Читать книгу The Good Behaviour Book: How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten - Martha Sears - Страница 62

During the last half of the first year babies begin a developmental process known as hatching. Baby realizes there is a whole wide world out there apart from mother. Throughout the second year, your baby’s understanding of himself matures from a feeling of “Mummy and me are one” to “me different from mummy” to “me” as an individual. Words like “my”, “me”, and “mine” show a struggle for identity apart from the mother. Besides an intellectual desire to be “me”, the little individual now has the motor and language skills to help him be himself. How a baby develops this concept of “me”, and how the parents discipline the behaviours that naturally go along with this “me” stage, are vital to the emotional health of the child. Child and adult psychologists believe that pleasant separation experiences in early life act as a sort of psychological vaccine against the anxiety of stressful separations that come in later childhood and adulthood.

The infant who was never connected misses the healthy “Mummy and me as one” stage. This infant will have more difficulty transitioning into the healthy “me” stage. The infant who is pushed into the “me” stage prematurely is also likely to develop a shaky self-image, leading to insecurity, withdrawal, and anger. Finally, parents who misinterpret the normal behaviours that go along with this oneness-to-separateness process are likely to have the most problems with discipline.

Certain behaviours happen along the way in the child’s journey from oneness to separateness. Some of these behaviours that help him become more independent are the very ones that may get him into trouble. By understanding why these occur and how you can help, discipline becomes easier.

Ambivalence. Baby wants and needs to separate, but she is not certain how soon or how far. Baby is constantly testing what is a comfortable distance from you. One minute she’s a clinging vine, a few minutes later she’s happily playing across the room. This requires moment-by-moment parenting decisions. Baby is up and down from floor to arms like a yo-yo. If you’re relaxed, amused, and unhurried you may hardly notice. If you’re bored, hurried, or feeling needy yourself it will drive you crazy.

Stranger anxiety. Independence has its price. Anxiety in the presence of strangers begins in the last half of the first year. This is where being connected to your baby once again pays off. The connected baby relies on parents to assess the security of a situation. In an unfamiliar social situation, baby rates strangers by your reaction. She sees strangers through your eyes. If you are anxious, baby is anxious. As the “stranger” approaches, baby will notice that you reflect an “It’s OK, there’s no need to be anxious” attitude in your body language. In the cautious mind of the baby if the stranger is OK to you, she is OK to baby. Hopefully, the “stranger” will also have enough knowledge of baby development to allow time and space for this evaluation to occur. A baby knows it is inappropriate just to barge into his personal space and will react strongly against the intrusion. The parent can act as a buffer in this situation.

Some babies are more stranger sensitive than others. When I see a new baby in my surgery, I’ve noticed that the baby often reacts to me the way the mother reacts. If the baby initially clings to the mother and the mother clings to the baby, often adding an anxious “He won’t hurt you”, she reinforces the anxiety and baby clings harder. But if mother relaxes her grip and clicks right into a happy-to-be-here dialogue with me, baby often clings less to mother and cooperates with me, sensing that I am a “mum-approved” person.

The ability to create a mental image of mother helps baby to separate from her.

Separation anxiety. The fear of separating from mother is another normal development beginning in the last half of the first year. Understanding this stage helps parents cope with separation anxiety and not inflict separation when the baby is clearly saying it would make him anxious. It used to be thought that if a mother got too attached to her baby during the first year she would spoil her baby and the baby would cling to her forever. Many people still believe this, even though attachment research has shown the opposite to be true. The babies who are the most connected early on are the ones who later separate with less anxiety.

The physical and mental presence of the connected mother during play situations acts as an anxiety regulator, giving the baby the message “It’s OK to explore.” The connected infant has such a rich storage file of mental images of his mother that he is able to take mother with him mentally even when he no longer has a visual connection to her.

When encountering a strange play situation with mother, an infant has to balance the desire to explore a novel situation against the need to remain attached to the familiar caregiver. This is why even secure infants, upon entering a strange situation, initially cling to the mother before beginning to explore. Attachment parenting helps babies develop a balance between clinging and exploring. Infants check in with mother periodically for reassurance while they explore the strange situation. Mother’s presence seems to add energy to the child’s exploration. Since the infant does not need to waste effort worrying about whether mother is there or might leave, he can use all his energy for exploring. In time he will cling less and comfortably explore the environment, increasing his distance from the maternal home base, though checking in from time to time for emotional refuelling. If you watch toddlers in play groups, you’ll notice that they periodically run over to their mother, sit on her lap, and get a reassuring cuddle or even a brief chance to nurse – an emotional pit stop before darting off again to play.

Insecurely attached babies have more difficulty developing this balance. They are likely to spend more time clinging or may withdraw from both mother and the play situation. The late British psychologist Dr John Bowlby, one of the most influential researchers of attachment theory, stated, “A child with no confidence does not trust that his attachment figures will be accessible to him when he needs them. He adopts a clinging strategy to ensure they will be available. He is uncertain of the mother’s availability, and thus is always preoccupied with it; this preoccupation hinders separation and exploration, and therefore his learning.” Attachment parenting acknowledges the developmental principle that an infant must go through a stage of healthy dependence before she can comfortably handle independence. (See related feature “Becoming Interdependent”.)

Some babies are more separation sensitive than others; so one of your discipline goals in the second year is to find out in what situations, how often, and how long baby can comfortably separate from you. Some infants are anxious separating from their mothers because their mothers are anxious about them separating. The healthier the connection between you and your baby the first year, the more willingly your toddler may separate from you between the second and third year.

Every baby has his own separation timetable. Around two years of age our toddlers would usually happily wave “bye-bye” to Martha if I, or a sibling, were with them for connection. By three-and-a-half our “big kids” were happy to be on their own in Sunday school; and by four, they could securely spend the night at a close friend’s house.

Tantrums. Baby’s desire to have it all gives way to the realization he can’t. His desire for bigness and power gives way to the frustration that he is not all-powerful. Tantrum behaviour is a natural by-product of the normal determination that is needed in the development of a healthy self. (See Chapter 5, “Taming Temper Tantrums”, for an understanding of why tantrums occur and how to help your toddler through them.) It’s important not only to structure the toddler’s environment to lessen the need for tantrums, but also to allow and support the child’s need to express feelings.