by Jane Nelsen
SELECT CHILDCARE CAREFULLY
A child’s growing brain does not shut off when he is dropped off at a childcare center. Most parents work outside the home these days, and many babies and toddlers spend the bulk of their waking hours in another’s care. Not surprisingly, the same skills that are essential for parents in nurturing developing brains are just as critical for childcare providers. Leaving your child in another’s care may be difficult, but it helps to recognize that high-quality care can support a child’s development. It is important to be sure that the care your child receives when he is away from you is truly quality care. This will be explored in more depth in Chapter 19.
LOVE AND ENJOY YOUR CHILD
Remember, what your child (and all of us) needs to know is that she belongs, that she has a special place in life, and that she has value to those around her. No matter how busy your life, and how seriously you take your responsibilities as a parent, take time to simply love and enjoy your child. The quiet moments of wonder, the laughter and giggling, the delight we take in the special qualities, first words, and adorable actions of these new little people are not wasted time but precious investments in the future of your family. The housecleaning, yard work, and laundry will wait; slow down occasionally and just enjoy the time you have with your child. It speeds by all too quickly.
Encourage Your Baby’s Brain Development
• Respond to your baby’s cues.
• Touch, speak, and sing.
• Provide opportunities to play—and play along.
• Encourage curiosity and safe exploration.
• Allow private time for your baby.
• Use discipline to teach—never shake or hit.
• Take care of yourself.
• Select childcare carefully.
• Love and enjoy your child.
THE FIRST THREE YEARS LAST FOREVER
The Positive Discipline approach to raising young children fits well with our knowledge of how the human brain develops, and doing your best will almost certainly be “good enough.” Awareness is always the first step to action, and knowledge will help you make choices and decisions that are in the best interest of your baby or toddler.6 Raising a young child is indeed a serious responsibility. In many ways, a child’s first three years last for the rest of his life.
Conscientious, loving parents frequently worry that they won’t be able to meet their child’s needs, that they will leave some task undone or fail to provide the care and environment that their child’s growing brain requires. It may help a bit to remember that none of us is perfect—and you don’t need to be. Your baby or toddler doesn’t require perfection; he only needs you to be warm, loving, and aware of his needs.
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
1. Think (and perhaps journal) about the family you grew up in. What did you appreciate about your parents? Your other rela tives? Your caregivers? What did you wish could have been different? What decisions do you think you made about yourself and others because of the way you were raised? How might you use what you’ve learned from your own experiences growing up to strenthen your connection with your child?
2. Consider choosing one of the ways described in this chapter to encourage your baby’s brain development and focusing on it for one week. For instance, you might decide to focus on touching, speaking, and singing to your baby. The following week, choose another way. How do you think your relationship with your child will be different when you have spent a week focusing on each suggestion?
3. Which do you believe is more important—using technology to stimulate intellectual learning, or focusing on your relationship with your child? Why? Is it possible to balance the two?
1 Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, and Patricia Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind (New York: Harper, 1999), p. 13.
2 A professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, and a founding member of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (www.developingchild.net).
3 Erik Erikson found that an infant’s development of a sense of trust in the first year of life is directly related to a mother’s sense of trust in herself.
4 The details of attachment are beyond the scope of this book, but it is wise to understand that you cannot give your child what you do not have yourself. Understanding and resolving your own struggles, challenges, and emotional issues can change your interactions and may be one of the greatest gifts you give your child. To learn more about attachment, brain development, and parenting, see Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., and Mary Hartzell, M.Ed. (New York: Tarcher Putnam, 2003).
5 Magda Gerber’s book Dear Parent: Caring for Infants with Respect (Los Angeles: Resources for Infant Educarers, 1998) is a valuable resource for you and your child’s caregivers. See the Resources section for details.
6 For more information on brain development and your child’s first three years, visit www.parentsaction.org or www.zerotothree.org.)
4
GETTING TO KNOW YOUR YOUNG CHILD
Martha had a story to tell. She collapsed into a chair and waited impatiently for the other members of her parenting group to stop their chatter and settle down.
The group’s leader noticed Martha’s exasperation and smiled. “Martha, it looks like you came prepared with something to share. Why don’t you start us out?”
Martha sighed and shook her head. “I just don’t know what to do,” she moaned, the frustration in her voice obvious. “My two-year-old, Daniel, is driving me crazy. He insists on touching things in stores even though I must have told him a dozen times not to touch. He gets angry when I won’t read to him or play with him right away—he just can’t seem to wait patiently for even five minutes. He’s always yanking his hand out of mine when we walk together, and I worry that he’ll get away from me or run into the street.”
The rest of the group smiled sympathetically and a few heads nodded as Martha told her tale of woe. Other parents had shared such experiences and understood her feelings. “This morning was the last straw, though.” Martha paused. “This morning Daniel deliberately lied to me. I’ve told him I won’t tolerate lying, but he fibbed right to my face.”
