Radical Parenting

I came across a show on Discovery Health last night called "Radical Parenting". I was very intrigued by it, so Mike and I decided to watch it. It featured 3 families with 3 different "radical" forms of parenting. I am not going to give my opinion on any 3 forms of parenting, because I don't want to offend any of my readers. (Shocking, I know, but who I am to judge someones form of parenting!)

Family #1- "Parenting without Consequences" & "Unschooling"
This family basically believes that there should be no "head" of the family- everyone, including the kids, are equal. There are no consequences when a child does something wrong, but there are safety rules. It empowers the child to make their own decisions: what they want to eat, when they want to eat, what they want to wear, when or if they want to take a bath, etc... They approach personal hygiene like this: "Mommy doesn't want to cuddle with you because you are stinky." Then the child processes that and decides for himself that he may need to take a bath if he wants to cuddle with mommy. If it is time for dinner and the child doesn't want to eat, that is their decision, or if they want to eat ice cream for dinner, that's ok too.
They also don't send their kids to school. They believe in "Unschooling", which is a form of homeschooling but without a set curriculum. They learn through life as opposed to books. For example: They learn math by going to a store and buying something with money. If they want to do arts and crafts all day, that's what they do. This is what I found online:
"This is also known as interest driven, child-led, natural, organic, eclectic, or self-directed learning. Lately, the term "unschooling" has come to be associated with the type of homeschooling that doesn't use a fixed curriculum. When pressed, I define unschooling as allowing children as much freedom to learn in the world, as their parents can comfortably bear. The advantage of this method is that it doesn't require you, the parent, to become someone else, i.e. a professional teacher pouring knowledge into child-vessels on a planned basis. Instead you live and learn together, pursuing questions and interests as they arise and using conventional schooling on an "on demand" basis, if at all. This is the way we learn before going to school and the way we learn when we leave school and enter the world of work. So, for instance, a young child's interest in hot rods can lead him to a study of how the engine works (science), how and when the car was built (history and business), who built and designed the car (biography), etc. Certainly these interests can lead to reading texts, taking courses, or doing projects, but the important difference is that these activities were chosen and engaged in freely by the learner. They were not dictated to the learner through curricular mandate to be done at a specific time and place, though parents with a more hands-on approach to unschooling certainly can influence and guide their children's choices."
-I just want to note that the parents who were on the show last night who believed in this type of parenting, grew up in pretty traditional homes. The wife had her masters and the husband also was a college graduate.

Family #2- "Attachment Parenting", "Babywearing", & No Diapers
I found this online:
"The term, "attachment parenting", was conceived by pediatrician William Sears and his wife Martha, to describe a highly responsive, attentive style of caring for a child. Attachment parenting promotes physical and emotional closeness between parent and child through what the Sears refer to as the "Baby Bs." The Baby Bs are bonding, breastfeeding, babywearing, bedsharing and boundary building.
Attachment parenting advocates encourage parents to hold their baby often in the early sensitive weeks of life to foster bonding. Breastfeeding is promoted because it enhances the mother's natural instincts to respond to her baby through physical closeness, hormonal influences and promotion of attentiveness. Both babywearing, the practice of carrying the baby on the parents' body with an infant carrier or sling, and bedsharing, parents and babies sleeping in the same bed, provide additional opportunities for closeness. Boundary building is a discipline philosophy that entails responding to the genuine, age appropriate needs of the child and using gentle guidance. All of the Baby Bs are aimed at promoting a trusting, intuitive relationship between parents and baby through the physical and emotional closeness that makes it easier to know and appropriately respond to the baby's needs. While some people might see the Baby B's as a set of rules they must follow, they are just recommended tools that can and should be individualized for each family and parenting situation."
The family on the show practiced all the above. They co-slept with their children until the child decides to sleep in their own bed. Either the father or mother always "wore" the baby in a sling until the baby decided when it was done. (Some of their kids they "wore" until they were 2-3 years old- always wearing the baby, not putting them down except at night to sleep.)They have never used disposable diapers on their children- only underwear, even as infants. They practice "reading" their children and knowing when they need to go to the bathroom. They are very focused on the different faces a child makes to the different ways a baby cries. The child decides when they want to stop breastfeeding. She breastfed one of their children until she was 4 years old. They basically go at the child's pace, not the parents.

Family #3- "Gender Neutral" child raising
This family had 2 little boys, and they were raising them to be gender neutral. I found this online:
"Often, society dictates a child's predilection toward "boy stuff" or "girl stuff" even before birth. Attend most any baby shower across the country and you'll find that parents expecting boys are likely to end up with lots of blue clothing and accessories with sports or automotive themes while parents expecting girls are bombarded with pink and yellow clothing and accessories with floral or princess themes.
Some social scientists believe these gender-specific colors and themes can limit a child's imagination and, ultimately, his or her options. You end up with hyper-masculine men and hyper-feminine women who often can't get along, theorizes biologist Lise Eliot, a critic of traditional pink and blue parenting.
She and other gender-neutral advocates suggest that parents toss gender-geared clothes and provide gender-agnostic toys. The approach, they say, expands both girls' and boys' horizons; girls, for example, can practice competitiveness and assertiveness through activities like remote-control-car racing or rough-and-tumble play. Boys, meanwhile, can play with kitchen sets and dolls to hone nurturing and people skills.
Eliot acknowledges that gender-neutral parenting takes effort and can be challenging because we don't live in a gender-free world. Women are still expected to be the primary nurturers. And "feminine-boys" are made fun of in school. The gender-free movement hopes to change all that."
If the boys wanted a doll house (which they did, so they bought them one), it was ok. If they wanted to wear mommy's high heels or play with princess dress up clothes, that is fine. All the toys in their home were "gender" friendly, meaning they had kitchen sets, doll houses, tool sets, cars, etc... The parents also believed that there were no girl jobs or boy jobs around the house. The man could do laundry, wash dishes, cook dinner, and the woman could use power tools to hang a shelf or fix things around the house. Everything was "gender" neutral!

There are many forms of "radical" parenting styles, some follow a specific type, and some take bits and pieces from several types of "radical" parenting styles. When you have children, only you can decide what works best for you and your family.