Five instruments of attachment formation
There are three goals that we consider important for beginning parents:
• learn about your child;
• help your child feel that everything is good and right;
• take pleasure in parental responsibilities.
The approach to the relationship with the child that we are discussing will help you achieve these goals. There are five rules that ensure the emergence of attachment as the basis of parental care.
1. Get to know your child
How a child and parents begin their communication usually sets the tone for all their future relationships. Do everything possible to organize yourself such births as you want. Approach your families with all responsibility, study your education and develop a generic philosophy together with your obstetrician-gynecologist or midwife. Birth trauma or unreasonable surgical intervention, leading to forced isolation of the child from the mother, is not the most ideal beginning of the relationship. In this case, part of the energy that would be directed to get acquainted with your child, temporarily goes to heal your own wounds.
The joy of successful childbirth turns into the joy of having a child. See Article 2, "How to ensure a safe childbirth" to understand the relationship between childbirth and the establishment of close contact with the child, and how to reduce the likelihood of severe, traumatic birth or even surgical intervention. See also tips for compensatory contact establishment, in the event that the complication is still at
. To help you and your child adjust
to each other - that's what
affection is, or loving care.
led to a temporary separation of mother and child.
The first weeks and months are a very important period during which the mother and child need to be together. Proximity from the very beginning makes it possible to evoke a natural, child-centered, love-and-attachment behavior, and also allows the mother to reveal her intuitive, biological mechanism for caring and caring. Intimacy from the very beginning provides a good start for a couple at a time when the child as never needs help, and the mother as ever burns with a desire to nurse him. Of course, the process of the emergence of love for one's own child, feelings of attachment and the establishment of a close contact begins long before birth and continues long after.
2. Catch your child's signs and respond to them
One of the earliest tests for you is to guess what your child wants and what he needs. This can lead to huge disappointments and attacks of self-flagellation: "I'm a bad mother!"
Relax! Your child will help you learn how to read it, like an open book. Researchers are used to believe that children are only passive participants in the game called "Child Care".Now it is known that children actively form the reaction of their parents. And here is the way: Children are born well equipped with attachment-oriented behavior stereotypes( or behavior-inducing behavior), .by their behavior they, like a magnet, draw their parents to them, speaking in a language so penetrating that its
can not be ignored. Some signs are hard not to notice - for example, a child's crying, smiles and clinging gestures;others refer to the unobtrusive, such as eye contact and body language. All parents, especially mothers, have a built-in intuitive system, through which they recognize the signs given by their children and react to them. Like a system with a radio transmitter and receiver, the mother and child experimentally set up their message until the reception is clean. How quickly this communicative system is established depends on the particular mother-child pair. Some children give more understandable signals;some parents perceive these signals more intuitively. But a good connection is established inevitably. It's easier to install it, if you remember that you need to be open and responsive. Even a random "wrong" reaction( for example, if you are going to feed a child who just wants to be in your arms) is better than a complete lack of response, because it encourages your child to continue working on you.
Take the baby in his arms if he cries. As everything is simple, it would seem, however, there are many parents who were told that it is necessary to give the child to cry for the reason that one should not reward "bad" behavior. But newborns can not behave badly or disobey: they just communicate the only way that nature gave them. Imagine how you would feel if you were completely helpless - unable to do anything for yourself - and your cries for help would remain ignored. An infant whose crying does not receive an answer does not become a "good" child( although he can calm down) - he becomes a disappointed, unhappy child. He learns only one thing that you hardly want: that he is not able to communicate or that he can not hope that his needs will be met.
It's easy for a person from outside to advise you to give to your a child to cry. If only this person is not too sensitive, nothing will happen to him when your child is crying. Let's dig a little for a moment into the technique. Your child's crying will bother you - he is meant for that. This is especially true for mothers. If we put the mother and the baby in the lab and connected blood pressure to the chests of the mother, that's what we would observe: when the mother hears the crying of her child, the blood flow to her breasts increases, accompanied by a strong desire to take her childon hands, to press to a breast and to calm. Your child's crying is the strongest language, created in order to ensure the child's survival and normal development, as well as the care of
from parents. So answer me the same.
If in the first months of your life you will not hesitate to meet the needs of the child, you will ensure the development of strong communication schemes. Over time, you will learn to delay your response a little, and gradually your child will learn to wait patiently for a while, comprehending the language of communication without crying and developing self-service skills. At worst, consider this a contribution to the future: you will be glad to have a good understanding when a child grows up and his problems become much more serious than to ask for food or to get him lulled.
