Posted on July 21, 2009 by
Paul C. Holinger |
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How and why children identify with their parents
My son used to love to ‘shave’ with me. I would help him lather up his cheeks and give him an empty razor so he could pretend. But, on a busy morning, it was easy to forget how important his drive to imitate my behavior really was, and how much of a compliment it was, too. As the minutes ticked by, I would try to remember this, however, and to encourage and support his play-acting. I would guess most parents have had the same experience. To remain patient, I would remind myself about just how much of a role model parents are to their children and what a big help it can be in cementing your relationship and providing guidance. Keeping this in mind may help prevent you from misunderstanding some of your child’s imitative behavior and from injuring your child’s good-hearted impulse to be like you and be liked by you.
–P.C. Holinger
Your child’s tendency to want to be like mom and dad is one of the most powerful influences on his emerging character. In fact, your baby’s tremendous conscious and unconscious urge to emulate you is one of the strongest, and perhaps most often overlooked, motivators of behavior. This inherent impulse to identify with you can be a tremendous help in raising an emotionally healthy child.
What’s behind an infant’s tendency to imitate and identify with parents? The answer takes us into a much studied and somewhat complicated aspect of infant development. Darwin (1809-1882) was much intrigued by the strength of imitative tendencies in both animals and man, and Freud (1856-1939) studied these processes in depth from a psychological perspective. More recently, researchers such as Meltzoff and Gadini explored the tendencies of infants to identify with and emulate the important people in their lives. These studies suggest that at a very early age much of a child’s well-being and sense of belonging comes from the feeling that ‘I am like my parent’ and ‘My parent is like me.’ Parents too have these feelings of “likeness” with their children. And it is this exchange of identification that gives a child a feeling of kinship and leads to a child’s idealization of the parents. These are complex dynamics. Even sorting out words such as identification, imitation, mimic and the phrase “to be like” is more than we need to take on—each has a distinct meaning in the world of child psychology. However, for this discussion, I will use the words interchangeably and with their everyday conversational meanings.
How your child sees you;
Babies always seem most interested in what you have or what you are doing. They want to play with the shaving cream or use the toothbrush. As a parent, you can use this tendency to teach the baby a variety of things. For example, what better way to teach your child to wash his hands or brush his teeth that to do it first, yourself. “See Mommy brushing her teeth like this. Uppers. Lowers. Oh, you want to play with this? Okay, here we go.” Or, if you have to struggle to get your child to allow you to clip her nails, you can try showing her how you clip yours, first. “See? Clip this one, and this one. Now, do you want to try? Okay, here we go. Let me hold it with you and we’ll do it together. Very good.” Imitation can also help make haircuts an easier process. They are often a real trial, because of the newness of the situation, the rapid movements toward the child’s head and eyes, and the use of scissors, which have been the subject of loud warnings such as “Sharp! Be careful.” The solution? Try sitting in the barber’s chair and get a little trim first. Pretty soon your child will be clamoring to get in the chair or on your lap and have a haircut too.
Children learn more than simple tasks through their impulse to imitate you. They use imitation and identification to pick up a lot more complex and subtle information. Much of your child’s character is formed by the tendency to imitate your worldview, emotional expressions and attitudes. She inevitably picks up your habits regarding tension regulation, playfulness, learning, interpersonal relationships and expression of affection. That’s why being affectionate and honest in your dealings with your child and other people will help tremendously in raising an affectionate and honest child. Telling your child, “Don’t lie,” or “Be nice!” is much less effective than telling the truth and being kind yourself. You’ll discover very quickly the wisdom of “actions speak louder than words” and “practice what you preach.” As one dad once told me, “I sure learned in a hurry to watch my bad habits once Charlie was around.”
Other ways to use identification to help your child develop include:
Demonstrating tension regulation: If you are able to modulate your emotions, so that you don’t fly off the handle when you are frustrated, your child has a better chance of learning to do the same. If, on the other hand, you are given to impulsive rages, outbursts of anger or yelling, chronic impatience and irritation, then your child will think that is the right way to handle stressful situations. If you don’t have good tension regulation yourself, then chances are there will be two people—you and your child—in the house who don’t know how to defuse a tense situation or soothe their frazzled nerves. That can make for a lot of bickering, ill will and mutual frustration. All of this really gets back to understanding and dealing reasonably with the foundation of emotional life—the nine built-in signals.
Playful is as playful does: As we discuss in chapter TK on playfulness, being able to find the interest and enjoyment in a wide variety of circumstances—even those that are stressful such as a traffic jam—teaches your child useful ways of regulating tension, and makes the world a more interesting and rewarding place.
Instilling the love of learning: If you have a curious mind and enjoy reading, taking classes, figuring out how to build things, or discussing ideas and world events, you will provide a role model for your child that will bring a lifetime of pleasure and reward. When watching TV, keep a dictionary, encyclopedia or computer handy so you can look up words, or historical figures or find more information on a subject. Make a game out of it. When you travel, make an effort to show your child maps of where you are going, explain geography and encourage questions about where you are and what you see.
