One of my peri-retirement ideas is to write a book for parents about child development and how understanding and going with that can make parenting more natural. I also have my sights set on volunteering to share these ideas with the young mothers - mostly aboriginal - in a program at our local Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. Maybe I’m re-inventing the wheel but I can’t say I’ve seen anything written quite like what I have in mind.
Anyway, this still needs a ton of fleshing out and expansion - going deeper into what is going on in the brain and further on age-wise with development etc.
Any thoughts or questions, fire them my way.
Ask any parent what they want of their child and you will get the same answers. Parents want a close relationship with their children. They want a child who responds to them. They want a child who listens to and respects them. Finally, they want a child who can manage his or her own emotions.
What parents also yearn to know is how they can parent in such a way as to accomplish all of this. To meet that need there has been an increasing number of books trying to teach parenting skills. Too many of these focus on discipline, as that is what many parents seems to have trouble with. The problem with these approaches is that any of these strategies only work in certain situations and even then, parents - and children - get tired of trying to put them into practice. They will go back to those who are trying to help them and say things such as, “It worked of awhile, but then it didn’t work anymore.” Discouraging for them and for the professional, perhaps even ‘expert’, who is there to help.
The trouble with all of these approaches is that they seem contrived. The parents have to learn to do them. They were not things the parent were doing ‘naturally.’
I believe that if parents have a good beginning with their child, they can do ‘what comes naturally’ and be ‘successful' parents. They can achieve their goals as expressed above. It need not be so hard.
I also believe, that for those who are not equipped to get off to such good start, the way to success lies more in understanding than in learning certain techniques. Parents want to understand and know their children. Indeed, they know that if they do, they will have the happier relationship with them they want to have. To figure out what might be missing and what we can do to correct it, we do well to learn about child development.
Indeed, children enter the world very well equipped to respond to us, their parents, even to try to engage us to respond to them. If we understand what they are doing and how we need to respond to them, we can make the right choices in how we behave, and the child will respond appropriately. It will all come more easily.
Ultimately, what we are talking about here is the development of a relationship. It is in taking the appropriate steps to cultivate that relationship that we will bring up the children we want and who will be equipped to thrive in their world.
Of course, one could say much about the factors that set the stage for all this. What are you bringing to the role of parenting? How prepared are you? How ready are you for what is coming? How well are you able to control your own emotions and behaviours?
How were you parented? What we think parenting involves usually has its beginnings in how we were parented. That will be different from one potential parent to another depending on our parents and siblings or lack thereof.
What was our childhood like? Was our home basically happy? Were our needs adequately
met? Or were we the observers or recipients of violence, of abuse?
What about the partner with whom we might be looking at having and rearing this child together with? What was all of the above like for them?
What are our expectations of our relationship as parents? Is there space in it for a child?
What are our fantasies of pregnancy? How might illness and stress impact that?
What are our dreams of what baby, our child, will be like?
All of these factors can be looked at and have an important bearing on the childrearing that is to come.
Finally, what about the unpredictability of that little bundle that eventually gets placed in our arms? What will its temperament be and how might that affect things going forward? Do we know that all of the above can influence this?
All of the above might need to be examined and dealt with in more detail in any given situation. We want to rectify what we can before a child is conceived, or born. Then we will be off to a better start.
However, ultimately that baby will arrive. There’s no turning back. What awaits?
Bonding
When I first entered practice as physician in the 1970s, ‘bonding’ was the big thing. This refers to the first level of attachment that an infant has with their caregiver, their parent. The literature on child development and parenting, the teachings in pre-natal classes, were full of discussions about this desired state and how to achieve it.
Parents who are ready and wanting to fill that role can’t wait to see and hold their child at birth, their first opportunity to do so. So, there were many suggestions as to how to facilitate this. Of course, much of this was what humans had probably done since time immemorial but just forgotten or lost because of teachings to the contrary that had developed.
Both parents were encouraged to hold the baby, to touch and caress it. The mother was urged to hold it on her breast and even try to get it to nurse as soon as it was born, even before leaving the delivery room if it was hospital birth. Unfortunately, those women who did not nurse were in the process often made to feel badly for not doing all they could do to obtain that much-sought-after ‘bonding.’ Well, of course, although there are manny benefits to nursing, to breast-feeding, one can develop an entirely adequate, rewarding and effective connection with one's child without nursing.
