Parenting Through the First Year

The first year of life is crucial to your child’s development. Sometimes it can feel daunting and scary if we truly realize how important this time is. Healthy attachment and bonding through the first year can set your child up for a lifetime of success, both relationally and in school. Our babies come into the world incredibly vulnerable, trusting little beings. You are their answer to absolutely everything, which sure can feel like a lot of pressure! In past times, children were raised in a village. Unfortunately in today’s world, sometimes we don’t have the support we need to raise a child up in a village. Family may not be healthy enough or they may just live too far away. Overall, we live in a relatively individualistic society, so friends might not be quick to jump in. To make matters more complicated, some parents are parenting with quite heavy trauma in their history.

As a parent with an attachment history or attachment wounding yourself, you can be ill-informed on healthy attachment and bonding. You may feel like you have no model for healthy parenting and that you’re parenting without a map. You look to doctors, friends, and your own parents for parenting advice. Unfortunately, you are so often given advice that goes against your natural instincts to go to a baby that’s crying, to hold your littles ones close, to be attentive and sensitive to their needs. You are told you will make them needy and dependent. You want the best for your children, so you fear damaging them. You know so well how wrong things can go. You struggle to trust yourself and to know what’s best. Yet the advice that is so commonly given goes directly against what attachment research tells us. It tells us that being sensitive and attuned to our children’s needs makes them well-adjusted socially and academically. It makes them more independent as adults. Children need a solid foundation as they grow up to enable them to trust themselves, others and the world. After working with countless adults with trauma and attachment difficulties, we see how true this is. The adults we work with don’t trust themselves, others, or the world. They walk around with a low grade anxiety, damaged self-worth, constantly looking for approval from others to tell them that they’re okay.

At Safe Haven TS, we work to provide education on healthy attachment and bonding to set your child up for a lifetime of success and fulfillment. We all want our children to be well-adjusted and happy, but it’s so hard to know what’s best for your child. However, if your process your trauma, understand the way your baby thinks and what they need, you can learn to trust your own inner knowing. Only you know what’s best for your individual child. We can help support you as your navigate this new phase of your life!