Showing your child how to express affection and to be a good friend: The ability to have satisfying intimate relationships is learned, in part, through the way parents relate to their children, to one another and to their friends. If you are able to show affection and to be both sympathetic and empathic, then your child will not only receive the benefits of your warm nature, he will also learn how to form intimate relationships.
Translating actions and feelings into words: As mentioned earlier, labeling feelings and substituting words for actions greatly enhances the emotional and cognitive development of a young child. Talking to your child about what you are thinking and feeling and labeling your child’s signals and emotions for him from a very early age will help him learn how to manage emotions and use the metaphor of language to express intense emotions as early as possible. You can help your child develop this skill by making sure you actively use words to communicate your feelings and as a substitute for actions. For example, when you are angry, if you express your feelings using reasonable words that convey your thoughts instead of throwing things or ranting, then your child will learn to do the same.
Including your child in decision-making situations: From an early age you can help your child gain confidence in his ability to identify and express what he thinks, wants and believes by asking him to participate in everyday decision-making. Even toddlers can be allowed input in a family decision: Go to the grocery store or to a restaurant for dinner? Make soup or a peanut butter sandwich for lunch? Wear your pink socks or your blue ones? It may make life less efficient in the short-run, but in the long run you will teach your child about the decision-making process, weighing pros and cons, and that you value his opinion and trust his judgment.
Using imitation and identification to help develop manners: Manners are important for children, not only do they make it easier for children to find acceptance and make friends, but manners also teach boundaries and remind them that other people’s feelings and needs are important. Even before your child learns to talk, they can pick up the nuances that are communicated when people treat one another with respect and care. You have the chance to set a tone that she will bring into her world of words and language as she mature. But how often have you heard a parent admonish a child, “say, please;” “say, thank you,” “say you’re sorry;” “hold the door for that person;” but without saying or doing those things themselves? If you want your child to learn manners, things will go much easier if you demonstrate the behavior instead of talking just about it. If you treat your child politely and say, “sweetheart, would you please pick that apple up off the floor,” or “thank you for closing the door,” the child will be much more likely to act politely as she gets older.
Children also learn to apologize and acknowledge a mistake without being defensive by watching how you handle your mistakes. If you say, “Oh, I am so sorry I pinched your finger in the high chair,” or, “Honey, I am very sorry I dropped your toy car and chipped the headlight. Should I try to fix it?” then they will grow up with a graceful style of handling their own missteps.
Using humor and appealing to your child’s self-interest are also good ways to teach manners. If you want your preverbal child to learn to say please, you can turn it into a fun sounding game: “Honey, will you pleeeeeze give me that book?” makes the word ‘please’ funny and entertaining. It catches the child’s attention and teaches a lesson using playfulness.
Beyond modeling behavior: teaching decision-making
Imitation can also be used to help your child develop good decision-making skills so they can sort out feelings and select the most appropriate option for responding. Manners, tension regulation, playfulness are all important examples of the ability to make a good decision about how to handle complex interactions and internal emotions.
Here again, kids pick up a lot of their habits about decision making from watching you do the same. If you impose rules on a child, “because I say so,” then the child will learn that arbitrary seeming responses are the way to behave and one day when you ask why on earth your child has done this or that, the toddler will look at you and say, “Because I want to,” and feel that is a reasonable explanation. Being authoritarian toward your child may be mirrored back at you in the form of stubbornness and inflexibility. That’s why over and over I have stressed the importance of labeling and explaining your directives to your child. When you tell a child to do or not do something, set out your reasons for it in a calm, loving voice. Don’t hesitate to say, even to the youngest infant, “I don’t want you to do that because I love you and I don’t want you to get hurt.” Or, “You can’t have that because that is something that is valuable to Daddy and he would be sad if it was ruined.” Explain why. Talk about what you believe and feel. Take the time to communicate instead of trying to end a situation quickly and moving on. If you operate with the unstated message that sharing thoughts and discussing reasons for decisions is a waste of time, your child will pick up on that. But if you explain why you do or think things, then the child will understand that you think things through and will learn to do the same himself.
Common misunderstandings:
Parents can easily misunderstand a child’s desire to imitate their behavior. It is an injustice that can stick with a child her whole life. Many times, when I ask parents to recall an early conflict with their parents, they often mention being misunderstood when they were simply trying to act like their mom or dad. Yet, ironically, with their own kids, they fall into the common trap of seeing their child’s actions as “misbehavior,” when they are often no more than innocent imitation. One child I knew was always playing with the buttons on her parents’ alarm clock before she went to bed. Her father was getting angry about it, until her mother realized that the child was simply doing what she’d seen her father do when he was getting ready for bed. They cleverly decided that the solution was to put an old alarm clock in the child’s bedroom so she could “set” it for herself.
