The Art of Conscious Parenting

A new approach to creating, rediscovering, and renewing the intimate bonds between parents and children • Explains the importance of bonding with your child in utero and the physical and mental preparation needed even before conception • Shows how "green parenting"--breast-feeding, contact with nature, and low-tech creativity--can enhance your child's life • The Art of Conscious Parenting won the 2010 Gold Nautilus Award for the best Parenting/Childcare book. The Nautilus Awards recognize books that promote spiritual growth, conscious living and positive social change, while at the same time stimulating the "imagination" and offer the reader "new possibilities" for a better life and a better world. Our first days and months of life are critical in forming the attitudes we bring into adulthood and in structuring the very roots of our personality. Simple bonding techniques--long forgotten in our modern world but stemming from the age-old customs of indigenous peoples--are at the core of a new model of conscious parenting that can produce happy and well-adjusted children. These practices also help parents experience an increased joy and intimacy both with their child and with each other. Based on obstetric and psychological evidence, Jeffrey and Dalit Fine reveal how bonding begins in utero and that the physical and mental preparation of both the father and mother, even before conception, sets the tone for the future well-being of the child. They show how sustained physical contact and simple ways of consciously interacting with your infant--eye contact with the newborn, baby-wearing instead of stroller use, and co-sleeping--have an observable positive effect. They also show that the "green parenting" practices of breast-feeding, contact with nature, and simple low-tech creative play not only provide a more hands-on and intimate approach to parenting but also are more economical and environmentally sustainable. From in-utero bonding through the challenges and joys of consciously interacting with your growing child, this book will help parents rediscover and apply the natural art of conscious parenting.

Jeffrey L. Fine, Ph.D., is a psychologist with an interactive web-based therapy practice and founder and director of the American Foundation for Conscious Parenting. He is a member of the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health. He lives in Israel and the United States with his wife and son.

Publisher's Preface: There's Nothing New Under the Sun Foreword: Not Just Another Book on Parenting By Joseph Chilton Pearce Preface: Don't Throw Your Baby Out with the Bath Water 1 A New--or Old--Way to Think about Birth 2 High-Tech Birth and the Alternative 3 A Child's First Schoolhouse: Learning in the Womb 4 Birth: Labor and Delivery 5 Breastfeeding 6 Life after Birth: The Most Important Days of Our Lives 7 The Great Healer Afterword: Thinking of Conscious Parenting as Green Parenting Notes Bibliography Resources About the Authors Index