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Ages and Stages

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

I want Christopher to learn how to share, and how to be kind, and how to understand the needs of others, but he just isn't ready yet-my wonderful, beautiful son is very self-centered right now. Because he's sure the world revolves around him, he just doesn't seem to care about the feelings of others. He doesn't share at all. He sometimes hits his friends. And it's like talking to the wall when I try to explain why he has to clean up his own toys. I think all I can do right now is to show him through my own example and with facial expressions and my tone of voice what is right and wrong, good and bad. Hopefully, in the next few months he'll get the idea.

Emotional Health

Although many forces shape a child's level of emotional competence (such as genetics and environmental factors), it is now well known that the parent-child relationship during infancy and toddlerhood has an exceptionally strong and lifelong influence on children's emotional development. In fact, there is growing biological evidence that infants need responsive care from their parents and caretakers in order for the parts of their brains that control emotions to develop properly. This development is nurtured as infants learn about love and affection, joy and anger, and fear.

Love and Affection

Eight-month-old Rachel sat contentedly in her infant seat watching her grandmother prepare her lunch. Then, suddenly, Rachel came alive as if someone had thrown a switch in her nervous system. Her face lit up with a full-face smile, her arms flailed up and down, and her little legs kicked wildly as she let out a loud squeal. The love of her life had just entered the room-Mom was home.

Making children feel loved is the single most important task of parenting. This feeling enables children to value and love themselves. It teaches them how to love and relate to other people. And it allows them to become emotionally stable persons. Our children learn to love by being loved. It's as simple as that.

Love and affection are first nurtured in infants through the development of trust. From the moment of birth, children begin the task of assessing if they can trust the world they live in to meet their needs. Are cries for food promptly answered or are they ignored for long periods? Is the need for comfort lovingly met or is it answered with harsh words and rough handling? Do they have influence over the adults who care for them or are they powerless in an indifferent world? The answers to these questions determine how emotionally secure children grow and how they later form attachments of love and affection.

Babies who learn that the adults in their lives are trustworthy and can be counted on to respond to cries of frustration or distress form a positive image of themselves and others. Parents who can respond with a soft voice to a baby's hunger at 3 A.M. or respond to a baby's persistent cries with gentle handling (even when they themselves are fatigued and impatient) teach children that they are important and loved. This lesson allows children to later build loving relationships. But if babies learn that their cries for help are not answered or result in anger or harsh treatment, they become wary and distrustful of others. As these children grow they generally lack confidence and feel unworthy of warm, responsive attention.

To an infant, love means development of affectional attachment with a caretaker. This relationship (called attachment or bonding) becomes firmly established by the time the infant is 8 or 9 months of age and is characterized by strong interdependence, intense mutual feelings, and vital emotional ties. Early attachment helps a child develop trust and confidence in the caregiver and is vital to the quality of relationships the person will later develop with peers, relatives, other adults, and a spouse.

Bonding does not happen immediately, or quickly, or in only a given window of time. It is a process that happens over many months and even years. Like any other love relationship, it develops in gradual stages and improves and deepens with time and attention.

If you want your baby to "love" you, try these three simple suggestions:

Consistently and immediately respond to your baby's cries of distress.

Give much physical contact. Babies feel safer, sleep better, gain more weight, and are more interested in being with people when they are often cuddled, held, and stroked. The importance of loving touch cannot be overemphasized.

Play with your baby. Even in the first few months of life, infants enjoy games like peek-a-boo and songs. This creates a pleasure bond that encourages affectional attachment.

Some signs that an infant is making this affectional attachment to you are the following:

The baby will smile when he or she sees you.

The baby will seek close physical contact with you when he or she is distressed.

The baby will be upset when separated from you.

The baby will show pleasure when reunited with you.

Parenting to Nurture Love and Affection

Teach your child to trust you by responding consistently with love and sensitivity to your baby's cries of hunger, pain, or discomfort.

If you need childcare, find a program that allows one caregiver to take care of your child over a long period of time.