I know of another father of a two-year old boy who was convinced that his son was learning how to steal money when he found him going through his work pants and taking out keys and coins. The father was going to punish the boy rather severely, until a friend suggested that the little boy was just doing what his father did. “He’s trying to be a grow-up man, just like you. He’s putting his change and keys in his pockets and getting ready for work.” The dad then bought his son a pair of overalls with a front pocket and put a little wallet in it with a couple of dollar bills and some plastic keys. He then made a point of putting his pants on the same time as his son did and they both put their keys and money into their pockets. Sharing the activity delighted his son and the son’s so-called stealing was correctly understood to be playful identification with dad. The father validated his child’s desire to imitate him, but he also took advantage of the situation to impart an important lesson in manners and behavior. He explained to his son that it is not a good idea to take money or anything else that belongs to someone else. “You need to ask first, and explain why you want it,” he told him.
Potential trouble spots: When children imitate parents’ misbehavior:
Since an infant child cannot discriminate between your attributes that are worth copying and those that might be better left alone, it is useful to be aware of the negative traits that you might be teaching your child—some of which you may have picked up from your own parents. You may want to take an inventory of how you express the nine signals—interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust and dissmell. And take some time to reflect on your own behavior and to think about any personal habits or qualities that you may want to change, improve or mitigate. Your power to mold your child’s attitudes, emotions and behavior is so great that it is wise to try to make sure you are transmitting messages that you want your child to receive.
First time moms often experience a kind of déjà vu. When I asked a friend if she was aware of how much children identify with and imitate their parents she exclaimed: “It’s so true—now that I have Clöe, I realize how much I am like my parents, how much I absorbed from them. These are things that I was only vaguely aware of—and some of them are not so good. But now I see how I get agitated over small things like my mom and how I tune out like my Dad. I hope I can stop being so much like my parents so Clöe won’t learn the same bad habits from me.”
Luckily people can change and grow. I am reminded of a famous Hall of Fame hockey player who used to rack up 200 penalty minutes a year. He was a notorious brawler.
Eventually he married and had a daughter. When she was around three years old, she started watching him play on TV. He’d never felt the slightest compunction before about his on-ice behavior, but one day she asked, “Daddy, why do you fight so much?” Suddenly he was horrified at the thought that she was seeing him hit other players and get into fistfights. So he changed how he played. From that day on he was more contained on the ice; in fact he won several league awards for sportsmanship and leadership and his reputation as a player didn’t suffer at all. He credits his daughter with teaching him two valuable lessons, one about being a parent and the other about playing hockey.
While you may try to modify your less desirable traits, your need to be aware that your most muted, hidden emotions and unconscious actions may be coming through loud and clear. Infants can pick up aspects of your emotions, worldview and physical actions that you may not even be aware of consciously. For example, some parents who profess open-mindedness, but are actually intolerant or prejudiced, often end up with equally intolerant kids. The children may hear lip service given to civil rights, for example, but the message that some people are inferior comes across in gestures, expressions and word choices. Children adopt the same prejudiced point of view, even if they are too young to actually know what it means. We had a neighbor when we were first married who was cordial and well mannered but filled with all kinds of biases about people. In casual conversation he’d say things like, “you know how the [fill in an ethnic or racial group] are,” or “that was as dirty as a [fill in an ethnic or racial group].” It was shocking to her his three-year-old son would mouth the same upsetting stereotypes.
This can be a problem because developmentally kids have a tendency to create cliques, to include or exclude others. They have a strong inclination to repeat the familiar and enjoy matching up things that seem to have similar patterns—just think about how many times your child can watch her favorite video and how she enjoys a particular game or puzzle. But kids also have a strong interest in novelty and new stimulus which can provide balance.
There have been some interesting and successful attempts to counter prejudice in young children. A wonderful book, “You can’t say, ‘You can’t play,’ tells the story of what happened in an elementary school when a teacher decided to make it a rule that no child could tell another that he or she was excluded from a group activity. All the kids—including those that were sometimes singled out as different because of race, appearance, or behavior—were to be included. At first, many children resented the rules, and they wrestled with issues of inclusion, exclusion, rejection and fairness. But over time they discovered that they could enjoy everyone’s company and learn from those kids who were different. The class developed much more harmony and fewer cliques.
Imitation: Another reason not to abuse:
A child who is hit or otherwise abused is likely to have many negative feelings of anger, distress and fear stirred up and these interfere with healthy, normal development. In addition, an abused child may also adopt the very behavior that is hurting him and become abusive himself. Hitting may be seen as a normal and acceptable way to solve problems and get what he wants. And not only will the child become mean to others, he may become mean to himself. Abused children often turn the impulse to hit onto themselves and adopt various self-destructive behaviors and relationships.
