The Continuum Concept

I just came across the work of Jean Leidloff, who is known for her book, The Continuum Concept.  When I was browsing her website, the principles she espouses are basically attachment parenting staples- breastfeeding on demand, bedsharing, and babywearing.  I was searching around to find out what makes her different, and I came across this interesting article, "Who's in Control?" that was originally published in Mothering magazine in 1994.

If you have time and interest, it's worth a quick read, but I will give a summary here.  She spent two years in the South American jungles living with and observing the Yequana Indians.  One of her observations was that she never witnessed two children or a child and an adult arguing or engaged in any sort of power struggle.  So this became her question she sought to answer:


"Where were the 'terrible twos'? Where were the tantrums, the struggle to 'get their own way,' the selfishness, the destructiveness and carelessness of their own safety that we call normal? Where was the nagging, the discipline, the 'boundaries' needed to curb their contrariness? Where, indeed, was the adversarial relationship we take for granted between parent and child? Where was the blaming, the punishing, or for that matter, where was any sign of permissiveness?"


What she found is that while the Yequana keep their babies in close physical contact until they can crawl, they are not child-centered.  All this means is that they go about their daily activities with the baby close and secure without focusing on the baby.  The baby is allowed to observe a competent, confident adult going about the business of daily life without being the center of attention.  This gives the baby a rich, developmental basis for future behavior, language and general pace of life.  She sums it up like this:

"Being played with, talked to, or admired all day deprives the babe of this in-arms spectator phase that would feel right to him. Unable to say what he needs, he will act out his discontentment. He is trying to get his caretaker's attention, yet — and here is the cause of the understandable confusion — his purpose is to get the caretaker to change his unsatisfactory experience, to go about her own business with confidence and without seeming to ask his permission. Once the situation is corrected, the attention-getting behavior we mistake for a permanent impulse can subside. The same principle applies in the stages following the in-arms phase."


She goes on to say:

"It appears that many parents of toddlers, in their anxiety to be neither negligent nor disrespectful, have gone overboard in what may seem to be the other direction. Like the thankless martyrs of the in-arms stage, they have become centered upon their children instead of being occupied by adult activities that the children can watch, follow, imitate, and assist in as is their natural tendency. In other words, because a toddler wants to learn what his people do, he expects to be able to center his attention on an adult who is centered on her own business. An adult who stops whatever she is doing and tries to ascertain what her child wants her to do is short-circuiting this expectation. Just as significantly, she appears to the tot not to know how to behave, to be lacking in confidence and, even more alarmingly, looking for guidance from him, a two or three year old who is relying on her to be calm, competent, and sure of herself."


I think this is so valuable for me to remember as a parent who is trying to practice attachment parenting.  I believe that what I am doing will help my little boy to be secure, confident, and independent.  What I have never thought about is that he needs to observe me being that way as well.

Thanks for the food for thought, Ms. Leidloff!