Dear Dr. Phil,

Your recent show has made it very clear that you don’t understand what Attachment Parenting is all about. You have confused it with permissive and narcissistic parenting, which is very much not in line with AP in the slightest. You have highlighted permissive and narcissistic parenting styles and have called them “Attachment Parenting”.

Not knowing the meaning of the word “no” is permissive parenting. A permissive parent is a selfish brat who places their own need to be loved by their child ahead of what the child actually needs. A permissive parent will give their child a cookie if the child throws a tantrum. Or will just buy cookies to give to the child because they think the child wants cookies. A permissive parent will face their child forwards in the car seat before the child is ready to face forwards safely because “they want to see things!” Permissive parenting actually crosses over a lot into mainstream parenting in those ways.

Not allowing a child to spend time with anyone other than themselves is selfish abusive parenting, or is the parenting of someone who has legitimate concerns for their child’s safety. Attachment Parents generally place tremendous value on family and friends and believe in fostering relationships with many people so that their children have a wide network of emotional support and a lot of people to learn from.

Attachment Parents view separation anxiety as a natural part of infancy that fades when the child is able to understand certain things and when the child’s desire to explore and be around other children outweighs the child’s need to keep us in eyesight all the time. We believe in working with our children to become comfortable with the idea of being in different environments with different people at different times in their lives. We understand that if separation anxiety persists or becomes worse it is a social anxiety that needs to be overcome.

Attachment Parents recognize that children have many different personality attributes just as they may have different hair colors, eye colors, different body types, different facial features, and hair of different textures. We understand that our parenting needs to adapt with each different child because a “one size fits all” approach of any sort is doomed for failure.

Attachment Parents do not sleep with their children against their child’s will. Attachment parents sleep with children that need more nighttime parenting, and encourage independent sleep in those who are fine with that independence. (I personally LOVE to sleep without small feet in my eyeballs, and with more than an inch or two of space to myself.)

Attachment Parenting is not threatening my relationship with my partner. It is making my relationship with him stronger. By talking about parenting issues that we face, we listen to each other and we approach things as a team rather than one of us declaring that our way is The Only Way to Do Something. I listen to my partner with every bit as much zeal as I listen to my children.

Indulgent parenting takes the easy way out by throwing everything under the sun at their kids in the hopes that the parent can avoid doing any real work and the child will obey out of appreciation.

Strict parenting takes another easy way out by refusing to acknowledge the validity of emotions such as anger, sadness and disappointment. Strict parenting labels legitimate emotions as “manipulative” and tries to wall children off from their parents so that the parents will be sheltered from the emotions that the children have.

Attachment parenting is a lot of hard work. It means LISTENING. It means understanding. It means working with the child. Attachment parents don’t hide from the difficult emotions- be it through giving the child everything that they want or through putting our feet down and declaring that the child’s deepest feelings are just an attempt at controlling us.

I think that if you learned a little bit more about what Attachment Parenting really is.. Maybe you’d be ready to let go of the controversy and focus on something that truly damages children.

You can just as easily do a show on indulgent parenting, which is very damaging. Or a show on the effect of discouraging our children from expressing emotions rather than helping them understand what it is that they’re feeling.

Somehow I doubt that you have any interest in doing that, though. It’s easier to hold onto what we think we know than it is to listen to the things that we think we disagree with.

-Sarah