Your child wants to be like you, but she is different!
Parents gain a great deal by recognizing how much their children want to be like them, but they also need to remember how un-like them their child is. These differences are not just matters of taste and pace and different strokes for different folks, but also of age-related mental abilities. Young children do not have the same capacities as adults to understand and remember what is safe and what is not, what can be played with and what cannot, and so on. They simply haven’t developed the impulse control or cognitive abilities to understand that they are not supposed to be playing with electric wires or the contents of the refrigerator. This can cause a lot of frustration in parents who aren’t aware that it is a natural and normal stage of development, best managed by offering the child other equally intriguing alternatives to play with, not a scolding or worse.
As your child grows older:
Your child’s impulse to identify with you does not stop with childhood. You can continue to use it to help your child navigate successfully through adolescence and into adulthood. With teens, lessons in moderation and responsible behavior, respect for one’s own health, and an interest in ideas and other people are often best transmitted through example instead of words—particularly if they learned through example as infants. That doesn’t mean that identification will make it easy to teach your teen to act wisely or to dial down impulsiveness. Much of adolescent behavior is the result of a struggle between a teen’s desire for independence, on the one hand, and closeness to parents on the other. It turns out you are more of a role model than you may know, and it can have far reaching benefits to your child and to you as well.
A friend of mine found he was constantly getting into verbal fights with his teenage son because the boy would borrow hats, ties, jackets and coats without asking. It was only when I suggested that perhaps his son was simply trying to get close to his Dad, to be like him, that the father was able to see the nice side to having his closet plundered and to appreciate his son’s well-meaning though irritating behavior. There were a lot fewer fights after that, although the father did have to struggle to get his son to learn to ask before taking the clothing. In time, they even went shopping together and have started spending some more time together playing sports. “I never expected to be so close to Sean at this age,” he says now. “I just thought I’d be the enemy until he was about 25. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I took the time to understand what was behind his raids on my closet.”
Teenagers borrow their parent’s clothing, wear makeup like an adult, try out adult experiences such as drinking and sex, often because they want to identify with their parents, for good or for bad. They also search for mentors and idealized heroes that help them define their own personalities more clearly during the upheavals of adolescence. This is all part of a complicated pattern of identification and imitation. So take a deep breath, and remember, when you mess up, it’s just one more opportunity to help your child learn decision-making, how to apologize, and humility. You’ll discover that there are a lot fewer parenting mistakes, if you just make them part of the learning experience.
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Posted on July 21, 2009 by
Paul C. Holinger |
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INTEREST
“It is interest … which is primary …[Interest] supports
both what is necessary for life and what is possible …”
S.S. Tomkins,
Vol. I, p. 342, 345
When your baby expresses the signal for interest, he is clearly engrossed. His eyebrows are slightly lifted or slightly lowered. His mouth may be a bit open. If the object that’s caught his attention is moving, he’s following it closely with his eyes. His whole body seems alert, a little tense. He then turns his head, and perhaps his body, toward the object of interest. If he can crawl or walk, he’ll move toward it. Interest is expressed on a continuum from interest to excitement.
I have two girls, grown now, but both of them, from the very beginning, expressed their special talents and personalities through what interested them. The youngest, who ended up going to art school, was always captivated by the color and shape of things—once she could crawl she would always make a beeline for the most colorful item in the room. And she loved to touch things, to trace their shape with her hands. From the very start we tried to put a lot of interesting visual experiences in front of her, to help her experience the world as she liked it. But my older daughter was much different. She seemed to like to figure things out, how they were put together, what people were saying, what things meant. She was much more analytical, and in some ways more observant, less of a participant. Maybe because she was my first, I wasn’t as sure of how to encourage her. I would get her blocks, and other toys that she could build things with; then I’d get on a kick taking her to a lot of movies, even when she was only two. They held her attention, unlike most kids. She was more self-contained even at a young age. Well, she’s an accountant, and a good one. Both my kids really enjoy the work they do. I guess we were able to let them discover their interests and then pursue them. I think if you really pay attention to babies, they will let you know a lot about what they will become as adults, and, as their caretaker, it’s our job to help them get there as smoothly as possible.
Kim, 47
Kids’ interest in what’s around them starts right from the beginning—even if it’s directed at little more than a breast or an embracing arm. Exploring the world is how they learn about themselves, others, and life in general. Infants are great big interest machines—devouring up whatever comes across their line of sight, taking in every drop of input they can. From birth, a child’s brain is programmed to seek out and respond to all forms of stimulation. Children are driven to use their senses to make sense of the world. They gain information and enjoyment from expressions of interest such as looking, touching, smelling, tasting, and those behaviors that many adults try to suppress, such as throwing, grabbing and pulling. These exploratory, stimulus-seeking tendencies are very important: they are how we learn.
