What is attachment parenting?
If you have ever read the book a Battle hymn of the Tiger Mother- a book about why parents should demand more from their children and not the other way around – attachment parenting is going in the opposite direction. Those who strongly believe in attachment parenting are willing to change their life completely for the sake of raising their child. Attachment parenting says that “the more time babies spend in their mother’s arms, the better the chances they will turn out well –adjusted”. Dr. Bill Sears who is responsible for attachment parenting and for remaking American motherhood is operating with eight principles:

1. Preparation for Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting
2. Feed with Love and Respect
3. Respond with Sensitivity
4. Use Nurturing Touch
5. Ensure Safe Sleep, Physically and Emotionally
6. Provide Consistent Loving Care
7. Practice Positive Discipline
8. Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life

These values are interpreted in a variety of ways and for anyone either for AP or not, can agree that these are sensible rules. However, some take these steps much much further: Like quitting work, embracing home birth with no painkillers, co-sleeping and breastfeeding from sunset to sundown to late toddlerhood.

Please share your thoughts about these questions in the comment field:

1. What do you think about Time Magazine’s cover?
2. What child philosophy are you leaning more towards – attachment parenting or The Battle Hymn Mom’s parenting? And why?

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One of the frustrating things about kids growing up is that there comes a time (far too soon) when they suddenly know things that you, as a previously omniscient parent, didn’t know. For instance, I pride myself on knowing quite a lot of things and always enjoyed explaining things to our son. One day, we were discussing spiders at dinner (as one does, right?) and he insisted that spiders weren’t insects. “Nonsense,” I replied, “Of course spiders are insects.” But he insisted and – of course – he was perfectly correct. Spiders are arthropods. Insects are arthropods. But spiders aren’t insects. It was a moment when I realised that I didn’t know it all. And boy – he did, too. Now he looks at me critically when he asks me something and asks: “Are you sure? You don’t want to go and look it up in Wikipedia?” And with that, bang goes our parental self-image of being wise and life-experienced oracular sources of knowledge. Now we’re just plain old and fallible. Our son even sometimes prefers to go and Google things himself instead of asking me. (Sniff…) He adores encyclopaedias and spends hours reading about all sorts of things. It’s sad that he prefers to look things up himself sometimes, rather than ask me.

But of course that’s the way it should be. I guess it’s one of the early phases of gaining their independence. They realise that their parents don’t know all the answers and that they don’t have to take our word for it. We can be wrong. Teachers can be wrong (wow – that’s a big one…). I think that the best way to deal with this is to go along with it and – as always – to support our kids. To say to them: “Hmmm… I’m not sure. Where do you think we could find that out?” Help them develop their own research strategies. Strategies which are essential no matter where they end up going in life. A little scepticism on their part goes a long way towards helping our kids become responsible and sensible adults. From not believing every e-Mail claiming that they have won the Estonian state lottery (“just send us your credit card information and we’ll transfer millions of Euro to your card…”) to Nigerian millionaires asking for their assistance and bank account to help transfer millions abroad (“of course, we’d be delighted to leave you 10% commission for your kind assistance…”).

I mean – really – how many grown-ups end up getting scammed? I mean – how much sense does it take to realise that it’s very unlikely that you won anything from a lottery you actually entered, let alone one you have never even heard of and certainly never entered? This is the world our kids are growing up in. On Saturday night, my wife won a two-week, all expenses paid trip to Cuba for two. Wow. Cool. All she had to do was send a scanned copy of her passport to an e-Mail address and the travel documents would be on their way. But she never took part in any competition. And – strange – there wasn’t a telephone number on the entire website the mail directed her to. And – rather odd – the website address belongs not to the travel agency (as all their legitimate websites usually do), but to a private citizen in Switzerland who probably registered it under a false name. I called the company and had a chat with their legal department and they confirmed it was a scam and we compared notes. The thing is, we would have liked to win a holiday. So we wanted it to be true. When our son heard us discussing this, he just said: “Have you called the company to ask if it’s real?” and when I told him that there wasn’t a telephone number listed, he said: “Yeah. That figures. It’s fake.” Just like that.

I don’t think he’ll be easily scammed when he grows up. And if that’s the price I have to pay or being wrong, then so be it.

This article will be directed towards the stay-at-home spouse, because this person is most likely to face the important task of rebuilding the social networks that helps keep a family going. That does not exclude the fact that the working spouse also has an important role, while she or he has the important role of securing the family financially. It is also important to emphasize that the working spouse is the reason for the grand move but not, of course, without the consent from the rest of the family that is moving along.

The working spouse is generally socialized through his or her work. That means that his or her social start package is suppositional better because the working spouse has at least a social life through his or her family and through colleagues at work. This is often in sharp contrast with the stay-at-home spouse whose social network, besides the core family, starts at zero.

