are you also a natural attachment parent?

Yes, natural living definitely fits in with my parenting philosophies. We use cloth dipes on our 18 month old (only natural/organic materials w/ wool), try to do mostly organic food and clothing, we are switching to green energy, selectively vaccinate and delay those, use cloth napkings/"un-paper towels", etc. I've always been drawn to a natural lifestyle but recently I have become much more interested in it and have been working to make my life (and my family's) more natural.

I do a lot of the things that go along with attachment parenting. I wish I had done my research about cloth diapers and gone with cloth diapers from the beginning. We're not vegetarians. But we were co-sleepers until my daughter just decided she didn't like sleeping with us anymore. I was big on baby wearing until she got too big. And I've never been one on the cry it out method. I don't like letting my daughter cry. Whining is a different thing though.

We do some attachment parenting things, but not everything. We don't cloth diaper, we only do SOME of the vaccinations. We eat healthy 90% of the time. We don't do organic all that often anymore, because we can't afford to. We can't afford $4.96 for a lb of strawberries, when the non-organic ones are less than half that price. If we ate totally organic I would have to go back to work. And I would rather stay home with my son. We are the only parents I know that actually do disposable diapers the RIGHT way. We avoid most household chemicals. As for the attachment parenting part, we really do most of the stuff. We only coslept until he was 4 months old, because he got too big for the bassinet, and he never wanted to sleep with us anyway. We never carried him in a sling or anything, but I just carried him a lot, until he became too independent. We've never let him cry anything out. We have always fed on demand. We do what feels right to us, not what anyone else says is right.

I have never until this day heard of attachment parenting, but funnily enough my husband and I basically do what we find loving and as natural as we can. We have never smacked our four year old son, we have always fed him healthy home cooked meals form the moment he could have solids I would cook up pumkin and potato and all different things for him, not jar baby food. We did not leave him in his room to cry even though we were told by lots of so called experts to do so. I still now if he calls out during the night which is sometimes four times or more I always go in and even sometimes all he wants his a hug and a kiss, and I don't ever tell him not to call out. Up until the stat of this year I would most nights end up sleeping in his bed with him as he would sleep longer that way. We made a special chart to help him sleep all night on his own. I still lay with him for about ten minutes and sing him lullabyes and then sit on a chair near his door until he goes to sleep, and if he calls out I go and comfort him tuck him in and we say night night, love you lots, sleep well, and he knows that I go out then. We had some nights I would sit on the floor next to his bed and hold his hand but I would not sleep in his bed and he slowly has got his confidence and now sleeps all night without asking for me to sleep in his bed. I still go in to his room a fair bit sometimes I go in there and ask whats up and he just says' I just wanted to say I love you.' I say love you to and go back to bed. He filled his sticker chart up very easily and we got him a surprise at the end of it, two guinea pigs. He loves helping me get their food and look after them and I remind him we got them for him because he is such a great helper and such a big boy sleeping all night by himself. He always says shucks. I have to say though we did have him vaccinated and we didn't use cloth nappies, but we teach him it is alright to have feelings and to talk about them. We just do what we think is the best and treat him the way we like to be treated as an equal. He is such a gorgeous boy. The other day he cam home from kindy and I asked him how his day was, he told me that some school kids came over for a visit. He went on to tell me that the little boy that sat next to him was a bit smelly. He said I pretended I had to go talk to someone and walked away cos I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I felt very proud. He is a very caring sensitve little boy, and we love him to bits.

For me it is hard to seperate the 2. Not that you can't be AP w/o eating organic etc... but for us & pur live style they are 1 in the same.