There are many times when children’s expressions of interest strike adults as bad or risky behaviors. A mom’s understandable concern about an infant’s safety or desire to eliminate some of the chaos, noise and debris that an “interested” kid can produce, may create a conflict with the child’s expression of interest. If a child’s interests repeatedly are not given their due—are repressed, criticized or thwarted—a child can be made to feel ashamed of his curious, exuberant behavior. This shame may constrict these exploratory activities and erode the development of self-esteem and a sense of competence. That doesn’t mean that parents have to forgo order or rules or their need for a bit of peace and quiet, but it does mean that from day one parents face the challenge of finding ways to encourage and appreciate interest even as they redirect or shape it.
For example, if your baby crawls over to the wrapped package on the floor and starts pulling at the ribbon, your goal as an adult is somewhat complex: to prevent the package from being destroyed, and at the same time to see what’s happening from the child’s point of view, not just your own. Then you can resolve the conflict so that the package is preserved and the child is allowed to feel good about expressing interest.
To the infant, pulling on the ribbon unleashes a cascade of novelty and new information. The color and the texture of the ribbon are interesting. The fact that the ribbon, when pulled, gets longer, is intriguing. The baby is changing the shape of an object. It’s a mystery and a pleasure. The child is having an effect on the world; she is actually experiencing a bit of power, something children have very little of. She is unable to move through the world on their own, get food for herself or compete with adults. But with the ribbon, oh boy! Baby conquers world! In this little event there is, for the growing brain, a clue to what life can be like.
To the parent, the event may look much different. The child is destroying something that has value only when left intact. There’s no pleasure or interest in untying the ribbon. The child is messing with the world as it is supposed to be. The parent feels challenged and even a little distressed.
See the conflict? With children, even the simplest interaction may have a larger meaning. In a circumstance such as this, how you react may have all kinds of repercussions, short term and long term. In the short term, your response to the signal for interest may impact your child’s mood and yours—and influence whether you are left with a fussy, upset kid (never pleasant for you) or if the two of you will continue enjoying your interactions, as you nurture your child’s curiosity. In the long-term, if you don’t take time to see what’s happening from the child’s point of view and try to respond with that in mind, you may establish a relationship with your child that is based on power conflicts—conflicts that often escalate and consolidate over the passing years. A relationship founded on ‘No,’ may become a battleground.
So what do you do when baby pulls on the ribbon? You need to let him know he’s done a great job, that’s he’s discovered a marvelous piece of information. “See how that ribbon works?” “You’ve really got that one by the tail, don’t you?” There will be plenty of opportunities when he’s older to explain that making the bow took effort, a concept he could never understand now. If there’s time, and whenever possible, it’s important to allow a baby his triumph.
At the same time you want to shift his attention and interest to a less problematic object. “See, if you pull on my shoelace, it comes untied, too. Let me show you.” Or perhaps get another piece of ribbon and a box for him to play with. Or simply distract him, “Hey, what do you think about giving Teddy a ride on your belly? Here’s Teddy. Want to say hello?” Redirection and distraction are your two primary tools and they do work. Shape interest, don’t stifle it.
Dr. Virginia Demos, a marvelous integrator of clinical work and infant research, studied in depth these various exploratory activities and the parents’ responses. She noted that one frequent misunderstanding involved a variety of activities commonly engaged in by infants, such as banging, throwing, mouthing, biting, pulling, picking up, and dropping. Unless performed when the child is angry, these activities are almost always in the service of exploration and play, and they are fueled by interest and enjoyment. Nevertheless, they may result in damage, loud noise, or irritating messes. A parent may fail to perceive the child’s affective state of interest and the plans related to it, and instead focus exclusively on the consequences or potential consequences of the child’s behavior. From this perspective, the parent may see such behaviors as a hostile, destructive act by the child. This interpretation often leads to parental efforts to punish, scold, or restrict the child’s activities. Thus, what began for the child as a relatively benign, interesting activity, ends in a negative exchange with the caregiver. Because the child may not understand what specifically has provoked the parent’s responses—whether it was the affective state of interest; the banging, pulling, throwing; or the result of these actions—the consequences of this type of misunderstanding may be varied. The child may reproduce the action in an effort to sort out case-and-effect relationships. If I do this again, will I get the same rise out of mother? Or the child may gradually learn to curtail exploration and initiative because they tend to negative exchanges. Or the child may begin to view himself as hostile and destructive and therefore dangerous.
How to Maximize Interest:
As a parent you not only want to respond appropriately to individual situations, such as the ribbon pulling, you also want to convey the message that the more interest the child expresses in the world the better. This is the foundation of learning and of an agile mind.
1. Help your child learn how things work
You have the opportunity to turn each expression of interest into a greater lesson. Take the time to help your child discover what is hard or soft, tastes good or bad, sounds loud or quiet. Explore the world together. Remember, to a child everything is a mystery. The concept of cause and effect has to be learned. Pull on the tablecloth and the dishes fall on the floor—a simple enough idea for an adult—a wildly new idea for an infant. And one a baby cannot learn immediately. This lesson must be taught over and over, through experience. Luckily, you can (often) control whether it is learned through unfortunate disaster or example and explanation.