When you don’t know the language or how the system works it is easy to feel helpless or isolated. Coming from my own experience, moving to Nidwalden where the presence of the international community is not so strongly felt as in Geneva and Zürich, it was often difficult to communicate with the locals, since many of them either spoke poorly English or non at all. Therefore I often came in a situation where I was misunderstood or I misunderstood them. Naturally this made me frustrated and I wanted to flee from any situation where I knew that I was bound to get into trouble because of my poor German. Right there and then I felt it was sometimes easier not to deal with these situations rather than to face them and learn from them.

To give you an example, I went to the local public health nurse (Mutterberatung) for the usual weighing and measuring of my four-month-old daughter. I strolled to the local health station. My daughter, of course, went right to sleep and was still sleeping beautifully when we arrived at the health station. I knew that when she woke up for the measuring and weighing, she would cry, and that’s what happened. The nurse asked me if my child cried because she had “Angst”.
“No, no“ I said shocked, because the word “Angst”, when directly translated to my native language, has a strong pathological sound to it, meaning someone who suffers from an abnormal form of fear. The Mutterberater who didn’t speak a word English went on saying that she was sure my child had “Angst”. Then, because of her interpretation of my child’s behavior, I said a hurridly goodbye, missing out on the weighing and measuring, and went crying and angry back to my house.

Later that day after talking to friends that were more familiar with the German language, I realized that I had got it all wrong. I felt miserable because not only had I totally misunderstood her meaning of the word “Angst”, but I had also made a sortie that couldn’t be misunderstood. She knew that I became angry but didn’t know why — “Oh no” I thought, “now she thinks I am an oversensitive foreigner”.

Thankfully from there on everything went better, not because I did something sensible about it, but because my nurse did. The next day she rang my doorbell and suggested that we could do the weighing and measuring at home — sensing, I think, that she thought that this poor foreigner needed extra care. She was a sweet, caring nurse and from then on she came, for one year, monthly to our home to weigh and measure my kids. She even introduced me to a Swiss mother whom I became friends with.

To misunderstand or to be misunderstood is quite normal for a foreigner who is not yet properly acquainted with the new language, and the problems that arise when trying to communicate in an unfamiliar language can be a very frustrating experience. The worst scenario but at the same time a quite natural reaction is to withdraw and become isolated from the rest of the community. The important thing is really to go out of your way and court allies and potential friends, and then you will realize that all the feeling you’re having, good or bad, are not just yours. My “therapy” was going daily to the playground where I often exposed others to my bad German, mingling with my neighbors and sharing my experience with my friends.

There are a lot of organized activities for Stay-at-home-spouses and their kids in Switzerland and these activities are good opportunities to get involved in your community. MuKiTurnen (Mutter und Kind Turnen) are one to name a few activities where you can play around with your children and other moms with children in a gym. You can find MuKiTurnen almost everywhere in Switzerland from small villages to big cities. The same can be said about ElKiSingen (Eltern und Kind Singen) where you can enjoy a sing-along with children and other parents. Otherwise your kids can join an activity ranging all from ballet to soccer, and usually these types of activities also encourage parents to volunteer work. So to activate your kids also mean that you can activate yourself. These activities are also a good excuse to get out of the house even if it means a household chore gets put on hold.

Other important areas where you can socialize and exchange cultural views are different clubs whom there are many of in Switzerland. These clubs are often organized country wise and there you can mingle with people from your own country. To name a few you have the American Women’s Club of Zurich, Asian Ladies Club of Switzerland, Aussies Abroad Switzerland, Skandinavisk Club Zurich and English Speaking Club. You probably have to have a membership but then you can participate in most social events.

How one socializes is of course up to each and everyone all depending on where you come from, your religious views and other interests. Others will benefit from your qualities and you will only get stronger from opening up to new cultures. It is a risk putting yourself out there but use your positive energy to get in touch with local people and people with a similar background, perhaps with the motto — learning is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on (Samuel Butler 1835-1902)

Learn the language of your new country!
It is not always easy and some learn quicker than others, but the more you expose yourself to Swiss people the better it will get, and a language course will do you no harm.

There are also courses arranged by your local authorities (Gemeinde).
Often the local authorities offers German for foreigners (Deutsch für fremdsprachige Erwachsene). These courses are especially beneficial if your kids are going to attend the local school and not an international school.

In July, after seven happy years living near Zug, we upped sticks and moved to Nyon, on the north coast of Lake Geneva. For the first month, it felt as if we were taking a long, sunny summer holiday. But once school started and the holiday feeling wore off, small differences and first impressions combined to make me realise what a marvel Switzerland really is.

The first big change, of course, was in the language. ‘Septante’, ‘huitante’ and ‘nonante’ weren’t in my school textbook, but are much easier to use than ‘quatre-vingt-dix’ and all that. Our kids have grown up speaking Swiss-German in the ‘Krippe’ and at ‘Chindsgi’, and I’d come to terms with the idea that soon they would have a private language all of their own – well, shared with 4.5 million others, making it more useful than Welsh, but sadly incomprehensible to me. With French, I breathed a sigh of relief and greeted confused neighbours with ‘grüetzi – er, bonjour!’ for weeks, until the difference sunk in.