The leader met Martha’s eyes and nodded. “I can see you’re really upset. What did Daniel say?”
“Well,” Martha said, “he told me he saw a lion in the backyard. Isn’t that ridiculous? He knows there isn’t a lion in our backyard! If Daniel starts lying now, what will happen as he grows up?”
Another woman spoke up. “I worry, too. What will my child be like as an adult when he does these things now?” Others nodded in concern.
The concerns and confusion these parents are feeling are easy to understand; most parents have similar moments of frustration and disappointment. But young Daniel isn’t intentionally driving his mother to distraction. It’s very likely, as Martha’s parenting group facilitator will undoubtedly explain, that Daniel is simply being his age-appropriate self: an active, curious two-year-old who is learning about his world in the only way he knows.
GETTING INTO YOUR CHILD’S WORLD
Your little one inhabits a vastly different world from yours. One of the first and most important challenges in parenting your baby or toddler is understanding what his world looks and feels like—from his perspective—and how his brain and skills are developing. Expecting your child to think, act, or feel the way you do will create all sorts of difficulties and misunderstandings.
One of the best ways of becoming an effective parent—or, for that matter, an effective human being—is to understand the perceptions of other people, to be able to “get into their world.” This is especially true for parents of very young children; after all, their world is so different from yours! (Interestingly, your child will not develop this ability, something researchers call “mindsight,” until he is approaching adolescence. No matter how intelligen
t he is, he cannot see the world exactly the way that you do.) Babies are not miniature adults, but they can certainly begin learning about feelings.
A newborn infant arrives in this world from a place where she’s been cradled in warmth and safety beside her mother’s heart, her every need immediately met. Suddenly, after a convulsive and tiring journey out of her mother’s body, she finds herself in a world of heat and cold, loud noises, moving objects, and bright lights. Faces come and go, voices come from all directions, and this new world runs on a schedule she doesn’t yet understand. The instant nourishment and comfort are gone; now she must wail loudly for someone to satisfy her hunger or give her comfort. Sleeping, eating, simply functioning—all must be adapted to her new life. It wouldn’t be surprising if we somehow found scientific evidence that infants long to return to the womb!
From the moment of birth onward, a child’s early months and years are a voyage of discovery. And one of the first things a child must discover is himself. An infant’s control of himself moves from the center outward. In other words, he develops the large muscles at the center of his body (working lungs, beating heart) before the small muscles in his extremities. At first he is helpless, doing for himself only the most basic bodily functions, unable even to lift his head or to turn over without help. A baby’s very survival depends on his ability to attract an adult’s attention to get the care he needs.
As time passes, his control increases. He learns to really see (“Is that Mom?”) and to track objects with his gaze. One day, he realizes that he can manipulate the hands that flap in front of his face; he can make them move, grab them, and even—oh, bliss!—stuff them into his mouth. Later, he learns that he can grab other things with his fingers and stuff those into his mouth as well.
Many other developmental milestones follow in due time. A baby learns to turn over, scoot, crawl, pull herself up on the furniture, and eventually walk. She becomes a little scientist, exploring everything she can. Parents sometimes see these explorations as “mischief” and may not appreciate their value to healthy brain development. The last things to be mastered are the delicate skills, like balance and fine motor control, which explains why a five-year-old or even a six-year-old may have such a difficult time mastering the art of tying shoes. Part of becoming an effective and loving parent or teacher means understanding the world of the little ones you’re working with and making every effort to get inside it.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR CHILD’S PERSONALITY
What shapes the personality of a human being? Why is one two-year-old peaceful and compliant, eager to please and easy to get along with, while the two-year-old next door seems bent on challenging every rule, pushing every limit, and breaking everything in sight? Children are a product of their parents’ genes (nature), and they are undoubtedly influenced by the environment and ideas around them (nurture). Research appears to indicate that genes and inborn temperament traits play a stronger role than experts previously thought, while other research demonstrates that beliefs may actually change DNA.1 Perhaps it is more important to realize that while children are shaped by both the raw material they inherit and the forces around them, they also bring to the world something unique to them: their own spirit and identity. These factors, combined with the individual decisions (many of them subconscious) they make along the way about what they must do to survive or thrive, will form their personalities. Such decisions are so important that we will come back to them often as we help you get into the world of your little one.
Have you ever noticed that, despite having the same parents and the same home, children in the same family can be incredibly different? That is because each child makes unique decisions based on his or her perceptions of the world. One child may decide, “I like the safety of boundaries.” Another child may decide, “I feel thwarted by boundaries.” Many of these decisions are made preverbally as “a sense of,” rather than through rational understanding. Parents need to take time to get to know—and to accept—their children for exactly who they are.
Remember Martha and two-year-old Daniel? Let’s take a look at some points that might explain the behavior this mom finds so frustrating. (We will examine these ideas in more detail in later chapters.)
