Responding to Your Infant’s Signals:

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Paul C. Holinger |

Although the second half of the book deals in more detail with the nine signals, I want to take some time here to talk about the process of learning to understand their meanings and responding to them. Becoming comfortable with your child’s expressions of the signals provide enormous benefits to both of you: It helps the two of you establish a good relationship; it helps your child develop the ability to regulate tension and increases the feelings of happiness and security; and it can prevent all kinds of problems and enhance your child’s potential.

The actual process of perceiving and responding to your infant’s signals requires an awareness that the infant has signals and the child is making an effort to communicate. Next, it requires the adult to internally integrate the incoming message with their own understanding, past experience and so on, so they can sort out the possible meaning of the signal—that is, the meaning of the message that’s being sent. And, finally, the process includes a response from the adult. Dr. Ivri Kumin, a psychoanalyst in Seattle, Washington, has recently written an elegant book that delves into these processes in great detail.

Listen, understand and respond

You already may have had this sort of experience: Baby starts fussing while you are doing the laundry, talking on the phone, getting dinner or taking a shower. On any given day, you may react differently—depending on your own mood, your degree of alertness to what’s going on, outside pressures or just plain old exhaustion. But let’s say you finally call out, “Hey, sweetie, I’m talking to Grandma. I’ll be there in a minute.” The baby quiets down after she’s heard your voice and you go back to the call. It’s not a solution, however. Pretty soon the baby starts up again, more persistently and louder. You figure she is just unhappy because she isn’t the center of your attention right now and she can learn to live with it another minute or so. You don’t call out this time, instead you walk with the phone into another room to try to hear over the crying. Suddenly, baby launches into full scale, air-gasping bawling. You’re irritated and the baby’s angry. You hang up and rush to see what’s going on. Now it’s not easy to get her to calm down. You feel miffed and frustrated. And so does baby. You try a bottle; check her diaper; walk her around the room; show her the stuffed animals. You work to figure out what signals the baby was sending and why. And, often there’s no one to pat you on the back or bring you a cup of tea or say sweet things in your ear. You’ve got to calm yourself down.

All this happened simply because when baby signaled ‘Hey! I’m over here. Where are you?’ you ignored the question and tried to pretend that nothing was being said to you. Imagine if it had been your friend or partner calling out. If you simply ignored them instead of responding appropriately, they’d get ticked off and feel dismissed. Same with baby.

That’s why, even when it seems like you can never have a moment for yourself, and it all feels like too much, you and baby will end up less hassled and more attuned to one another if you respond appropriately. You might say to the person on the other end of the phone, “I have to go check the baby for a minute. Hold on.” Then, if you need to change the diaper, or pick baby up, you tell your caller, “I gotta scoot. Call you back when I can.” It may seem frustrating not to finish your call, but you can bet your life will be a whole lot less frustrating if you attend to baby in a timely fashion.

That said, I don’t mean that you can never, ever respond slowly to your child’s signals. There’s little harm from an occasional miscommunication or the inevitable frustration that results—after all there is a lot going on in your life at any given moment. The trick is not to respond so slowly that the baby is traumatized. Every child and adult is going to experience frustration at some time, it is part of life and learning how to handle it is necessary for sound emotional development. So, you don’t need to be overly anxious and rush to decrease the slightest frustration or deny the child a chance to overcome it on his own. If, however, you establish a pattern of inattention or permit traumatizing levels of frustration, you are going to produce longer-term negative repercussions. Remember, while babies are often resilient, they can be quite delicate when it comes to their emerging feelings. Single episodes of misunderstanding rarely cause lasting damage; but repeated misunderstanding of signals can cause problems. If your child finds that you regularly miss, ignore or respond unhelpfully to her signals, she will have a far harder time developing a positive sense of self and will have a difficult time feeling she can depend on you. In addition, spending time with your infant and child sends the message that she is interesting and loved and enhances her internal sense of being valued and important.

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