Читать книгу The Complete Parenting Collection - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 14

Science has trouble measuring something like love, but it’s getting better. Scientists studying mothers and babies have observed what they call ‘joint attention sequences’. This is love in action, love you can see. Researchers filmed mothers and babies going about their day, and discovered that joint attention sequences happen between 50 and 100 times a day.

You will have certainly experienced this with your own child. The baby seeks out your attention with a gurgle or cry. You look towards him and see that he is looking at you. He is thrilled to make eye contact, and wiggles with delight. You talk back to him. Or maybe you are holding him or changing him, and you feel that closeness as you make eye contact and sing to or tickle him. He impacts on you, and you on him. The exchange goes on, a ‘prewords’ conversation – it’s delightful and warm.

Another kind of joint attention sequence is when a child is distressed and you croon, stroke or hold him gently, and distract him – you care for him based on your growing experience of what works to help him calm down. Or you engage with him just to enjoy seeing him become happy or excited. Soon your ‘joint attention’ might be directed at a toy, a flower, an animal or a noise-making object that you enthuse about together. You are teaching him to be interested in his world.

This is one of the most significant things a parent ever does for their baby. Inside baby’s little head, his brain is sprouting like a broccoli in the springtime. When a baby is happy, growth hormone flows through his body and right into his brain, and development blossoms. When he is stressed, the stress hormone – cortisol – slows down growth, especially brain growth. So interaction, laughter and love are like food for a baby’s brain. All this interaction is being remembered in these new brain areas: the baby is learning how to read faces and moods, be sensitive, and learn calmness, fun, stern admonition or warm love. Soon he will be adding language, music, movement, rhythm and, above all, the capacity for feeling good and being empathic with other people. Boy babies are just a little slower, a little less wired for sociability than girls, and so they especially need this help. And they need it from someone who knows them very well, who has the time and who is themselves reasonably happy and content.