What is the most significant thing we can do to nurture happy, healthy kids?

We need to create connection on three levels:

1) Create and nurture a strong bond and connection with our children

2) Nurture a connection with our own intuition and inner wisdom

3) Allow our children to stay connected to their own internal guidance

Create and Nurture a Strong Bond and Connection with Our Children

To help our children reach their greatest potential, we must first create a strong bond and connection with them before, during, and after birth and consistently nurture and strengthen this connection throughout their entire childhood. Children who receive continual nurturing, plenty of loving physical contact, and have a healthy, bonded relationship with at least one parent know at a deep, core level that they are loved and valued for who they are - just because they exist. With a healthy sense of their value and worthiness, children can more easily tap into their natural state of happiness and develop their full potential. We show them how to love and value themselves by being present for them and tending to their emotional needs.

A group of child advocates and professionals have formed the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children (aTLC). They have spent thousands of hours developing a proclamation and a blueprint of evidence-linked principles and actions that integrates age-old wisdom and leading scientific research on optimal human development. One of the main principles they set forth is "Every child needs to be securely bonded with at least one other person-optimally the mother."

What do we do to create and maintain a healthy parent-child bond?

We need to provide as much close physical and emotional contact as possible, making it a consistent element of our children's reality. Actions that promote bonding with a baby are extended breastfeeding, continual physical contact such as holding, cuddling, massaging, rocking, carrying in a sling or in arms, and co-sleeping. Facial expressions, actions, and talking that mirrors to babies that they are valuable and their needs truly matter are also important to the parent/child bond.

We need to respond immediately to our babies' needs so they feel wanted and worthy of our attention, and so they can view the world as a safe and benevolent place to explore and grow. This is the opposite of "spoiling" a baby. When children become demanding and clingy, it most likely means their bonding and attachment needs have not been met consistently.

This way of parenting, sometimes termed "attachment parenting" or "connection parenting", provides babies and young children with what they need for optimal development of the brain, immune and nervous systems and overall health and well-being. It is not a fad or a new style of parenting. It has been the norm in much of the world throughout history. Unfortunately, it seems our society as a whole is becoming more detached from our babies and children. It's become common in modern Western society for babies sleep alone in cribs in separate rooms and carried everywhere in plastic car seat carriers, away from the natural warmth, rhythm and heartbeat of their mothers.

In a fast-paced society such as ours, where there are a lot of distractions competing for a parent's attention, forming a strong connection with our children is even more necessary. Fortunately, in addition to the enormous benefits to babies, connection parenting can be a blessing for busy parents, making parenting easier, calmer, more fulfilling, and fun.

Sleeping right next to our babies enables us to breastfeed more easily during nighttime awakenings, without getting out of bed. Hearing and feeling the breathing and slight movements of our sleeping babies confirms they are safe with us and gives us peace of mind during the night. In addition to being the only complete nutrition and immune building food available for babies, breastfeeding is far easier (and more rewarding) than mixing formula, and eliminates the need for bottles and all that comes with preparing and cleaning them. Carrying our babies in slings allows us to meet our babies' needs for holding and carrying while keeping our arms free to do whatever we need to do. We can go about our day, holding our baby close, breastfeeding discreetly right there in the sling. Our contented baby then is able to see and experience more of the world from this vantage point, increasing his or her learning from life.

The positive effects of connection parenting extend both ways. Babies carried in slings are happier, calmer, and cry less, and parents who wear their babies are also calmer and more confident as parents. Becoming more in tune with the natural rhythm and energy of our babies allows us to be more deeply in tune with our own natural sense of well-being. When we deeply connect with a child, we more easily connect with our own sense of joy and well-being, and experience greater health and awareness.

To create a healthy bond with older children, we need to create one-on-one connection time and give our kids our undivided attention on a regular basis. We also need to talk to them with respect, engage with them in their self-directed play and activities in non-controlling ways, actively listen to them, and allow them to fully express their feelings. Older children also need plenty of hugs and loving physical contact. We must build a connection of trust and respect with our children. In her book, Connection Parenting: Parenting through Connection instead of Coercion, Pam Leo provides tools and helpful guidance in creating and maintaining a connection and bond with older children. This and other great books on creating connection with our babies and children are available through Healthy Child's Parenting Resource Page.

Nurture a Connection with Our Own Intuition and Inner Wisdom

Parenting can be challenging when we have many different opinions coming in to our mental awareness from friends, relatives, doctors, books, etc. Well-meaning opinions, strict regimens, and "baby training" methods/schedules can be the biggest interference in creating a bond with our babies. When we can loosen the grip of these outside voices and tap in to our own inner guidance to parent from our heart, we will naturally know what to do to meet our babies' needs. We have to go with what feels right, what our natural instincts are telling us.

