r/AttachmentParenting

Taking my very newly two year old on her first flight not as a lap infant tomorrow. It coincides with nap time (I didn’t have a choice) and I’m very nervous about having to put her in her own seat if she’s asleep when the seat belt sign comes on.

Asking this group since I’m hoping it will be more understanding of nursing a toddler to sleep than other Reddit groups. Any tips for making this work? I typically nurse to sleep in bed and roll away for naps.

Help! It’s been months since my baby has slept more than a 3hr stretch at night, waking usually 3-5 times per night. She is sleep trained in that she goes down absolutely fine at bed time, but this has not stopped the night wakings!

We are at 2 naps a day and I do not feed her to sleep - sometimes she cries but no more than 2-3 minutes. Wake windows are 3/3.5/4. She’s asleep at 7:30pm and wakes up around 6:45am.

We have tried applying our sleep training method at night, but it escalates to her absolutely screaming so quickly that I either just feed her back to sleep or we bring her into our bed or both. One time on our more determined nights we let the crying/screaming go on for an hour (with check ins) before giving up. I have also tried dream feeding her before I go to bed (about 1.5-2.hrs after putting her down) and this has not helped, as well as sending dad in instead of me for check ins.

What else can we try?! I’m good with some wakes in the night and feeding her back to sleep… but I need to start getting some longer stretches here. Morale is low lol

Hi! My daughter is 9.5 months old and has never slept in her own room. We’ve tried on and off but she just isn’t ready. We aren’t doing sleep training so I was just wondering what others experiences are when their children naturally learned to self soothe to sleep? Occasionally she will wake up very early morning in her pack n play next to our bed and roll around and go back to sleep, but every night is a struggle to get her to sleep. Eventually I just rock her in bed until shes in a very deep sleep then put her down but she gets up many times a night. Eventually ends up in bed most nights. I love the cuddles and am happy to have her in our room, but we’re trying for #2 and I know it won’t be sustainable to have a toddler and newborn in the room waking one another up. So 1) when was your baby ready for their own room? 2) when did they start being able to fall asleep independently or do drowsy but awake? (Without any sleep training) for context we’ve tried to soothe her while she’s in the crib and that doesn’t work. When she was really young (up to 4 months) she would fall asleep fine on her own as long as she was sleepy, but ever since then she can’t and won’t.

Take my adjectives with a grain of salt, i basically just want to make an inspo post where we can share advice and hacks for our parenting. I know every family is different but i think it is nice to share wisdom and insight.

We value different qualities differently of course, but i thought we could share things we do in our parenting or things we teach our kids, that we have or have not yet but hope to seen the fruit of, that will give them qualities such as empathy, resilience, intelligence, patience, ability to analyze, ability to work towards a goal, living through the heart, ability to listen to the gut/their own body, integrity...

Would be nice to really nuance the hacks, so for example write what you do and why, what the intention behind it is.

Here are some of mine, although my first baby is just one year old.

If i offer her food and she shakes her head, i mirror that and say "no, okay. You dont want that" and put it away. Why, to show her that her "no" is respected and that she knows when she is hungry or what she needs (of course i wouldnt give her sugar because she wanted to though for example)

I teach her sign language to make it easier for her to communicate because she cant talk yet. She can communicate "more" for more food for example. To ease her frustration with not being understood, so that she feels seen and heard.

She has her own kind of responsibilities in the household that fit her interests, for example she is the one that fills the cat bowl with food, or opens the chicken coup door, etc. This makes her hopefully feel like she is contributing, is part of the household, is capable and is welcomed to actually do the things she is capable of. So she feels seen and welcome as she is.

I try my best to understand why she does what she does. When she goes to the shelf and yells, i ask her to point. Then she points up, i lift her and she keeps pointing towards the top shelf and to the bucket, where the scissors are. I confirm that i see she wants the scissors. And either i give it to her but i put safety tape around it, or i will say that the scissors will stay there. But i confirm her intentions and her wishes so that she feels valued and understood. (Instead of just saying stop yelling or whatever some people do)

My baby (10 months) has just started nursery in the UK. I started now even thought I'm not back at work for another few weeks so that we can take longer for settling if baby struggles with separation (he is). The nursery settling in is very short: starts on Monday, parent stays for two short sessions, then separation, and full day by Friday.

Anyway I recently read about about the German Eingewöhnung model. There, a parent stays for several days, the baby bonds with one key person first, and the first separation only happens once the baby can be comforted by that person. If I understood correctly this happens over multiple weeks.

My nursery's view seems to be that babies cry for a while and then adjust, and that the key person matters less than I thought. I've been negotiating shorter separations and staying for all sessions so far (although only for a short time), and they've been flexible, but it's clearly not their default. I understand most parents don't have the luxury of weeks to settle a baby in, because of work and cost. I'm lucky to have a month. But I keep wondering: shouldn't slow settling be the norm, rather than a favour for parents who can afford it? Isn't it less stressful for babies, and does it make them more likely to enjoy nursery? Did your baby go through a quick settling-in or a gradual one? How did it go? Did the speed make a difference to how they felt about nursery after a few weeks? If you could redo it, would you have asked for more time?

Not looking for judgement either way, but i am curious what you'll think since i know we're all aligned in terms of attachment with our babies.

I'm making the nursery take it slowly with my little one, (for which i thank them profusely every day) but I feel like somehow I'm in the wrong for taking my baby's input as to how quickly we're doing it.