2. Encourage your child’s emerging interests
For a child, the cumulative effect of a day’s many intriguing experiences lays the foundation for future interests. So your best bet is to try to emphasize what seems to intrigue your child most, you strengthen those budding inclinations. For example, many little children love trucks and construction sites, motors, and machinery. These machines do big things. They have big effects. They make noise. They are interesting shapes and colors. They are magic. Other infants adore music; they respond to rhythm and love to be sung to. Notice your child’s favorite things and use them as learning tools. They also are very effective when you are trying to redirect or distract your child.
By tuning into what captivates your child’s attention, you are telling your child, “I get it. I see what you like and I think enough of it to share your interest and encourage it.” This validates the child’s interests and feelings, which in turn build a child’s self-esteem and confidence.
As Demos noted, children use a variety of techniques to involve parents, such as bringing them objects, pulling at their legs or arms, flopping in their laps, asking them questions, or smiling. Even a perfunctory response from the parent is sometimes sufficient to sustain the child’s interest or playfulness. But ignoring the child at such times, or reacting with irritation or prohibitions, tends to dampen or inhibit the child’s capacity to sustain the interest and enjoyment on his own. Undoubtedly there are a variety of reasons for this type of parental behavior—reasons ranging from temporary lapses due to fatigue or a preoccupation with other concerns, to more characterological factors. In the latter case, the parent might believe that child’s play is silly; or feel embarrassed at playing on a child’s level; or assume that as long as children do not cry or fuss and sound contented, a grownup need not get involved; or show an inability to value personal interests and enjoyments and the importance of sharing them. But, to the child, all communicate the same thing—that the child’s joy and interest-excitement and playful intentions have been perceived and understood, yet have not been accepted and supported. The lack of a positive response to expressions of interest-excitement and enjoyment may have all or some of the following meanings to the child: I am not interesting and enjoyable, it is not worthwhile to be interested and joyful; it is not worthwhile to be interested and joyful about this particular thing; I shouldn’t bother trying to engage mommy or daddy in my interests and joys. Any one of these meanings may partially attenuate the child’s positive affect and create a temporary barrier to further communication with the parent. According to Tomkins’ theory of affect, such a situation will evoke shame in the child. Moreover, depending on the child’s response to shame, other negative affects, such as distress or anger, are likely to be added to the sequence.
3. Allow the child to fully express the signal for interest
Look at every signal of interest as an opportunity to build your child’s self-confidence and brain power. If adult scissors are tempting, you can gently take them away and replace them with children’s scissors or something else. Then show your 13-month old how to use the scissors. Take the time to offer a demonstration of how they work and how sharp they are. Let the child know you appreciate her interest in them but that you must protect her from the danger they pose. “See, you put a piece of paper into them and you can turn that piece of paper into four pieces of paper. How neat is that? But these scissors are too sharp and can hurt you, so I can’t let you have them; let’s try these scissors which are duller.” This reasoned approach helps the child learn about with scissors without suppressing the child’s signal of interest or scaring the child. (I think that the fear of barbers is the result of scissors as being portrayed as horribly dangerous in order to keep the child from playing with them. Then, when a barber comes at the child with scissors in hand and brings them close to the child’s head and face, it is terrifying.)
Virginia Demos shed light on the problem which arises if you simply remove the scissors or yell “No”— even if your main focus is on protecting the child from harm. This response fails to support the infant’s built-in urge to explore interesting objects. The opportunity to learn about scissors is lost, and no other interesting substitute is provided. The message to the infant is simply, “Stop.” But, asks Demos, “Stop what?” Stop being interested? Stop exploring new objects? Stop exploring scissors? If this type of prohibition occurs frequently enough, the infant may learn to inhibit her exploratory, learning, stimulus-seeking behaviors on her own and may become increasingly constricted and immobilized.
Why ‘No’ can be heard as a three letter word:
If you frequently step on your child’s expressions of interest by reprimanding her with a sharp ‘No!’ or a “Stop that!” you may make her feel shame and humiliation. That’s the natural reaction when you tell your infant that she is ‘wrong’ for being interested in this or that object. Abruptly breaking off a child’s expression of interest makes it painfully clear to the child that she can’t share feelings of interest with you without being scolded.
