I are first-time parents. Our little guy is 16 months old.

He was an early walker so he’s pretty solid on his feet at this point! But he’s also a toddler so sometimes he waddles around like a drunk penguin. Trips and falls are inevitable, he usually has 1-3 a day.

I’d really like him to grow up to be a resilient person where if/when he trips or injures himself, he can take a moment first to assess himself and see if he’s actually hurt or not. Rather than instantly defaulting to freaking out/big sad feelings (when it’s not serious of course).

I grew up with an overly-cautious mother and any time I would even mildly stumble it was met with a loud obnoxious “HEEEEH!” (If you’re Eastern European or Arab you know lol), so I would get nervous over falls or hurting myself at all. My kneejerk reaction when my son trips or stumbles is to want to do this, but I don’t. I’m pretty good at catching myself because I don’t want him to experience that same nervous energy. But at the same time, I don’t really know what the “right” thing to do is.

What I currently do is of course first assess the situation. If it’s actually a worrying fall I’d immediately scoop him up and sooth him (this rarely happens thankfully!) But for his daily little toddler trips and stumbles, I pause, stay calm, and then say something like “you’re ok!”; “Say, ‘I’m ok!’” and then model brushing myself off. Of course if he needs more than that like a hug or wants to be picked up, I absolutely give that to him! But I’m just unsure what the right way to go about this is. Like is saying “you’re ok” teaching him to ignore what he actually might be feeling?

Kids naturally look to us for our reaction whenever anything happens. I don’t want to undermine him if he’s hurt, of course. But I also don’t want to cultivate unnecessary big feelings over really minor trips/falls. Like it sounds odd but I don’t want to reach out for him every single time he falls even though that would be my instinctive reaction.

What do you all do?

I feel guilty even typing this because I love my baby so much, but I’ve started dreading feeding sessions.

Not because I don’t want to nurse, but because every feed turns into 30+ minutes of adjusting positions, fixing the latch, switching sides, sitting awkwardly, and trying not to strain my back.

I’m never comfortable. Ever.

And the anxiety of constantly wondering is he positioned right? or is he choking? makes it even worse mentally.

Who else is experiencing the same thing?, and is this common?

I’ve followed a very attachment-focused approach with my almost 16-month-old — breastfeeding on demand, feeding to sleep, cosleeping, responding to every wake, no sleep training, no CIO. And honestly, for a long time, it felt right for us.

But lately… I’ve been feeling deeply touched out.

She was waking multiple times a night just to nurse back to sleep, sometimes staying latched for long stretches, and I started feeling exhausted, overstimulated, and honestly a bit depleted as a person. I reached a point where I dreaded nighttime.

Last night, I decided to try gently night weaning — not through sleep training, but by staying with her, rocking, walking, talking to her, and supporting her through the wakes without nursing.

To my surprise, she handled it much better than I expected. She still woke up, but she accepted comfort in other ways. I eventually gave one early morning feed around 5:30 AM.

Today I already feel a little lighter mentally, which makes me realize how touched out I had become.

I think I’m struggling emotionally with this transition because breastfeeding has been such a huge part of our bond and parenting journey. Part of me wonders if keeping one feed a day (morning or bedtime) might feel more balanced than stopping entirely.

Any attachment-oriented moms who’ve gone through this around 15–18 months? Did you keep one feed? Fully wean? Did your toddler adjust better than you expected?

She is 19 months. I planned to start weaning after her 2nd birthday. I was hoping we could do it gently and gradually, but she is nursing so frequently that I'm not sure how we will ever stop.

I've always nursed her on demand, but her demand has become too frequent. She wants to nurse anytime she sees me sit down, even if it's at the table for dinner. She will eat her food, then want in my lap to nurse while I'm still eating. She wants to nurse anytime she is bored, even if she is playing independently, she will come over and lift up my shirt, nurse a few minutes and then go play again. It's like she plays for 5 mins, then nurses for a couple mins,then goes back to playing. She also wants to nurse anytime she is disregulated. If she gets frustrated, mad, or sad - she needs to nurse to calm herself down. It's really beneficial in some situations like when we are at the doctor or something, but not so much when she gets her toy shopping cart stuck behind the kitchen table. And for example, in those situations, if I try to help her with the shopping cart, she just gets more angry. So I'm not sure if her relationship with nursing is still beneficial?? Or is she using it as a coping mechanism when she needs to learn how to problem solve?? If this is age appropriate and normal and beneficial for me to keep nursing through these types of scenarios, then I want to keep doing it, but I'm just not sure what the right thing to do is.

