I always looked at AP as having sort of standard rules. Especially from the books/ articles I have read. And I would like to consider myself AP but while there are certain AP methods that I feel very strongly about, others I'm more like "Meh". I would also be open to bringing my parenting style in line with its core philosophies. The CIO discussion has really got me thinking, does AP really mean just being a nuturing parent? Is there a more formal guideline of sorts? Is it being judgmental to have such a strong opinion and voice it or just better to "quietly AP"?.
Sorry if I am rambling and I am truly NOT trying to offend, I guess I am just trying to get a clearer concept of how to follow something that emotionally feel so strongly drawn to.
Re: What is AP? (genuine question). What does it mean to you?
I haven't really read much of anything about it, we did cover it years ago in my early childhood education training but I don't remember what we learned.
Here, for our family it means responding to her needs without making her cry for it by watching her cues and paying attention. BF on demand, baby wearing, mostly bed-sharing though she does sleep in her crib when she's content with it (seems to be in stages, currently back to bedshare stage).
That's the main parts I guess...like I said we just did what came naturally rather than following a list. Basically as much as we try to keep living our life as we did pre-baby, life has greatly changed to meet our babies needs...we don't force her to fit our old life. She just worked the two together as much as we could and had to give some aspects up in order to meet our little one's needs.
Baby wearing has helped a lot with that...I wear her and we still manage to spends a whole day at a museum or go out for dinner etc. Her needs are met with closeness and we get to do some of the old things we enjoy.
At just under 6 month she is just starting to sit in the stroller more than 5min, she still comes out to nap in the baby carrier but she will sit in it for longer periods checking everything out. Prior to now she would fuss when we put her in so I wore her and the stroller became our very expensive, high tech, diaper bag mover. We didn't force her to stay in the stroller as she clearly wanted closeness.
Most days she fusses/cried less than 10-15minutes total in a 24hr period. We know what she wants and she know we'll respond so just no need to cry. That said, she is an easy going baby so it helped. I'm sure many families that are AP still have babies that cry.