Natural Child

The Natural Child makes a compelling case for a return to attachment parenting a child-rearing approach that has come naturally for parents throughout most of human history. In this insightful guide parenting specialist Jan Hunt links together attachment parenting principles with child advocacy and homeschooling philosophies offering a consistent approach to raising a loving trusting and confident child.The Natural Child dispels the myths of "tough love" building baby's self-reliance by ignoring its cries and the necessity of spanking to enforce discipline. Instead the book explains the value of extended breast-feeding family co-sleeping and minimal child-parent separation.Homeschooling like attachment parenting nurtures feelings of self-worth confidence and trust. The author draws on respected leaders of the homeschool movement such as John Taylor Gatto and John Holt guiding the reader through homeschool approaches that support attachment parenting principles.Being an ally to children is spontaneous for caring adults but intervening on behalf of a child can be awkward and surrounded by social taboo. The Natural Child shows how to stand up for a child's rights effectively and sensitively in many difficult situations. The role of caring adults points out Hunt is not to give children "lessons in life"-but to employ a variation of The Golden Rule and treat children as we would like to have been treated in childhhood.