I’m sorry to hear of her family’s struggle. It’s unfortunate that people will not only blame her, but an entire parenting philosophy because of her son’s illness. You are right that while it’s not a total crap shoot, there are more influences in a teen’s life than his parents. With another kid, it might never have gone beyond experimentation and he would have been fine. You just never know. For the child of friends of my parents, it was her peer group at school — *bad* news. By the time her parents realized that they could not successfully interfere with those relationships and transferred her to another school, it was too late — she spent her teens and twenties as a drug addict and petty criminal. (She was doing better by her mid-thirties, thank God.) Should they have changed schools earlier? In hind site, it obvious that they should have, but other kids manage to get in with the wrong crowd, then get out again, so how were they to know to take such a bold step? (These same people have raised a son and a granddaughter to be healthy, normal adults, so they are clearly competent parents.)
If only perfect parents turned out healthy, well-adjusted kids, then there would be no healthy, well-adjusted people in the world. The part that *is* a little bit of a crap-shoot is which of your otherwise not-so-bad mistakes will turn out to be disastrous for one particular child? This worries me as a parent, but I can only continue to do my best and pray. My heart goes out to Ms. Granju.

I’ve always liked Danielle Bean’s line: her parenting philosophy is whatever works. My problem with all of these various parenting theories, education theories, etc. is that they can tend to become ideologies. I see this all the time in the Catholic world with regards to how a mother nurses, what sort of birth one has (natural/epidural) how one’s child sleeps, whether one is going to homeschool or not. (For the record our first child slept in our bed for over a year and we plan on homeschooling next year.)
For us, at some point the attachment parenting — having our first in bed — had to give. She wasn’t sleeping, my wife wasn’t sleeping and our family life suffered. Horror of horrors we let her “cry it out” over a few nights and she learned to sleep on her own — though now at nearly age 6 she still doesn’t like to hit the sack. Our son was a different story. He was like a teenage kid from birth, burping and farting and making lots of noise. He also didn’t take to sleeping with us. So we set him up in his own crib — a jail-like mechanism according to one Catholic friend. My wife didn’t do natural births; she was induced and she had epidurals and she loved them. Now I certainly don’t think there aren’t good reasons to have natural births — though I think there is a tendency to cherry pick scientific evidence to support things like natural births. I am one who does believe that urbanism is better than surbanism for instance. But with some of this parenting stuff, I often think one sees the absolutizing of preferences.
I realize all of the above is a bit disjointed, but my takeaway is that much of this stuff leads to unnecessary fights among good folks try to do the best they can. (One final thing: if your family and you are suffering because attachment parenting is leading to a situation where your child and you aren’t sleeping, then it might be okay to try something else!)

My wife and I come from dysfunctional alcoholic families. Before we had children, we agreed we were definitely going to do this and not do that with our children. Then they came. We became a living myers-briggs experiment.
We were in the grocery isle one time with four children under 7 years old. Kids were helping with boxes and jars, parents were- well, doing ok. At one end of the isle was a person ready to turn us into child welfare for putting our hands on our children’s arms and hands. At the other end of the isle was a person who told us our hands should be on their butts. Here I am stuck in the middle with you.
One more thing- little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems.

For 15 years I have been leading a support group for parents like me and your author. Parents need the support of others who know the devistaion that addiction has on the family. We observe the three “C’s” You didn’t cause it. You can’t control it. You can’t cure it. Find a support group to help you survice your lovedones bad descision. On the plus side most addicts get clean and sober. You must get well so that when your addict comes to there senses you will be healthy eneogh to help them

There is a risk with all this business of making one’s family the center of a blogging / publishing “industry.” Sometimes it goes terribly wrong. What the writer did was very courageous.

My first and biggest mistake – and one that I implore other parents reading this not to make themselves – was to minimize and rationalize my child’s earliest drug use as the kind of “experimentation” that “lots of kids” try when they are adolescents. In fact, however, this “experimentation” was an early warning signal, a huge, blaring, shrieking, flashing early warning sign, and I chose not to see or hear it for what it really was. It was akin to early stage pediatric cancer and instead, I treated it like he had made a “D” on his report card or something similarly inconsequential.
Kids are such a crapshoot. Almost all kids experiment with drugs very few become addicts. So how do you tell which kind of kid you’ve got? If you catch your 12 year old with a beer or a joint how do you know whether you are dealing with a rare case of pediatric cancer or a common case of experimentation?

