The Aguayo - Ancient Andean Wisdom for Moms

I live in the UK and I have also never let my children cry alone and I have now three loving, independent teens. I used to carry them on a sling all the time and carry them on my back or side, doing the cleaning, cooking, etc. All natives in the Americas used to do that, and they also still do it in West Africa.

I wanted my children to know their mum and her love was always available, babies need to feel loved and secured.

crucified
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

Did I say to neglect a child? No. so stop putting text in my bubble.

I stated in my post that in the uk tv programs are telling parents never go to a crying child.

You replied with the following.

crucified
preparing kids for the cold reality of the world is a good thing

Whilst I did not put text "into your bubble" (please show us where!) you certainly seem to condone leaving babies to cry.
I replied to you with "neglecting a child is not a good thing", I said it because in my personal opinion, to leave a child to cry IS neglect.

I'm very happy to read a couple of posts made by ATS moms, sharing their positive experience using this ancient technique. Their experiences are absolutely undebunkable, like the song says : "Mama knows.....".

Thank you.

reply to post by VoidHawk


No one ever says never go to a crying child. They say to limit running like a madman every time the baby makes a sound. if the babies fed and clean and has no reason to cry nonstop start ignoring its little fits for short periods and it realizes that every little whimper no longer gets him attention. I don't know you but I know this about you, you like take everything you hear or observe and perceive it to an extreme level.
Your the type to describe a fender bender as a 3 car pile up.

reply to post by ketsuko


Actually . . . sadly . . . my own mother believed that

IF the child was fed . . . [bottle-fed, sadly] . . . and diapered . . . and held for 10 minutes

then the child 'should' be left to wail in their crib for 3-4 hours . . . as was done with my adopted sister.

What a sure-fire way to cause significant degrees of ATTACHMENT DISORDER.

The research is now clear. HOLD THE KIDS. This method is a great way to do it.

ATTEND TO THE KIDS . . . almost whenever and wherever asked for.

If the kid is demanding far too much attention--holding them in this fashion still communicates that they are of worth even if one is ignoring their repeated calls for undue attention.

Thanks for the thread, OP.

crucified
I don't know you but I know this about you

Hmmm, that tells us more than enough.

reply to post by BO XIAN


Absolutely we do and did every single time during the day.

We only started doing this at night after he was over a year old. And we did it in small doses. Make sure he was fed and clean and safe. Hug him and reassure him and say "good night" over and over, then leave him for 5 min. If he's still crying, return, hug him and reassure him and say "good night" over and over, then leave him for 10 min. If he's still crying, return, hug him and reassure him and say "good night" over and over, then leave for 15 min. Repeat, extending the time until child falls asleep. We never got past 15 or 20 minutes, and we only ever needed to do this three or four times.

Usually, we never had to even go there. He would only wake up and want either a bottle or a change and a hug and then go straight back to sleep, but occasionally, he felt he needed to wake up and run around like it was daytime. That was when we resorted to the above because we couldn't afford for one or the other of us to be awake like that with him, and he wouldn't just play quietly in his crib with the toys and board books we allow him to take to sleep with him.

Now, he plays quietly in his crib on those rare occasions and everyone is happy. As for attachment issues ... we have none.

reply to post by Nephalim


I think that the West always steals their spiritual concepts from other, more connected cultures. Christianity could have been a good concept, but then it got completely adulterated.

reply to post by Trueman


Great thread.

Dr Timothy Taylor of the University of Bradford developed the theory that the baby sling may have allowed mothers to recuperate, by obtaining necessary nutrition, and keep their baby safe from predators.

The relevant energy expenditure equations indicate that hairless bipeds would have benefited hugely from smarter solutions for carrying infants than holding them with arms alone. The sling as carrier is a concept understandable to chimpanzees and only requires a little more intelligence than theirs (or a stroke of luck) to be invented. But once you have a carrying device, the implications are immense. The infant, helpless at birth, can remain helpless longer with no great loss.

To get smart, we did not increase our pelvic width and impair our ability to walk upright. Instead we extended gestation, long past the moment of birth, as a kangaroo does, allowing the skull to enlarge outside the womb. The sling turns a primate into a marsupial, and its newborn into what is, developmentally, essentially a foetus. Chimp brains grow somewhat after birth, but the rate in humans – a quarter million new neurones per minute in the first year, continuing only a little less rapidly to age five – means that our children, while helpless for longer, are concomitantly amazingly impressionable. This is the substrate for the development of language and symbolic culture, which essentially hard-wires itself into our biology ex utero.