Also, a sharp “No!” or even simply, “Don’t touch that!” can be confusing for a baby. The world is a scary place to a child and she needs constant reassurance in order to feel secure and to bravely go where she has not gone before. If you abruptly stop her expression of interest, she may not know what to do next. “Okay, I’ll stop, but now what? What am I supposed to do?” she wonders. This shifts the signal for interest to one for distress; the child may start wailing and crying as soon as you take the scissors away. As a parent, you may think that your child’s immediate distress means she is upset because she can’t have what she wants. You may even say, “You spoiled little thing!” But that’s not what’s really going on. The shift to crying happens because the child feels acutely misunderstood and abandoned. Not only was her interest interrupted, which is no fun, but it was discounted as wrong. This undermines the formation of self-esteem and confidence. In short, ‘No,’ said too often and too quickly translates in a baby’s brain as B-A-D.
Why to maximize interest:
Clearly, signals of interest indicate that a child wants to learn about the outside world. But they also help a child learn about himself. When interest is stimulated, it shows a child what brings him pleasure, what captures his attention, what excites him.
• Encouraging interest helps your child become confident about exploring. It allows him to satisfy his biological needs for stimulation and tells him it’s okay to expand his world without feeling guilty.
• When you reward curiosity, you strengthen a child’s sense of control, competence and confidence. He begins to sense that he can manage “out there” in the world.
• Learning that there are limits is critical too. Seeing what’s allowed and what’s not allowed helps the child develop an understanding of boundaries. Your child will be reassured to find out that there are rules and that you can be counted on to teach her what they are. This will allow your child to learn how to self-regulate her impulses and desires so that she can follow the rules, fit in and gain your approval.
The interest timeline:
All infants are interested in what they can see, hear and touch. Initially, they use their mouth and sense of taste to assess many objects they encounter. Then, as their vision and hearing becomes more acute and they can move around more easily, the variety of things that spark their interest increases. Your role is to help your child find ways to express her interests and to expose her to new interactions that may stimulate new interests. Granted, it can be a hit or miss situation sometimes, but that’s okay. For example, some children will enjoy being read to at six months, others may not get into it until they are nine months or older. Your child will let you know immediately if reading is an activity that evokes interest or not. If it’s not a hit, she’ll squirm, fuss and shift her attention to something else. That’s your signal to set it aside for the time being.
Other activities that evoke interest in infants include playing with stuffed animals, going for walks, being sung to or shaking a rattle. No activity is too trivial or too minor where interest in concerned. If it captures your child’s attention, whatever the age, go with it.
As your child grows, and her interests expand, your ability to tune into what stimulates her curiosity may feel like it comes and goes. Don’t worry, this can happen as children pass from one developmental stage to the next and their expanding interests surpass their ability to communicate them. Temporarily, such a misreading of the signals can lead to heightened frustration and distress—for your child, and for you. For example, Lois told me that she was having a terrible time keeping daughter Eva, usually such a happy child, from crying. It hadn’t been a problem before, but now at 16 months, Lois felt like something was terribly wrong. After observing the mom and child together over the course of a couple weeks, it became apparent that the baby was frustrated by not being able to talk yet. Eva could understand what was being said to her, and she struggled to talk back using sounds and almost-words. But she couldn’t yet say, “I want…” or “I need…” and the frustration was getting to her. When she became interested in something or had an opinion to express, she wasn’t able to get it across quickly enough. She became impatient and fussy. To help Eva during this transition, Lois made an extra effort to put words to her child’s signals and to narrate what was going on.
Sometimes parents may understand their child’s interest but misunderstand their current developmental capacities and their need to have the enthusiasm and accomplishments validated—thereby puncturing the balloon of good feeling. Demos described one such situation between a mother and her 15-month-old daughter. Mother and daughter were outside in their yard, with the child playing in the sandbox and the mother nearby in a chair. A neighbor boy had just thrown a ball to the girl in the sandbox. She picked up the ball and “threw” it back. As often happens at this age, the ball dropped about two inches in front of her. Nevertheless, she was delighted with her efforts, smiled broadly at the boy, and clapped her hands. The mother said, “You can’t clap yet; the ball didn’t go out of the sandbox. Try again.” The girl looked a little puzzled, but did try again, with much the same result and the same excitement and joy. The mother again insisted that the girl had not achieved “her” goal. By the third and fourth repetitions of this sequence, the child’s expression had become sober; she was no longer clapping. Indeed, she soon lost all interest in throwing the ball and turned to other objects in the sandbox. From the child’s point of view, joining the game of catch and “throwing” the ball back to the boy probably meant simply moving her arm and letting go of the ball, which was as close as she could come to imitating the boy’s action. Her joyful, excited response clearly indicated that, by her lights, she had succeeded. The mother’s refusal to accept her goal (i.e., to see her efforts as an achievement) and to share in her excitement and joy, instead holding out for a better throw, left the child feeling perplexed and unsupported. Not understanding how she had failed or how to succeed and please her mother, she gave up the task.