She has only started this in the past month - she used to only nurse for sleep, and a little comfort.

I'd like to continue to nurse for sleep, and scary situations like the doctor, but I don't know how to set healthy boundaries.

I've tried bandaids over my nipples, or wearing a sports bra and telling her "Mama's boobies are sleeping now" and I've tried to talk to her about boobies are for when you're sleepy. None of that worked. She had terrible tantrums, bit me, hit me, hit her head against the wall and floor, throwing things, etc.

I'm wondering if weaning is this terrible for them? I'm open to any suggestions or books! Thank you!

I’m weaning my 20 month-old daughter currently - we’re down to just one nurse right before bedtime routine. I thought I’d be happy about it, but I’m finding it harder than I thought. When she’s upset or having a rough day/night, my first instinct is to nurse her and then I have this disappointed feeling that I can’t because we’ve already cut those feeds out. I keep reminding myself that I’m weaning so that we can start trying for baby #2 (I don’t want to worry about milk & nursing during the first trimester because I was so nauseous last time) but I miss being able to soothe her that way and I’m not looking forward to our last nursing session. Everyone keeps telling me that it’s great that I’ve gone this long, but I’ll be so sad when we don’t have this bonding time anymore.

I am so incredibly touched out today. we hit 9 months and my son will literally only sleep if my nipple is in his mouth or he is physically draped across my ribcage

I love the closeness I really do, but my lower back is absolutely screaming. I finally decided we need to transition to a floor bed so I can nurse him to sleep and then sneak away for like... maybe an hour? Just to wash my hair without rushing. but then I went down the rabbit hole of floor mattresses and why is everything made of polyurethane foam. It's so frustrating trying to find something for a baby that doesn't smell like a chemical factory right out of the box, especially when they're going to be face-planting into it all night. the baby industry just slaps a green leaf on a block of plastic and charges triple

after stressing myself out for a week I just threw my hands up and got a basic wool setup from Home of wool so I don't have to worry about weird off-gassing. so the safe "yes space" is finally set up

but here is the actual problem.

how do you guys actually do the ninja roll away?? the second I unlatch him and shift my weight even a millimeter, his eyes snap open like I just sounded a fire alarm. I tried the whole "keep your hand on their chest" trick but he just grabs my finger and pulls it into his mouth. Im currently trapped under him on the floor bed typing this with one hand while my coffee gets cold in the kitchen

please tell me the roll-away gets easier. or at least tell me I'm not the only one trapped in a dark room at 10am everyday feeling like a human mattress.

Здравствуйте. Мне 32, у меня есть дочь и ей 8 мес. После родов моя мать жила со мной и моим мужем, потом муж нас оставил. Я переехала к своей матери с ребенком и большую часть времени дочь находилась с моей матерью и всегда спала с ней. Я играла и проводила время с дочкой, но меньше, чем моя мать. Так как я выходила на подработку курьером на два три часа в день. Теперь я замечаю, что дочь тянется к матери и орет без нее. А на меня как будто плевать. Я ненавижу свою мать и она предала меня во многих вещах. Я планирую забрать свою дочь в дальнейшем и жить отдельно. Купить свое жилье. Мне обидно, что дочь как будто игнорирует меня. Как это исправить?

Hi community 💕

I’m not even sure what exactly I’m looking for here, maybe just some validation and hopefully a bit of relatability.

My baby is 3 months old, exclusively breastfed, and we’ve bed shared since day 1. She has never accepted a crib, bassinet, nothing. All naps are contact naps, usually in the carrier, either with me or her dad (Rip my back 💀).