A CHILD LEARNS ABOUT THE WORLD BY DOING
A child who is “playing” is actually hard at work, trying on new roles and ideas, tasting, touching, smelling, and experimenting with life. Learning is a hands-on experience filled with the enthusiastic joy of discovery. It takes a while (and some parental patience) before children learn where the boundaries lie. Some will accept those boundaries while others will continuously push against them. This doesn’t make the “pusher” bad. He simply has a different temperament and will keep his parents busy using kind and firm Positive Discipline.
A CHILD’S BIRTH ORDER AFFECTS HOW SHE SEES THE WORLD
Each child born experiences a different family configuration from that experienced by the children who came before or those who may follow. There are more people in the family, more siblings, and the adult or adults in the family have probably grown or changed in some way. They may be less knowledgeable with a first child, or might have gained a certain amount of perspective (and experience) by the time a new child joins the family.
Maria tells of the drama her daughter Fatima’s tantrums would spark, and the way she and Fatima’s aunts would try to reason with her, pick her up and beg her to calm down, or get exasperated and join in with their own wails of frustration. By the time Fatima’s brother, Miguel, arrived two years later and began having his own tantrums, the rest of the family had calmed down. They had learned from Fatima that tantrums were a normal part of raising a toddler. Because they knew this phase would pass (and would pass more quickly if it wasn’t given much attention), they found themselves regarding little Miguel’s tantrums as endearing. They would smile, shake their heads, and wait them out. Miguel was born into a different, more relaxed household than was Fatima.
Another aspect of birth order is the presence (or absence) of siblings. A hungry “only” or “firstborn” child usually has an adult available to get him a cracker when he wants it. When there are other children present, that cracker may have to wait until a younger brother gets his diaper changed or a baby sister finishes nursing. A firstborn child may also learn how to do things for himself at an earlier age, while his little sister will have older siblings around to hand out those crackers.
These differences are neither good nor bad, but they do affect children’s behavior. The older child who suddenly begins whining and misbehaving when her new baby brother is being fussed over is easy to recognize. The little one who starts clinging to Mom when a sibling goes off to preschool may be less obvious. Whatever the behavior, taking into account the effects of a child’s birth order can help you make sense of your child’s “misbehavior.”2
A CHILD’S DEVELOPMENTAL NEED TO EXPLORE AND EXPERIMENT MAY BE LABELED AS MISBEHAVIOR
Children need secure, loving boundaries in order to feel safe, just as everyone needs strong walls and a roof to feel protected from the weather. Still, any self-respecting child will feel obliged to cruise up to the boundaries you’ve set and test them occasionally, just to make sure they’re firmly in place. He’s not deliberately trying to drive you insane; he’s either exploring at his age-appropriate level or learning about consistency and making sure adults mean what they say (an important part of trust). Often adults fail to realize that they simply can’t reason with a toddler and thus they spend more time talking than acting. No matter how well you use them, words are often little more than sounds to young children. Actions, like removing a child from a forbidden temptation by picking him up and carrying him to another location, provide an unmistakable message. (Some actions or words, though, may only make matters worse: slapping his hand, yelling “no-no,” or engaging in a stare-down may invite a child to keep this entertaining adult involved with him—or to retaliate in kind!) Is all of this testing annoying? Of course. Frustr
ating? Absolutely! But children are rarely as intentionally naughty as their parents think—they’re just acting their age.
YOUNG CHILDREN RARELY MISBEHAVE PURPOSELY
Adults mistakenly read motives—that is, intent—into children’s behavior that reflect adult thinking rather than toddler thinking. Some act as though their child lies awake at night plotting ways to drive them crazy. Martha’s repeated warnings to her son not to touch things aren’t terribly effective; supervision and kind, firm distraction would be more helpful. Toddlers are highly impulsive little people, and warnings are simply overpowered by the desire to touch, hold, and explore. A toddler straining over the edge of his stroller to touch a shiny cup at the bottom of a highly breakable pyramid of cups does not intend to “disobey.” The colors on the cup attract his attention; he reaches for it and wants to examine it. He is a small scientist using his hands, mouth, and imperfect coordination to determine the properties of the marvelous world around him. Your real tasks as a parent are prevention, vigilance—and very quick reflexes.
A CHILD’S PHYSICAL SIZE AND ABILITIES HAVE A STRONG INFLUENCE ON BEHAVIOR
Take a moment sometime soon and put your face on the same level as your child’s. What do you see? The world looks a lot different from down there! Seeing an adult’s face requires tilting your head backward—an uncomfortable position if held too long. Most of the time, young children gaze out at a world of knees, shins, and feet, and the only reliable way to catch an adult’s attention is to pull on his hands or legs! And just imagine how frightening a yelling, pointing parent would look from down there.