How to tune into your child’s interests
One good way to understand just what interests your child is to use Floor Time (see Chapter ?, p. TK). This puts you into the child’s world in a way that few other activities can do. If your child crawls off into the kitchen and starts playing with the pots and pans, crawl along with her and see just how fascinating it is when you’re at a kid’s eye level. You will begin to appreciate how large a part the smallest encounters with outside objects play in a child’s imagination. And you’ll get a sense of the tempo at which your child moves through the world. Allowing kids to maintain their own sense of time is important if you are to encourage exploration and help build self-confidence.
Quantity, not just quality, time is also important. (see page TK) When your time with your child is too event oriented, too structured or scheduled, you don’t allow your child to simply move through the day at a unforced pace, interacting with the environment in spontaneous ways. Spend time with your child as you do laundry, while you read, as you do errands or just hang out. In these ordinary circumstances, a child can express extraordinary interest, and you will have the time to observe and interact with your child in an easy, natural way.
What to do when you must interrupt interest:
An important part of maximizing your child’s interests is learning how to manage situations where you must interrupt the expression of interest—which frequently leads to distress and anger. For example, you are standing at the deli counter in the grocery store waiting to be served. Your child is fascinated by everything that is going on—the slicing machines, the other people, the strange looking objects in the deli case. But once you are served, you have to finish up your shopping. As you turn to wheel your child down the next aisle, he lets out a wail that could be heard in the next county. He wants to stay right there and keep looking at all the activity. You need to keep moving. In such a situation, you might:
• recognize the distress and validate it: “Hey sweetie, you really liked watching all that didn’t you?” You might even wheel him back to the counter and say, “Look there’s the butcher. And there’s that delicious turkey you like. I know it’s upsetting to have to move on, but let’ see what’s next.”
• You then want to help your child learn to overcome his distress by finding something else to focus on. You may offer distraction by singing a song, offering him a toy or a favorite transitional object (his blanket or Teddy), telling him that you are off to see just what there is to explore down the next aisle, or going through an elaborate good-bye ritual as you leave the butcher.
• By validating the interest and allowing expression of the distress and then moving on to other activities you help your child develop tension regulation and the capacity to delay gratification. You also gently make it clear that sometimes he is not the center of the world. Sometimes other people or events will prevail. Your child will feel better about that startling fact if you handle necessary interruptions of interest in ways that helps your child remain calm, such as providing distractions.
Early Education:
Within this context of exploratory patterns and behaviors, one might ask: how important and how effective are early educational programs (e.g., Head Start)? The answer is that such programs are very important and potentially very effective. However, the more important issue arises even earlier in the child’s life: do the parents understand the signal of interest? Understanding the interest affect means appreciating that the baby’s curiosity, tendency to explore, examine, play, and “get into things” are all learning opportunities and activities. Of course, some limit-setting is necessary, and one can be creative in protecting the child from dangerous items without squashing their curiosity and enthusiasm. But one does not want to constrict these explorations or see them as “misbehaviors.” One wants to allow the child as much opportunity to think and say and explore as freely as possible. Even with words (see the Chapter “Beyond Signals”), one can encourage the verbal expression of feelings. If the child begins using what you might consider “bad” words, use this as a learning experience. Reach for a dictionary, talk with the child about the meaning of the word, whether or not it offends people, if it should be used in public, and so on. The trick is to encourage, not constrict, all these learning opportunities as early as possible. This stance promotes real “early education”!
The continuum:
Interest, like the other signals, is not a rigid state. It can be expressed as everything from mild curiosity to enthusiasm and excitement. When Grandma brings baby a new toy car, he may stare at it in an off-handed way, putting it down, picking it back up, not sure of what he thinks. But after a while he may decide that it is a pretty wonderful and begin waving it around, over his head. His interest has increased to excitement. This is getting good, he thinks. Then, if he accidentally hits a button that activates a siren, that’s surprising at first and then may be even more exciting.
Interest can decrease, as well as increase. Sometimes, children express initial interest in something, but then it fades. If the toy car, on closer inspection, doesn’t capture his fancy, there isn’t much you can do to change his mind, no matter how hard you try. If you insist repeatedly your child find the car interesting when he does not, you may provoke anger: His tears or writhing around in your arms are his way of signaling, “Aren’t you listening to me? I don’t want to play with that thing.” In such a situation, it’s better to put the toy aside and substitute another more engaging one or to look around and see what it is that’s occupying his interest. Perhaps Grandma herself is more intriguing. Let them interact and don’t worry about the toy.
For kids boredom is almost unbearable; they crave interesting interaction and grow distressed when they don’t have it. That’s why in restaurants or at the mall children can become so fussy and disruptive. They need a lot of toys or puzzles or other distractions in those situations to satisfy their natural, built-in, healthy curiosity and stimulus-seeking tendencies.
To recap: If you are able to help your child understand and gravitate to what interests him, you and your baby both reap great benefits now and in the future. Kids who know what they are interested in and get parental support for those interests have an easier time establishing a life’s work that they enjoy. And hopefully that will make you feel pretty happy too.
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