I am so saddened by this and I agree with Cheeky lawyer. I have attachment parented all of my 5 and was a La Leche League leader for a number of year. I guess I am the prototypical attachment parent. The lesson here is that
PARENTS DO NOT HAVE AS MUCH CONTROL AS THEY THINK!!!
So many of the things young parents argue about, or practice, do not affect the outcome of the child. Where they sleep, how they get born, what they eat…these things all pale in comparison to the things that I think really matter, that really make a difference…and that is
LOVE.
Not all that gooshy, child-led stuff…but real, Christlike sacrificial love. Laying down ones life for one’s friend love.
I have had the blessed opportunity to observe all kinds of families and parents for over 21 years and the kids who turn out okay are the ones who are truly loved…whether they slept with mom or not. I know of kids from a desperately poor family that lived in filth but who were well loved who have all grown up to be hard working, finctional,loving adults. I know kids from a well off, super clean family who turned out totally self destructive…hating themselves and doing all they could to ruin their lives. Both families practiced attachment parenting.
The difference between these tw
o families had to do with acceptance. The poor family was accepting of failure and gave a wide berth to differing perspectives. The well off family was unaccepting of anything that didn’t fit the narrow religious view held by the parents. That family disowned the children for disagreeing with them. The disapproval was tremendous. Those kids self destructed.
In my own family, I see love and forgiveness and acceptance as the reason we are all still close, in healthy relationship with eachother, and functional people…not perfect, but functional. I hope I can learn from what I see around me in how I raise my own…

And PS
I agree with Mont D law about drug use. It is not to be tolerated. That is the one area where acceptance is unacceptable. I agree that the only response is a total freak out, massive disruption of the kids life…change schools, change friends, off to boarding school, what ever it takes. Something to communicate that THIS IS NOT OKAY!!!

boarding school for a joint? that might be a little extreme. a better approach would be honest, informative education about drugs. a lot of kids are taught that all drugs are the same degree of dangerous (they’re not).
so when they try pot and realize it’s not that bad, that the adults have been lying to them to try to control their behavior, what do you expect them to do? believe what was said about the other drugs? after they were lied to about pot?
plus, no one who argues that pot should be illegal but doesn’t say anything about alcohol has no credibility. alcohol is much more dangerous, it’s scientific fact. kids have a good B.S. detector, once they figure out you don’t know what you’re talking about with pot, they’ll consider you ignorant about all other drugs too.

Indeed, it’s sad to hear of a troubled kid. But, as John Derbyshire pointed out in a series of posts in NRO a couple (few?) years ago, the cold hard statistics indicate that parenting style — good or bad (let any of those among the many shades of “good” — doesn’t much affect the resulting human. Stated as a percentage, it accounts for something like 10% of the influence, with the rest divided between the child’s socialization (the bulk of which is with peers) and genetics. And yes, to the extent that peer socialization is guided by parenting, parenting exerts influence beyond that 10%.
M

I have no desire to judge Ms. Granju, just as I have no desire to judge a parent who insist on home birth who goes on to lose their child during delivery. But what I do wish, is that advocates of attachment parenting and similar movements would look at a story like this one and stop being so judgmental towards those of us who find their arguments unpersuasive.

Shelley,
NO. I know kids that have been loved, loved, loved and they still were addicts. It’s as Marifasus says, social and genetic.

“But what I do wish, is that advocates of attachment parenting and similar movements would look at a story like this one and stop being so judgmental towards those of us who find their arguments unpersuasive.”
We use some attachment parenting things in our family and I used to consider us AP-lite but I’m starting to get a very bad taste in my mouth about attachment parenting as parenting philosophy. There is too little tolerance for parents who don’t follow AP. And I’m so tired of the claims that “science” and “evidence” are on the side of AP when it just isn’t. For example, it often claimed that using cry-it-out for an infant will lead to brain damage. This is based on studies of orphans. I’m sorry but the situation of a Romanian orphan is not analogous to a baby left to cry it out for 15 minutes.
I think it is extremely unfortunate that AP has such influence over traditional and conservative Catholics.
Here’s my take on this after being in the mommy wars, attachment parenting is all about guilt for the mom. You have to have a “gentle” birth (read painful), breastfeed (read painful, often inconvenient and incredibly stressful for some women), never sleep because sleep training isn’t allowed, etc. Note how it’s all mom who is supposed to do these things.
My advice to new moms is to do what works for you and your family. It’s okay to think about your needs and the needs of your husband. Throw out the Dr. Sears book. Don’t visit the forums on Mothering.com (for God’s sake please avoid that dreadful place!). Avoid “activists” (VBACtavists, Intactivists, Lactivists, etc.) like the plague. Have your baby in a hospital or a birth center and get an epidural if you want. Don’t trust “trust birth” midwives who tell you to have your baby in the kiddie pool in your living room.

@Mommy Wars Victim, Thank you, you hit all the main points that drive me crazy:
- false claims of having scientific support for their position
- the lack of tolerance for those who don’t accept their methods
- the equating of breast feeding, attachment parenting, and natural childbirth with magisterial Catholic teaching