At night, we go to bed together and I basically never leave her side. Yesterday, for the first time, I tried ninja rolling away after she had been asleep for about an hour. She woke up 10 minutes later, mildly crying, and I instantly felt awful, like I had betrayed her just for trying to sneak away for a bit.

The truth is, between contact naps and going to bed together, we have absolutely no time for ourselves as a couple. No intimacy, no sitting together watching TV, nothing. And at the same time, the idea of leaving her for even an hour fills me with guilt.

Has anyone else experienced this mix of emotions? Wanting a tiny bit of time to yourself, but also feeling consumed by guilt for even trying? Having a baby that only naps in the carrier and wakes shortly after you leave anyways?

Sometimes I feel like the alien parent in my parents group. The only one showing up without a pram, the one bed sharing, the one always baby wearing. I guess I’m just looking for reassurance that I’m not alone in this and perhaps some tips on how to balance this better.

Thanks if you read this far 💕

So with both my kids I bought a crib and ended up co-sleeping. My first slept in my bed until age 9. Now my 2.5 year old sleeps in my bed and I would like to make a room for him so he can have a place of his own and a place for his things. I also don’t want him in my bed as long as my first because that’s 2 decades of co-sleeping. I find that most of his night wakings are from us moving around or getting up, dad has restless leg, I am relegated to the edge of the bed and still have to feed several times a night. I notice now sometimes he is going back down without the feeding and just a little rub on the back.

Has anyone transitioned a kid out of the bed at this age and how should I approach it? I think I should get rid of the crib since he can climb out of it, and it feels too late to change the way he falls asleep. I have a twin mattress and I could make a floor bed in his new room so we can lay down with him to sleep. I am afraid if we don’t change something he will just end up in our bed for years. My daughter omg would just cry tears if we brought up sleeping in her own bed and we didn’t have the heart. Should I try to do this now while he is still sort of a baby?

I’m feeling like I failed to prepare my baby for life by not having the confidence to let others watch him.

He’s spent 2-3 hours with my husband or his uncle a bunch of times and was fine but generally doesn’t like anyone else and I’ve been on maternity leave so I didn’t see a need to leave him with anyone really.

I tried taking him to play group every day since 10 months to socialize him and he had fun there not being clingy to me.

He’s started daycare now and has been crying for hours every day and now I can’t help but blame myself.

Has anyone else been through this? Does it get better?

He’s only done half days at daycare and the provider doesn’t want to go to full days because he cries so much.

today i was having a really hard day and felt completely overstimulated and overwhelmed, so i had to step away for literally one minute to gather myself. i left my daughter in the room for maybe one or two minutes absolute maximum while i stood just outside the door taking deep breaths because i could feel myself getting to my limit.

she was crying so hard calling out “mama, mama” and when i opened the door she had turned around with her little shoulders slumped down looking so sad and defeated and it honestly broke my heart in a way i can’t even explain.

my girl is 17 months old and has never slept through the night, we’ve been through severe sleep deprivation, but that one minute of hearing her cry while i wasn’t right there beside her felt unbearable to me. it honestly reminded me why i personally could never leave her to cry alone for long periods of time. i truly don’t understand how parents can do that to their little innocent baby, because even that one minute absolutely shattered me.

i went straight back in, picked her up, cuddled her, comforted her and stayed with her while she fell asleep, but even now while she’s asleep i can’t stop replaying that moment in my head and feeling so guilty over it even though it was literally only a minute or two.

My son has always woken up a lot but the last 2 months he’s been latched from 1-2am onwards and I’m often awake for 1-2 hours in the middle of the night and then broken/light sleep after that despite cosleeping. I was mid way through gradually night weaning him but he started getting his last molar so felt like it was bad timing. But it’s been 2 months and it’s been half out (on the cheek side) the for a month and still no progress! My husband can’t help. Should I keep waiting or just night wean now?! I don’t want to make it harder for both of us but I wonder if he’s just developed a habit at this point.

