Mayim Bialik writes about attachment parenting in 'Beyond the Sling'

She plays a neurobiologist on the hit TV series "The Big Bang Theory" - and for Mayim Bialik, life comes pretty close to imitating art.

The 36-year-old actress and mother of two has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. She's putting that education to work not only on the CBS series but in her new book, "Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way" (Touchstone, 2012).

In the book, Bialik aimed to combine her years of study along with her own experiences using this form of parenting to help shine a light on - and shed the stigma of - attachment parenting.

"My husband and I became interested in attachment parenting when we had some friends who had kids before

us who were parenting this way," Bialik said during a recent interview.

"At first we thought it was really crazy, but we saw that as these children got older there was a very interesting relationship that was evident in families that parented this way. Also, doing a graduate degree in neuroscience I studied human attachment and embryology and all sorts of things that sort of reinforced a lot of what I was seeing."

Attachment Parenting International is a nonprofit organization with a mission to educate and support parents using this method of parenting, which the group describes using eight basic principles:

• Prepare physically and emotionally for birth. Educate yourself on all of your birthing options and all that goes with them;

• Breast-feeding is considered the optimal way to feed a newborn and infant. Also, parents should take feeding cues from the child, allowing them to eat whenever they are hungry and stop when they are full;

• Respond with sensitivity by tuning in to what your child is communicating to you and respond consistently;

• Ensure the parent meets the baby's need for skin-to-skin contact, such as wearing your baby close to you rather than