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The Continuum Concept - is it the answer?

© Sonia Fluke

I have just read the most fantastic book. It's called "The Continuum Concept" by Jean Liedloff. This book is in it's reprint edition and has been acclaimed worldwide by critics, doctors, childhood educators and parents. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the well being of children and anyone concerned with repairing the imbalance of harmony within the entire human race. This book made so much sense to me, and actually reflected some of my own parenting practices that have previously been doubted and ridiculed by many of my mainstream acquaintances.

According to Jean Liedloff, the continuum concept is the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings — especially babies — require the kind of experience to which our species adapted during the long process of our evolution. These experiences that evolutionarily speaking, we have subconsciously come to expect include spending our early months "in arms", in close contact with our mother; sleeping in a "family bed"; breastfeeding on demand in response to a childs body signals; acceptance of the child as a social human being, not in need of continual punishment or control; and the total inclusion of the child in day to day activities of his "tribe".

The ideas described are very different from the life that a baby in Western culture comes to know, limiting ideals such as early separation from his mother in hospital; controlled crying; separate bed, even separate rooms from an early age; fixed feeding times and the absence of the vital "in arms" experience that every baby needs to fully develop, and exclusion from adult activities, therefore depriving him of the opportunity to utilise his powerful observation skills designed to aid his independence later on.

Liedloff came to these conclusions after spending over two years in South America with Stone Age indians, primarily the Yequana tribe. This experience led her to a radically different view of what human nature really is. Among the observations she made, the most notable was the absence of the difficult childhood stages that Western families have come to accept as normal. She noted there seemed to be no "terrible two's", no tantrums, no fighting or sibling rivalry and the Yequana babies from the onset seemed to be content, not needing quiet to sleep soundly and certainly no colic. She eventually came to the conclusion that these childrens "continuum" from the womb through to childhood had not been interupted with manmade schedules and restrictive rules, and this resulted in a tribe of supportive, contributing, non coercive, happy people.

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