My son is about to be one in a few days and i've been reflecting a lot on this first year of motherhood. It's been both so amazing watching this tiny baby turn into such a goofy little person and so hard dealing with PPD and the baby clash.

One of the biggest disapointment is my parents though... My brother has a 2 and a half little girl and they are great grand-parents to her. Since she started daycare, they have been watching her one day a week, they are taking her overnight often, they have a really nice relationship with her. When i got pregnant, i thought "wow, they are great with my niece, my son is gonna be lucky to have such good grand-parents".

I knew it wasn't going to be the same because my brother lives in the same city and i live 1h30 away but i thought they would want to form a bond with my son.

They don't visit that often, when they do or when we go, they don't interact a lot with him. They watched him once a few weeks ago just for a few hours and it didn't go great. They weren't really supportive when i got diagnosed with PPD, i basically had to get help by myself. Last month i got mastitis and the on-call doctor send me to the ER to get checked out (i was really sick, i didn't know it was mastitis, i was told i might have to pause breastfeeding), i called my parents to see if they could watch my son while my partner took me to the ER, my dad said it wasn't a good time because they had to watch my niece the following evening.

I'm just so sad, i feel like they don't really care about him... I don't want him to grow up and realise he's not being treated the same as his cousin.

Our daughter is 3 and has been at home with mom up until now, and she is super attached to her. We want to start her at preschool and have tried a few days, and the first day went great she was excited to go, the 2nd day you could tell she was hesitant, and today she was sad and teary - and that just hurts so bad to see. I’m just wondering if this can cause any sort of issues now or down the road, if she really doesn’t want to go and feels sad about it? She’s also a kid that feels deeply, full of life, energetic, has her own mind, very smart, and stubborn as well. So I wonder if her unique personality makes things any different?

Parenting tips

Hi all,

Looking for some opinions on a situation which is leaving me divided. I didn't know about attachment parenting before having my daughter but from basically everything I've ever seen here it fits with my instinctive parenting style.

My daughter is very attached to me specifically (sahm) and wants to be held a lot of the time. She's 21 months and has had phases of wanting to walk around in public (which were honestly so heavenly because she'd stay nearby and just hang out with me and omg I miss it) but generally speaking she has always wanted me to hold her - "please see mummy"/"please pick up". She'll be independent at home on her own terms but for short spells before she wants to be included in what I'm doing or for me to come back and play. She loves painting and stickers which she generally does in the high chair with me sat next to her but she reaches a limit and suddenly won't engage anymore because she wants me to hold her. At toddler groups she'll walk around on her own some of the time but she typically asks that I carry her over to the area/toy she wants and if I don't she will just stand with her arms around my neck.

We're just at the beginning of the proper toddler emotions and today she had a meltdown because she wanted me to hold her while I was cooking. This is something I've done in the past but I have back problems and I just can't do it now so I said she had to stay in her tower, at which point she started sticking her leg out unsafely on purpose to get me to pick her up.

I didn't want to reward that so I put her on the floor after she'd done it multiple times and told her I'd be with her when I was finished (it was maybe 1-2 minutes). I'm really torn on this. Reading what I've written so far, part of me thinks I treated her awfully and punished her for being loving and wanting to see me, but on the other hand I really don't want to drift into permissive parenting. I don't struggle to hold boundaries when she can't have/do something like buy snacks in a shop or keep playing with a toy after we've put it away. Her little meltdowns, while I feel for her, don't hurt my heart when I know it's part of her learning and growing. But when the thing she wants is to be with her mummy... I don't know. She's still so tiny - it feels natural still that she wants to be close. But equally she needs her tea making and I can't do both. Worth noting that if I go down to her level and sit with/cuddle her it's not much better as she specifically wants to be picked up.

So what do people think? Do you say no to holding your toddlers and if so at what age did it start?

My son will be a year old in a week. I sleep trained him around 5 months old (intended to do Ferber method but ended with CIO- really would like to avoid doing CIO again). BUT We were successful and everything was great for a few months! Then he had the flu AND was cutting back molars at the same time, he was so uncomfortable at night and I caved and started co sleeping at night.

