Читать книгу The Secret of Happy Children: A guide for parents - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 10

The question that is uppermost in the minds of millions of parents can be summed up in one word..

Why do kids play up? Why do they always explore where they shouldn’t, do things that are not allowed, fight, tease, disobey, provoke, argue, make a mess, and generally seem to want to persecute Mum and Dad?

Why do some kids actually seem to enjoy getting into trouble?

This chapter tells you what is going on inside ‘naughty’ children, and how ‘bad’ behaviour is actually the result of good (healthy) forces going astray.

After reading this chapter, you’ll be able not only to see sense in children’s misbehaviour but you’ll also be able to act to prevent and convert it, making yourself and your children much happier.

You don’t believe me, do you? Read on!

Children play up for one reason only: they have unmet needs. ‘But what needs,’ you are thinking, ‘do my children have that are unmet? I feed them, clothe them, buy them toys, keep them warm and clean…’

Well, there are some extra needs (luckily very cheap to provide) which go beyond the ‘basics’ mentioned. These mysterious needs are essential, not only to make happy children but to maintain life itself. Perhaps I can explain best by telling a story.

In 1945, the Second World War ended and Europe lay in ruins. Among the many human problems to be tackled was that of caring for the thousands of orphans whose parents had either been killed or permanently separated from them by the war.

The Swiss, who had managed to stay out of the war itself, sent their health workers out to begin tackling some of these problems; one man, a doctor, was given the job of researching how to best care for the orphan babies.

He travelled about Europe and visited many kinds of orphan-care situations, to see what was the most successful type of care. He saw many extremes. In some places, American field hospitals had been set up and the babies were snug in stainless steel cots, in hygienic wards, getting their four-hourly feeds of special milk formula from crisply uniformed nurses.

At the other end of the scale, in remote mountain villages, a truck had simply pulled up, the driver had asked, ‘Can you look after these babies?’ and left half-a-dozen crying infants in the care of the villagers. Here, surrounded by kids, dogs, goats, in the arms of the village women, the babies took their chances on goat’s milk and the communal stewpot.

The Swiss doctor had a simple way of comparing the different forms of care. No need even to weigh the babies, far less measure co-ordination or look for smiling and eye contact. In those days of influenza and dysentery, he used the simplest of all statistics – the death rate.

And what he discovered was rather a surprise…as epidemics raged through Europe and many people were dying, the children in the rough villages were thriving better than their scientifically-cared-for counterparts in the hospitals!

The doctor had discovered something that old wives had known for a long time but no one had really listened. He had discovered that babies need love to live.

The infants in the field hospital had everything but affection and stimulation. The babies in the villages had more hugs, bounces and things to see than they knew what to do with and, given reasonable basic care, were thriving.

Of course, the doctor didn’t use the word ‘love’ (words like that upset scientists) but he spelt it out clearly enough. What was important, he said, was:

• skin-to-skin contact frequently, and from two or three special people;

• movement of a gentle but robust kind, such as carrying around, bouncing on a knee, and so on

• eye contact, smiling, and a colourful, lively environment; sounds such as singing, talking, goo-gooing, and so on.

It was an important discovery, and the first time that it had been stated in writing. Babies need human contact and affection (and not just to be fed, warmed and cleaned). If they are not given this, they may easily die.

So much for babies. But what about older children?

Here is an interesting thing – on page 32 is a graph of my estimate of the amount of touching (that’s right, physical touching) that people receive as their lives unfold.

Remember, this is the average situation. Who knows what is the ideal – perhaps a line straight across. You may be wondering about the dip at about two to three years of age. That’s when child number two (or three or four) usually comes along and affection has to be shared – a rough time for everyone!

Little babies like to be touched and cuddled. So do small children, although they are choosier about who does the cuddling. Teenagers often get awkward about it, but will admit in trust that they like affection as much as anyone. And, of course, by late teens they are pursuing specialised forms of affection with great energy!

I once asked an audience of about 60 adults to close their eyes and raise their hands if they got less affection than they would like to get in daily life. It was unanimous – every hand went up. After a minute the peeping began and the room began to ring with laughter. From this careful scientific study, I conclude that adults need affection, too.

Apart from physical touch, we find other ways to get good feelings from people. The most obvious one is by using words.

We need to be recognised, noticed and, preferably, given sincere praise. We want to be included in conversations, have our ideas listened to and even admired.

A three-year-old says it out straight: ‘Hey, look at me.’

Many rich people take little pleasure in their bank balance unless it can be displayed and someone is there to notice.

I am sometimes reduced to stitches by the realisation that most of the adult world is made up of three-year-olds running about shouting, ‘Look at me, Daddy’, ‘Watch me, you guys’. Not me, of course – I give lectures and write books out of mature adult concern.

