Share Individual and Family Plans for AP Month
Each moment presents us with a fresh opportunity to celebrate “Giving Our Children Presence” and in fact, recognizing and seizing these moments is the essence of Attachment Parenting.
We want to record, highlight and celebrate the power in the ordinary and simple daily interactions.
Please help us do this by sharing with us in the “Leave a Comment” section below some of the ways you have celebrated or will plan to celebrate “Giving Our Children Presence” in your family.
If your activity extends beyond your immediate family and occurs during October, please consider using the Event Registration section instead.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
This month we are working harder to spend more time on the simple enjoyments of life together. Playing baseball, going to the aquarium, extra tickles and well, just extra presence. A lot of times I get wrapped up doing the “grown up” stuff and rush through it rather than including them in it. Simple things like playing games together more often than watching TV, dancing to tunes, etc. are all a part of the presence I want to give to my kiddos and want to do it on a more conscientious level.
As a small family business of glass artists, my husband and I work non-stop from home….there is always something we can be doing! We love our work though and our son Riley Jack is the reason we do what we do. Riley just turned 5 years old and we have “officially” started concentrated home school efforts, mainly with a focus on learning to read. We spend about 45 minutes a day with our lessons; this includes some singing, reading time and discussion. With business time and homeschooling time and eating times….fun time seems to elude us easier than it did in his early childhood years. One of the family things that we do accomplish every month is traveling to a show in another town or state. While this is still work, it offers us the chance to take a road trip together, escape the tv, see new sights and explore the world together. It’s a great break from our routine and we always come home with a greater bond. In celebration of AP month, and with the harvest season of Fall and colder temperatures, I know we can spend the nights on our travels bundled up somewhere cozy, sipping cocoa, being together no matter what we do. I think that is an important component of AP, including children in our lives on many levels. Riley is a very well-rounded, secure person that knows his parents have time for him and want to hang out with him, hear his stories, perspective, dreams. I am glad for this month as a reminder to what we strive to achieve every day.
Peace and blessings to all.
I would like to do something more elaborate to celebrate AP month, but the main items on my agenda are to contact the local media with AP article suggestions, and to update our local meeting information on the calendar sections of area newspapers, magazines and community television stations. I mean to do this year-round, but don’t always make the time. AP month has been a great incentive for me to spread the word and hopefully attract more parents to the 8 principles.
We are not big planners, preferring spur of the moment activities. We already plan so much in other areas of lives, we often just want to be together, without organization or obligation. Somehow there is a connotation that if something is not planned it is not as valued or as important. Our presence permeates our family because we’re homeschoolers and work and play together, so I find I often discount it and think we’re just not doing enough because of this value on planning. So, this Month I “planned” to give myself more presence of mind for the experiences we are already constantly having together–singing and reciting all the lines of Wizard of Oz, studying history, building forts, designing and sewing projects, playing soccer in the front yard, even folding the laundry and talking and laughing about it together. So, for me it is being fully in the moment and not holding myself to a standard of unattainable perfection and not valuing the presence opportunity that is going on just because it wasn’t planned. My contentent in my presence also serves as valuable presence of contentment and peace for my children.