Our beloved rabbi, Rabbi Ira Stone of the Mussar Institute in Philadelphia, gave us this solid and meaningful advice about Jewish parenting:

Raise healthy children who will be able to serve God and develop themselves morally without struggling with their own psychological health.  

    Rabbi Stone guided us through my Conversion and our Jewish wedding 12 years ago, teaching us a beautiful Judaism in the process.  We lost touch with Rabbi Stone for many years; in the meantime Alon and I became parents in Los Angeles.  We struggled to find our own path as parents.  Then, last year, we discovered that our parenting path paralleled the path Rabbi Stone and his wife, Annie, used to raise their own children two decades ago.  How amazing!  Could it be that Rabbi Stone’s teachings on Judaism intuitively informed our parenting choices?

    Attachment parenting is a large part of the parenting style we have in common with the Stones.  This means lots of holding, baby-wearing, infant massage, breast-feeding, co-sleeping, and responding to the needs of our babies and children.  These keep us very busy yet also strongly bonded with the new people in our home.  And amazingly, the sacrifice of personal freedom and mobility that accompanies this style of parenting, although very difficult to accept at first, has become one of the best shapers of our ability to follow a spiritual path in life!  As my yoga teachers told me when I was pregnant with my first child: “when you have a baby, her care becomes your yoga practice.”  In other words, focusing completely on another person's needs is a spiritual practice. 

    Rabbi Stone's favorite teaching is that the "other" is a stand-in for God.   With attachment parenting, the baby is the "other" so that loving and caring for the baby is a way of loving and serving God.  In a similar way, the parent becomes a stand-in for God to the baby.  Kitty, our first Nurse as new parents, taught us this concept in the context of her Christian beliefs as she encouraged us to abandon nursing schedules in order to breast-feed our newborn on demand.  She preached, "Newly born and separated from the realm of angels, your baby looks to you, her parents, for sustenance.  What will you teach this baby about her new world and therefore about God?"

      So it seems that devoting ourselves to our children serves a holy purpose:  we teach both ourselves and our children to trust, love, and ultimately to serve God.