So, an interesting picture emerges. We take care of our children’s bodily needs but, if this is all we do, they still miss out. They have psychological needs, too, and these are simple but essential. A child needs stimulation, of a human kind. He must have a diet of talking each day, with some affection and praise added in, in order to be happy. If this is given fully, and not begrudgingly from behind a pile of ironing or a newspaper, then it will not even take very long!

Many people reading this will already have older children, or teenagers. You may be thinking, ‘But already they have learned some bad ways of getting attention. How can I deal with that?’

Here is another story.

‘Of mice and men’

A few years ago, psychologists went about in white coats and worked mostly with rats. (Nowadays they wear sports coats and work mostly with housewives – things are looking up!) The ‘rat psychologists’ were able to learn a lot about behaviour because they could do things with rats that they couldn’t do with children. Read on, and you’ll see what I mean.

In this particular experiment, rats were placed in a special cage, with food and drink, and a little lever. They ate, drank and ran about, and eventually asked themselves the same question you are asking: ‘What’s the lever for?’ They pressed it (being like children, they wanted to try everything) and, to their surprise, a little window opened in the cage to reveal a film being shown on the wall outside. The window soon closed and the rat had to press the lever again to get more of the movie.

TALKING IS BRAIN-FOOD FOR KIDS…

By the time they reach school age, some kids can talk very well and have a wide vocabulary. Some on the other hand are very limited in their verbal skills. This can be a real disadvantage – for one thing, teachers often use talking skills as an indicator of intelligence and ability, and so your kids can be either deliberately, or unconsciously, labelled as ‘slow’. How can you help your kids to be good with words – not little Einsteins, but able to speak up for themselves? Here’s how…

It was found as early as the 1950s that parents fall into two distinct groups in their approaches to talking to children. Some parents are very abrupt and short in what they say to their kids:

‘Dwayne, shut that bleedin’ door!’, ‘Get here’, ‘Eat it!’ and so on. Others were the opposite: ‘Charles sweetheart, would you mind closing the door – it’s blowing quite a draught on little Sebastian, there’s a good boy!’

You don’t have to be a professor to see that young Charles is going to have more words in his little head than Dwayne, and more ways of stringing them together. (Though on the other hand Dwayne may also know some that Charles doesn’t!)

A lot of parents now are more aware of talking to their children, explaining things and just chatting to them for the pleasure of it. They have realised the first rule of children and language – they always understand more than they show.

Here are the basic steps…

1) During pregnancy make lots of sounds to and around your baby. You can start by singing or crooning when you feel like it, having music playing (quite loudly is fine). If you’re a Dad, snuggle up and talk to your wife or even directly to the baby! This way your child will come to know and feel safe with your manly voice and be easier for you to comfort when they are little. Repetition and familiarity helps – the sound of TV’s Days of Our Lives theme music has been found to soothe new-borns who ‘listened’ to it with Mum during pregnancy!

2) With infants continue all this talk, singing, and music exposure once the baby is born. Moving or swinging them about will add to their delight and sense of rhythm, which is a necessary part of speech. (Special movies have been used to show that we all do a subtle swaying dance as we speak – that it is almost impossible to be still while speaking.) If you can carry the baby about with you in a sling or harness as you work, all the better.

As you go through the day with toddlers, tell them about what you are doing, using simple words, but not all baby talk. Use repetition of those words they say to you, so as to polish up what they are saying.

3) As toddlers start to talk more you can help by echoing and adding to what they say to you, so they are both encouraged by the response, and helped to get the words right.

‘Buppa!’. ‘You want the butter?’, ‘Want buppa!’ and a little later

‘Pass butta ayy?’, ‘You want me to pass the butter?’, ‘Pass me butter?’ and so on!

The best way to do all this is casually – as a game – with no undue pressure or expectations.

A recent TV series featured interviews with ‘superbright’ or ‘hothouse’ kids. It gave us some mixed feelings – these kids were certainly high achievers, but some by adulthood had turned into real oddballs! One family though stood out – for the naturalness and balance of their kids. All four daughters ranging from eight to sixteen in age were friendly, relaxed, very down-to-earth, and yet extraordinarily advanced in their skills. The sixteen-year-old for instance had simply skipped primary school (at her teacher’s suggestion – the parents had been quite happy for her to go) – She was now doing doctoral research into spinal cell damage. Asked how they had raised such genius kids, the father said ‘It couldn’t be genetic – I haven’t had the sperm bank knocking on my door!’ (And he did look, well, rather ordinary!) The mother added that ‘We just explain things to them…’ She explained that as she vacuumed the house, for example, she would tell the baby she was carrying on her back about what she was doing, that the noise was made by the motor inside the vacuum cleaner, which was electrical and turned very fast, that the air it blew through made a lot of noise, and so on…