Of course, the sling does not in itself explain what drove the cognitive acceleration that started two million years ago (that involves other arguments), but it did smash the glass ceiling that had for so long precluded it. By solving a carrying problem for a bipedal ape, this invention – made, I believe, by an australopithecine female with little more brain power than a modern chimp – opened the way to our becoming human.

rationalist.org.uk...

Before the invention of the baby sling, dated by Dr Taylor to at least 2.2 million years ago, when human ancestor head size suddenly began to increase, physically mature infants were more likely to survive, because caring for slower-developing immature ones was difficult, uneconomic and often dangerous. Mothers holding their infants were more vulnerable to attack from predators or other humans than those using baby slings. They were also less able to perform other more economically productive tasks.

Most importantly, the invention of the baby sling artificially lengthened human gestation, said Dr Taylor. Formerly, gestation ended at birth with the most physically mature babies surviving as they needed to be carried by their mothers for less time. But their head and brain size was strictly limited by the width of their mother's pelvis.

"Courtesy of the baby sling, our ancestors got smarter," he added.

www.independent.co.uk...

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


That's a good question about their hats. Wikipedia may be able to give you a rough idea somewhere.

reply to post by BO XIAN


Yep, seems like nothing more natural than a mother carrying her baby with her, Mother Nature is wise.







I miss my mama now.

photography.nationalgeographic.com...#/koala-mother-baby_19891_600x450.jpg

reply to post by brazenalderpadrescorpio


Yeah...i looked it up. This site gives an answer that feels right...but who knows:

rmfz4.home.comcast.net...

brazenalderpadrescorpio
reply to post by Nephalim

 

I think that the West always steals their spiritual concepts from other, more connected cultures. Christianity could have been a good concept, but then it got completely adulterated.

You know christianity is what was taken down there don't you? Came from europe? Spread north. Same for the rest of the americas? All of these religions are foreign to the lands you call America which is part of the west. I suppose though if you look at the globe differently its also the east.
Link
Thats a shoshone woman I believe. If you guys widen your search, that carriage is throughout the northern and southern continents.

reply to post by Nephalim


The West is just a catch-all term for the "civilized" countries. Notice the quotes.

reply to post by ketsuko


It sounds like you developed a very functional way to do both--affirm and comfort--transmitting great messages of WORTH while also training the child to handle sleeping alone in their own bed and room comfortably enough.

That could get into the whole . . . children in parents' bed issue . . . I'm still fairly on the fence about that.

I've lived overseas enough to know that our way is not AUTOMATICALLY nor NECESSARILY the best or only reasonable or good way.

In any case, I'm greatly in favor of the OP's example of carrying children on backs or in front. And when I see fathers do it, I try persistently to praise them up one side and down the other for it.

THX THX Trueman for your kind words and great pics. INDEED. INDEED.
.

reply to post by BO XIAN


He's come into our bed on occasion, too.

When he was young, we accidentally shut off his baby monitor one night and the windows in his room were open as it was a very pleasant spring night ... when we all went to sleep.

We woke up in the middle of the night to crashing thunder and a hysterical child whom we didn't hear because the monitor was off. We felt like horrible parents that night, and he's been a bit traumatized about storms ever since. So, on those occasions, he does wind up in our rooms long enough for the storm to blow over, but he quickly wants to go back to his own bed.

But it's a matter of knowing your kid and the bed thing is strictly for when he's afraid. And he always wants to go back to his own room pretty quickly.

reply to post by ketsuko


Thx for your kind reply.

It sounds like you are very sensitive AND RESPONSIVE to your child's needs.

Those are certainly PRIORITY issues.

I tend to lean more to the side of being as available for comfort and security the first 6-8 years of life as the child requests. The research is certainly clear that THAT strategy, set of habits REALLY produces very secure adults with relatively few to no attachment disorder issues.

Nevertheless, it sounds like your sensitivity and methods go the vast bulk, if not the totality, of that distance. I think the fact that he wants to return to his own bed is a clear indication that you are doing plenty quite right.

I think any difference between the two levels of care is probably virtually to totally negligible in terms of attachment issues.

Congrats.

My summer house is about 45 minutes away from Cusco, at 9800 feet altitude, and yes there are no baby prams around, just slings.

Unfortunately, Chinese made industrial textiles are now less expensive to buy than making your own, so centuries old traditions are slowly eroding, and ugly polyester made varieties are replacing the real deal.

Tourists buy genuine alpaca and lama textiles on the markets though, so the locals still make them, but you often see them wearing the low cost crap.