Parenting is an "in the moment" endeavor. Since no two babies are the same, and their individual needs can change from moment to moment, there is no set of guidelines available anywhere that can take the place of a mother's intuition. In fact, nature has helped this along by providing mothers with powerful maternal hormones - prolactin and oxytocin - that are stimulated by holding and breastfeeding and are the chemical basis for mother's intuition. By forming a deep bond with our babies, and continually checking in to our own internal wisdom, we will know what to do to meet our babies' needs.

Dr. Sears, who first came up with the term "attachment parenting" almost 30 years ago refers to it as "a style of baby care that parents would naturally practice if they followed their own intuition rather than listening to the advice of others." Even though most books and advocates of attachment parenting refer to specific practices that are most likely to foster attachment and bonding, there are no rigid rules. We can choose what is right for us and ignore what is not. As long as we have the intention of creating a bond with our babies, intend to be fully present to meet their needs, and are in tune with our own intuition and inner wisdom, we will know what's right for us and for our individual children.

Allow Our Children to Stay Connected to Their Own Inner Guidance

If it is our goal to have happy, healthy children who live and express their full potential, we must help them to maintain their connection with their internal guidance, and not derail it with our own disconnection and need for control. We don't want to "raise" our children to become what society deems successful and acceptable. We want to nurture, assist, and allow our children to grow to be the happiest they can be - truly tapped in to their inner guidance and full potential. This is easier said than done in this society where following your inner guidance is not supported.

Even though healthy parenting means forming a healthy attachment with our children, it is also about allowing our children to be who they are and staying out of the way of their connection with their own internal guidance. We need to give up control and "attachment" to how we think our children should be, and allow our children to explore their world, express their creativity, and create their own path and dreams. So there is also a need for us to "detach" and let go of control over our children.

Children are born with the awareness of their connection to Source or God. They embody this connection with their exuberance and energy. They have a zest to explore life and are thrilled and amazed at the simplest things. They live fully in the moment. They have a natural, positive expectation that things should go well for them. They know that life is supposed to be fun and joyful. Over time, due to parental, teacher, and societal control and conditioning, they learn to ignore this connection and eventually may forget that it even exists.

Most adults have lost touch with this connection since we learned at a young age to ignore our natural impulses and inner guidance. This disconnection has caused us to constantly search outside of ourselves for things that we think will make us happy, including drugs, relationships, religion, food, alcohol and all things that we think are the answer to our dissatisfaction. But the only true source of happiness is within us. Let's not take this away from our children, and instead, encourage them to trust their natural inclinations and feelings.

We can teach self-discipline and respectful limits without breaking the connection we have with our children and without breaking their inner connection that is so important to who they are becoming. Instead of viewing uncooperative or negative behavior as a challenge to our authority, we can listen to what our children need in the moment. Pam Leo explains in Connection Parenting, "Once we understand that uncooperative behavior is a communication of a child's unmet need, a hurt, or the response to an adult's unrealistic expectation, we do not have to take the behavior so personally." She also states, "The level of cooperation parents get from their children is usually equal to the level of connection children feel with their parents." We do not have to compete with or have power struggles with our children to get our needs met. We can find ways to meet their needs and our own needs with dignity and respect, not coercion and control.

An important thing to keep in mind is that healthy parenting is not about perfection. All parents make many mistakes, but since there are really no mistakes - only opportunities for growth - we can be easier on ourselves and our children. Parenting gives us the greatest opportunity for growth, expansion, and awareness. In many ways our children can be our wisest teachers and we can learn a lot from them. We can view parenting as a journey that we take with our children to become the best and happiest we can be. Most importantly, we can trust our children and trust ourselves.

It is never too late to create a stronger connection with our children. If our kids are older and we realize we could have done more to bond with them as babies, we can let go of any useless guilt that arises and celebrate that we do the best we can at any given moment, within our present situation, available resources, and life circumstances. We can always begin right now to turn around our relationships with our children - at any age.

There is a lot of information available now on the many aspects of parent-child bonding and attachment, and allowing our children's (and our own) internal guidance and connection. I have created a resource page on Healthy Child with articles, books, and websites, including a link to the aTLC Proclamation and Blueprint. I invite you to visit and bookmark this page, find the resources that resonate with your intuition, and embark on your own learning process. Creating connection with your children will be the most rewarding, delightful journey you will ever experience.

By beginning now to parent with connection, we can begin to create a different world in which people love, honor, and respect themselves and each other. A world where people fully connected to their inner potential, gifts, and wisdom are contributing to a world of true health, harmony and peace.

Healthy Child's Parenting Resource Page

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Jane Sheppard is the editor of Healthy Child (http://www.healthychild.com/), an online resource center for natural, holistic parenting and safe and healthy products for babies and children. Healthy Child empowers parents to make informed choices.

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