Creating a Village of Attachment (ongoing topic)

Another one of our ongoing features on this blog will be ideas and suggestions for how to create an extended "village of attachment".

As Dr. Neufeld mentions in his work, one of the things that has made parenting more difficult these days is a breakdown of the "culture" of attachment. What this means is that some of the rituals and traditions that once assisted us in raising our children have disappeared- especially in North America. It also addresses the fact that more and more we don't live near our extended family.

In some European cultures, many families are two-income families so the parents are both gone during the day, but it is much more common for grandma to live in the home to help raise the children.

In America, it used to be more common for neighbors or teachers, etc, to help us raise our kids by being our "eyes and ears" with our children when we weren't there. In this way they served as an extension of our attachment to our kids. It has become more common, however, for neighbors and teachers to feel they need to "stay out of it". I have heard from many teachers that when they try to address behavior issues with parents that they are told to mind their own business.

I am planning on doing a number of posts on this subject, including many ways to extend your village so you can do your job more effectively. I would love to have people write in suggestions and what has worked for them.

For us, we don't have any family in our area at all. We love it in Marin County and want to stay here because of it's beautiful natural resources and proximity to so many things we love. However, it's tough when our son's grandma's live in Sacramento and Southern California. One thing we do is to create "Aunts" and "Uncles" out of our close friends. Friends we love and trust and know will be part of our lives indefinitely.

So, what do you do?

Comments

[Jon Burns]

Great blog Todd. As you know, Kirsten and I are new at this parenting thing, so I can't as of yet comment on 'what we do'. Your "Aunts and Uncles" strategy rings true to me tho... when I was young I remember being quite frightened of all the other grownups -- aunts, uncles and otherwise -- so it has been a priority for us to socialize Amalia, early and often in hopes of mitigating that kind of fear to the extent that we can. So far so good as she greets pretty much everyone she meets with a big gummy smile.

And without even thinking about it, we were calling our friends "Tio" or "Tia" from day one! And we'll continue to do so, now with your endorsement ;-)

(We need to orchestrate an intro to Tio Todd soon!)

[gwen]

Todd, I would like to hear more about this since it speaks directly to my experience in cohousing. Joe and I are really struggling with creating a "suitable" attachment village though you would think it would be easy in cohousing. Luca now has lots of playmates so now my task of keeping him family oriented actually seems tougher than before. The other families here are mostly quite attached to their children, but a lot of them send their kids to daycare, and they believe that socialization begins at daycare/preschool. So how do you create a village of attachment with people who do not parent with the same ideals...or is this important? I did stop letting him stay at one man's house because that man is totally disengaged wtih his children and therefore mine. I do work on collecting other children and that is working for me so far. As my husband said, we just have to be cooler than his friends...and I would add, we have to be the coolest parents in cohousing. I would like very much to put out the idea of collecting other's children to this community.