When we first moved to Switzerland, I always had to seek out the French instructions, rather than the German or Italian, printed on everything from pasta sauces to mobile phone guides. But now I find myself hunting for the more familiar German names, to check that these sausages are indeed ‘Bauernbratwurst’, which I know the family likes, rather than ‘saucisse vaudoise’ which looks the same, but doesn’t pass the taste-test – yet.

Other Swiss tastes make me realise how settled we had been. I soon discovered that a ‘café renversé’ doesn’t taste a bit like ‘eine Schale’ – more chicory in the coffee? a different sort of milk? – and that a ‘pain aux chocolat’ may look like a suitable substitute for a ‘schoggi-gipfeli’, but simply can’t placate a grizzling child, unlike a ‘croissant au chocolat’ which is apparently close enough.

Even our local Coop is different – a vast hypermarket, stocked with all sorts of foreign foods, including Christmas puddings for hardy expats who haven’t yet ‘gone native’. This shouldn’t be a surprise as the population of Nyon is refreshingly multi-cultural, with 36 per cent ‘non-Swiss’, but it still feels odd to hear quite so much native English spoken in such a small town.

Strangely enough for an ex-Londoner, I feel a lot less safe in Geneva in the daytime than I did after dark in Zurich, let alone in Zug. The streets are dirtier and drug-dealers hang out in the park next to our primary school. It’s a shame, but I would be reluctant to let the kids walk to school by themselves, something I previously considered a cornerstone for the development of their independent Swiss spirit.

It may well be us ex-pats dragging the area down, but I find myself nostalgic for clean and organised streets, even for our old ‘Ökihof’’, with its tidy bins and strictly sorted bottles and papers. Unlike many cantons, we don’t have a tax on refuse sacks, let alone a weekly ‘green bin’ compost collection, and recycling is viewed with suspicion, especially if you drag along your vegetable peelings for composting. In true ‘laisser-faire’ spirit, no-one seems to mind that everything gets mixed up. But old habits die hard, even if I am the only person doggedly separating paper from cardboard and agonising over which bin to put the blue glass bottle into.

Of course, some habits are more dangerous than others. It didn’t take long to realise that I had become far too relaxed about crossing the road. As a driver in Zug, you learn to slow down even as people approach a pedestrian crossing. In canton Vaud, crossings are rather riskier, with cars sailing through even when you’re trying to cross with children. Roundabouts are greeted with a flurry of indicators and bizarre road positioning, so it is best to approach them with caution, or better still plan out a route that avoids them altogether.

Now, after six months, we are certainly settled here. The children love their school and are picking up the language, and although I miss the cleanliness and solid dependability of all things public – knowing that trains will run on time; that snowy streets will be cleared before school – there is a certain everyday spontaneity and creativity here that seems to flow here more easily. Maybe the children will even have the chance to grow up with a certain ‘savoir vivre’ to accompany their French – but I do hope they don’t lose track of their Schwiizertüütsch roots.

By Rowan Unsworth. 2010

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1. Timing and the Windows of Opportunity
What is the best age to start learning another language? If you have a bilingual situation in the family the answer is very easy: right from the beginning. If you have just one language in the family you may consider the Windows of Opportunity. In any case it’s good to know what they are and how they influence the child’s language development. For every skill the child has to acquire, there is a neurological predisposition in the brain, and at certain time it is fully open (like the window). This openness indicates that it is the best time to practice the skill. For learning languages there are 3 such windows.

1. between 6-9 month
2. age 4.
3. age 7

The best thing to do with your 6-9 month old child is to expose him/her to the sounds of different languages. Each language carries a combination of particular sounds but none has all of them. As we speak one language the child’s brain starts to select these sounds and neglect others and this is how, in time, the knowledge of one language comes. When we are babies we all have potential of learning any language in the world. By exposing the child to a variety of sounds we stimulate the brain to select more and neglect fewer sounds. At that phase we can’t speak yet about “learning languages” in the terms of the child being acquainted with particular words, rather, it is like preparing the soil for future seeds. After the age of 9 months the child’s brain is preoccupied with physical development: crawling, standing, walking, running, climbing etc.

For most of the children at age 2 it is normal to talk. At that age the vocabulary starts to develop.

Age 4, also known as the age of curiosity, opens the 2nd window. Children who were, prior to this window, exposed to another language, can suddenly start using it. For others, due to curiosity, an interest in another language can appear. The reasons and methods of learning can change now.

Age 7 coincides with starting of school life. The child becomes more social and due to prestige wants to show him/her self as somebody worthy. Knowledge of another language becomes a tool of establishing social status. Again the methods of learning can change.

Windows of Opportunity are neurological. How they express depends on variety of other factors.

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