3. Breastfeed your baby
Fathers usually say: "We will breastfeed."Breastfeeding is indeed a matter for the whole family. Of the mothers and babies we have seen, the most successful breastfeeding is achieved by those who have a reliable husband and father.
Five tools for the formation of loving care
1. Meet your child as early as possible.
2. Catch your child's signs and react to them.
3. Feed your baby breastfeed.
4. Wear your child.
5. Share a dream with your child.
Breastfeeding is of great benefit to children and mothers.
The positive impact of breastfeeding on the health and development of the baby is enormous, but what has not yet been properly evaluated is the incredible effect of breastfeeding on the mother. Here's what you'll find in it for yourself: every time you feed your baby, hormones( prolactin and oxytocin) enter your circulatory system. These hormones "wet nurse" contribute to the formation of the chemical basis of what is called maternal intuition. As you will learn in more detail from later chapters, the same hormones that contribute to the production of milk, facilitate the care of the child.
4. Wear your child
Such a delightful offer for parents did not penetrate into the Western world for a very long time.
In our study of the types of parent-child relationships, we attended an international conference on child development, where it was noted that in other cultures, mothers carry their children in bag-shaped bags that are part of their national costume. Fascinated by how happy the kids were and how attentive the mothers were, we asked them why they were carrying their children. They willingly shared two simple, but profound truths:
With a bag for a baby it is easier to raise two children.
It is pleasant to the child and facilitates mother's life. That's it! What all parents yearn for: doing something good for their child and making life easier for themselves.
Bag-sling, or bag-sling, will become for you one of the most necessary items. You do not want to leave the house without her. This does not at all mean that you should carry the child all the time, but is called upon to change your beliefs about children. Most people imagine themselves toddlers lying quietly in their cribs and gazing at the rotating carousels, which they take in their hands, only to feed, change the diaper, play a little, and then put it back in its place;that the time a child spends on his hands is only a forced break in order to calm the child and lull him so that he can be put back. Wearing children in a bag overturns this view. Parents or substitutes for them babysit babies most of the time and put them only when they are deeply asleep or when the nurse needs to devote some time to their own affairs.
When parents carry a child, both for them and for the child there is a lot of good. First of all, and this is most obvious, the child who is worn cries less, as if forgetting about his usual anxiety and discontent. In addition to the fact that such children become more cheerful, they grow better, probably because the energy that they would otherwise spend on crying goes to development. Also, the child learns much more in the hands of a busy parent. If you are carrying a child, it benefits you because it fits perfectly into a busy life. This allows you to take your child with you wherever you go. You no longer feel attached to home - a home for your child wherever you are.(See Article 14, "Wearing a child: The art and science of carrying your child in a bag".)
5. Share a dream with your child.( To pass a personal course on wearing a child and find out what other benefits this brings to the child and how it makes life easier for parents)
Once you start your parenting career, you will discover that children who always sleep at night are only in books or with others. Be ready for some time to jump at night in search of a place where the child and you sleep better. Some children sleep better in their own room, others in their parents' room, while others sleep best if they are pressed hard by their mother. Where you and the child sleeps best, is the best option for you, and this is a very personal decision. Be open to trying again.
Try to share a dream with your child.
personal options, and try to take the child to your bed.
A joint dream seems to raise more controversy than any other aspect of attachment formation - for not very clear reasons. It's amazing that such a wonderful custom, which was welcomed by the centuries, suddenly turned out to be "wrong" for modern society. Most of the children around the world are sleeping with their parents. Even in our country, more and more parents come to this option of sleep - they just do not inform health professionals and do not tell their relatives. You will be surprised how many of these people do just that, at least from time to time. Do not worry that your child will never want to leave your bed. This will happen. If a child needs to be close at night, the period that he will spend in your bed, the
is relatively short - and the benefit is enough for life.(Why sleep with the child makes life easier at night and how it contributes to the development of the child, as well as the latest discoveries in this controversial area of research you will learn from Article 15 "Parental Nights: How to Make Your Baby Sleep.")
Loving care based on attachment is the ideal style of relationship with the child. Due to illnesses, lifestyle, or just heavy periods, you may not be able to use all three rules of attachment formation. Raising a child is too private a thing, and a child is too complex an essence that there is only one approach. But these five attachment concepts give you the basic tools with which you can develop the type of relationship with the child that is most suitable for you.
It is important that be attached to your child. Enjoy the benefits of loving care for parents and children. When the attachment has arisen, hold on to what works, and change what is not. Eventually you will come to your own style. This is how you and your child awaken each other all the best.