Fast forward a few months, and he naps great during the day and can independently fall asleep in his crib. At bedtime, he will fall asleep in his crib and wake up at 10pm frantic and screaming until I put him into our bed and he IMMEDIATELY falls back asleep.

He gets about 2 hours of daytime sleep, and has a consistent bedtime routine. I feel that his wake windows are all okay, I think it’s just a separation anxiety issue, maybe? He sleeps perfectly throughout the whole night since we’ve been co sleeping.

He never wakes up in a good mood anymore, he always wakes up crying and screaming if I’m not beside him- even for naps. I’m soooo tired of co sleeping with him, but all my attempts at getting him back to being comfortable in his crib at night time have failed. Has anyone else had this happened? What did you do to re-transition to independent sleep at night? Is there another way besides CIO? I was unable to breast feed due to a medical problem, so Ive always felt like the bond we have isn’t as strong as it could have been. I’m scared that CIO will cause attachment issues and hurt the bond that I do have with my son. :( Any tips would be appreciated!

*his crib is still in my room, if that matters! Thanks!

My toddler is a little over two years old (2Y + 3M to be exact). I returned to work when she was around 5 months old, and since then, a family member watched her 4 days a week and my MIL watched her once a week while my husband and I are at work. That family member means the world to my daughter. She loves her more than anyone else, and sometimes she prefers her over me and I’m just thankful that my daughter got an extra grandmother figure in her life because my family aren’t really around and when they are, they’re not very affectionate.

Anyway, this family member has been having some health issues lately that required us to put our daughter in preschool 3 days a week. She goes to her bonus grandmother once a week, and my MIL once a week.

This is week 3, and her anxiety and crying are getting worse. Last night, she was crying saying she doesn’t want to school (we didn’t bring it up, she just randomly did in the middle of crying). And this morning she cried the second we left the house all the way to school (15 minute drive) and well into drop off.

The teachers say that she stops crying shortly after drop off, and last week when she was with her grandma, she talked positively to her about school and what they do before nap and that her teacher hugs her when she’s sad.

My question is, should we put her in school 5 days a week so she adjusts faster and then we can scale back to 4 days a week, if needed? I know predictability is important, but I feel bad taking away time away from either grandmas because she loves them so much and looks forward to seeing them (especially her bonus grandma). Currently, we do M, T, W, so she has a four day gap between school weeks. Should we do M, T, Th, F? Should we just commit to 5 days? She goes 8am-4pm, and unfortunately half days aren’t a possibility for us.

Help meee 😭 it breaks my heart seeing her like that and I don’t know what to do.

My daughter is for the start at a Montessori for 3 hours a day and I would like her to go because I think she will enjoy it and I would like a few hours a day after staying at home with her the past three years.

HOWEVER they won’t take her if not potty trained. She is semi curious but not at the point of sitting on potty or toilet. I have read the oh crap method and watched the big little feelings course but I do feel that the angle is about training them to submit to the toilet (but like training a dog) rather them a very collaborative child led approach.

Anyone have any resources about a child led approach or experiences of this kind to share?

My highly sensitive and spirited 21 month old still has to be rocked/bounced to sleep and wakes multiple times a night. Her sleep has improved but extremely slowly. Progression is painfully slow. We are still waking multiple times a night. I never felt like I could sleep train. It just seemed impossible with her temperament. I’m exhausted and often question everything I’ve done. We’ve had some real rough nights and moments where I’ve not been the best parent I could be. Frustrated, exhausted, angry, yelling, reaching my limit and overstimulated beyond belief. I always try to repair and I come back. I’ve never left my child to cry more than a minute and that was rare because usually my partner would step in to comfort her when I couldn’t handle it. But now I come across a post like this of an 18 month olds bedtime routine: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DX7tsBYCN\_K/?igsh=MWFnM2NwNDIwa3lzZQ== The poster said in comments they did modified Ferber at 4 months. That sounds horrible but it looks like that baby is so happy and thriving and bedtime is so smooth…what am I missing??? I know social media is often fake but just this little bedtime routine seems so much better than anything I’ve ever done.