Responsive Parenting: What it is and why it matters
Sleep is part of parenting, and how we parent around sleep is part of how we parent over-all. In fact, some of your sleep parenting decisions are the first big ones you make that either emphasize connection or separation, emotional availability or emotional distance. Responsive parenting includes night time parenting. Those decisions and approaches are connected.
So, to understand why responsive sleep support is so important, we have to talk about why responsive parenting is so important.
In my work, responsive parenting is my go to term for connection focused, attachment based, emotionally supportive parenting, with my understanding strongly influenced by Dr. Laura Markham’s peaceful parenting.
You may have heard, or identified with a lot of different parenting labels: Attachment parenting, positive parenting, gentle parenting, respectful parenting, conscious parenting, peaceful parenting, intuitive parenting, responsive parenting….Likely I’ve missed a few . All of these various labels are variations of each other. They may differ in how the core elements are presented, but they share a lot in common.
What is responsive parenting?
When I talk about responsive parenting, here are a few key elements that I identify with the definition of responsive parenting.
Parenting responsively is relationship-based parenting.
Recognizing that every child is an individual with their own unique temperament, needs, and capabilities.
Grounding our expectations in age-appropriate, developmentally informed concepts.
Striving to attune to our child, being aware of their cues/communication, accurately interpreting it, and responding consistently to meet the child’s needs.
Seeing behavior as communication - the outward expression of a persons inner world, needs/unmet needs, and experience.
Supporting and holding space for emotions.
Setting loving, empathetic, and age appropriate limits.
Choosing connection and teaching over separation and consequences or punishment.
Understanding that long-term independence grows out of dependence in the early years. Our job as parents is to support emerging independence not push them into it.
Regulating our own emotions as parents, because that is the only way we can help regulate our children.
Accepting and taking responsibility for our reactions, recognizing that our intense reactions as parents are often more about our own triggers than our child’s behavior.
Recognizing that nurturing ourselves is essential to show up as a responsive parent.
Why does responsive parenting matter?
Responsive parenting supports secure attachment. Decades of research show that a secure attachment is the foundation for life long mental and physical well-being. It’s important to note that attachment is the emotional relationship between parent/caregiver and baby, but from the baby/child’s perspective.
You don’t need to be perfect! Even the most responsive, attuned parents miss cues or mess up. That’s ok. Your child doesn’t need a perfect parent. They just need you striving to be responsive as best you can, and reconnecting, repairing after a misstep just as you do in other relationships.
Responsive parenting teaches your child:
That their needs are valued and valuable.
That they can trust in relationships.
That the world is a safe place.
That they are worthy.
That they can trust you to love them unconditionally.
Why do connection, attachment, dependence, and other responsive parenting elements matter so much in the early years?
The first 3 years are a sensitive period for brain development. Your child’s brain doubles in the first year and roughly triples by age 3. Your baby’s brain makes 1 million new neuro connections each second. While the building blocks of the brain are genetic, your child’s experiences shape the brain, building connections, and wiring the brain for life-long function. How you parent literally shapes your babies brain!
This is also the foundation for their stress system. Nurtured, coregulated kiddos grow up more resilient, cope better with stress, and have better emotion regulation skills. Kiddos who don’t receive responsive, nurturing parenting are more likely to be on high alert with an over-active stress system.
Responsive parenting matters!
Unfortunately, mainstream parenting is generally not responsive parenting so many of us were not parented this way and have to overcome past modeling, or reparent ourselves as we parent our littles. This also means that the go to advice or what we see our friends and family do is often not responsive. Many popular strategies are more about separation, compliance, and controlling behavior rather than connection and teaching skills.
Responsive parenting is a journey that unfolds as you’re little one develops.
It can be especially tricky when you weren’t parented this way and have no models to support you in your own growth as a parent. To parent with confidence, we all need the right information, support, and tools. And that’s why I created the Intuitive Parenting Community with my friend and colleague Kaely Harrod. We want this community to help you understand developmental norms, learn responsive tools, and have a community to support, encourage, and validate you through the process.
Find support and community as a responsive parent.
We would love to have you over in the Intuitive Parenting Community. Click below for more information.