It is that holding of the child to our body, best skin-to-skin as that facilities release of oxytocin, a hormone that further promotes bonding and the letdown of milk for breastfeeding. But even that is not absolutely essential. We parents will get many opportunities to embrace, to hug and hold 3our helpless infants, as they will remain entirely dependent on us for many months, as we sometimes feel we have learned all too well when it comes to the wee hours of the morning and our hungry child is keeping us from our precious sleep. Even then, provided we are looking after our babies and keeping them clean and healthy, that wonderful newborn smell coming off their bodies, that makes us want to nuzzle their scalp and inhale that warm scent, will do its part to help us bond with them. Their cuteness and first smiles and then giggly laughs will also help i that. As I said, babies ware designed to make us want to love and be close to them, to look after them. It is a good thing they come that way, because they need precisely that to develop properly.
Attunement
The next level of development is attunement. This refers to the match, the synchrony between child and parent. If we have succumbed to all the wiles of our sweet innocent babies as described above, attunement will follow. All it requires is that we continue to be sensitive to them in every sphere of their needs and behaviours.
To properly describe this, it is best to give examples. To begin with, this refers more to physical issues. It is knowing when your child is hungry or wet, or may simply want to be held for reasons of security and help falling asleep, for example. It also can refer to that desire we have to want to just stare into our offspring’s eyes and get them to return the loving gaze.
As your child grows older and begins to show its personality, to begin to smile and giggle, situations arise that require greater sensitivity and understanding of what is going on for your child. For instance, you are engaged in a big smile exchange with your child, maybe even tickling them to get them to laugh. Suddenly they twist their head away. They may even arch their back and pull away from you. Here is where it is very important to realize what is going on, to understand what your child is doing. It is not that it does not like why you are doing, or doesn’t like you. It is simply telling you it has had enough excitement for the moment. It needs to regroup. We all know that when we then stop our play and simply and reassuringly hold the child close, it soon turns back to search for our face again. It is ready to play again - for another short while. Understanding what our child needs in these many exchanges that occur throughout many days and responding appropriately is what is meant by attunement. Our child is telling us something. We need to ‘listen’ and understand and respond appropriately. Most of us do, most of the time, if we have had a good foundation to build on to that point. That is doing what ‘comes naturally.’
Attachment
In the end, this is what all of the above is to lead to. Behaviours are promoted that lead to continued nearness and ever-deepening levels of relationship. Properly grounded, this will last through the whole span of a child’s development, including through the teen and young adult years into adulthood.
Self-regulation
All else being said, it is the failure in this area that creates the most difficulty for parents and even day cares and schools once the child is of age for that. This is often what brings parents for help. Somehow, their child has been unable to learn to control his or her emotions. We hear of temper tantrums and meltdowns. The child can’t tolerate certain things and can’t control the anger that results. Sometimes there is destructive behaviour and outright physical aggression directed at those perceived as pursing the course the child doesn’t like.
What we need to understand is that the child does not like behaving this way. It causes more consequences in therms of punishments and also has social implications in loss of friendships and opportunities in that area. If the child knew how to control their behaviour they would do so.
The important thing for us to know about this is how it came to be so we can prevent it in that child we have the responsibility of raising.
This problem has its roots in the failure of attunement. When we as caregivers, parents, fail to give the infant, then the toddler, the respite they need when excitement is building up as we discussed above, they don’t learn to control themselves. That’s where it starts. It’s really that simple.Of course, it doesn’t help if we ourselves have deficits in this area and model poor self-control of our emotions and behaviours. That just compounds the problem.
The messages are:
- Give yourself and the baby quality time to be together, to hold, to touch, to stare into each others eyes, and you will bond.
- Pay attention to every aspect of baby - movement and sound and behaviour. There is always information there for you to process and understand so you can realize your longed-for attunement with your little loved one.
- Continue all these behaviours on your part and the baby will do his part to help you achieve mutual attachment.
- If you have faithfully done all the above, your baby will be well on the way to being a happy child who can control their emotions and behaviour, who has learned self-regulation, and you can be a happier and more relaxed parent.
I hope, over the next while, to be able to expand all of the above. Wait for the posts.
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