Create an affectional attachment with your baby by (1) consistently and immediately responding to your baby's cries of distress, (2) giving much physical contact, and (3) playing with your baby.

Make your baby feel safe and comfortable.

Avoid

Getting angry when your child begins to cling to you and avoid strangers at around 8 months of age. It is a normal sign of attachment and affection.

Letting your own fatigue or anger push you to respond negatively to your baby's cries.

Assuming your infant doesn't need quality time with you because he or she seems content to be alone.

Expecting bonding to happen immediately, or quickly, or in only a given window of time. It is a process that happens over many months and even years.

Joy and Anger

Although the emotions of joy and anger are very much a part of babyhood, most child experts believe that these feelings require mental processes that are not present at birth. Parents may swear that their newborns light up with joy one minute and have a quick temper the next, but the smiles and cries are actually prompted by other, internal stimuli.

Joy

The smile of a newborn is probably based on brain stem activity. It occurs during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and during those waking states in which rapid eye movements can also be discerned. Then, between 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 months, smiles begin to appear when the baby sees something pleasing. Social smiling begins around 2 1/2 to 3 months; at this time, familiar faces are more likely to elicit smiles than nonfamiliar ones, indicating that early smiling already has a cognitive component involving memory. Between 3 and 5 months, babies will smile when they notice they can control their environment; they will smile, for example, when they learn they can make a mobile move by vigorously kicking their legs. (This is called mastery motivation; the pleasure of success encourages them to try harder and stick to a task longer.)

Smiling may turn to outright laughter by 4 months, indicating great pleasure and a feeling of delight. At first, this laughter occurs mainly as a result of physical stimulation such as tickling, but by the second half of the first year the baby will laugh in response to interesting or incongruous events. (See the "Play and Imagination" section under "Cognitive Development" later in Stage 1.)

by the end of the first year and during the second, sustained joy or elation can be seen in toddlers. They show particular pleasure when anticipating events that will occur and in planning such events. They'll giggle themselves silly, for example, when they know in advance that you're going to jump out from your hiding place and say, "Boo!"

Whatever prompts a baby's smile, it is surely nature's way of gaining the child positive attention. Who can resist responding to a baby's smile with a smile in return? A child's laughter is rewarded with reciprocal laughing, talking, and other kinds of positive attention from adults. This teaches socialization skills by encouraging the child to smile and laugh some more.

Anger

Feelings of anger develop in much the same way as feelings of joy. In the beginning, infant crying is a call for relief from distress; it is not a display of anger. But by 6 months, anger is evident in response to frustration. When you restrict your child's body movements while dressing, bathing, or buckling up the car seat, for example, you'll see frustration turn into angry flailing of arms and legs.

Babies also feel frustrated because they are totally dependent on someone else to give them everything they desire-a helpless situation that prompts anger. Nine-month-old Jacob pushed forcefully away from his mother as he reached out toward something he wanted across the room. Jacob squirmed, twisted, and cried, but he couldn't make his mother understand what he wanted. "I've noticed," says his mom, "that Jacob gets very frustrated when he can't do things for himself. He just can't wait to grow up."

Anger is also an enabling emotion. It energizes and motivates babies to keep trying to master a frustrating event. Babies soon learn that anger can prompt action; it gains attention; it wields some power. For example, 16-month-old Clara jangled her mother's keys with glee, but then began to scream when her mom took them away. The anger grew not only from frustration, but also because past experiences had taught Clara that her anger would keep her mother's attention and would probably bring back the keys.

Now is a good time to begin teaching your child about anger by letting her experience it and by resisting the temptation to always jump to remove the frustration. If your child's temper flares because he can't make the jack-in-the-box pop up, let him struggle with it for just a bit. Babies need to learn about anger in a safe, protected environment. Through experience they learn that it's okay to be angry, that it's a natural response, and they learn how to let it go when it doesn't get them what they want. Experience with anger teaches children emotional control. Situations such as waiting for food or sitting in a car seat provide important opportunities for acquiring regulation skills such as turning away from the frustrating object, distracting oneself with something more comforting (like a favorite toy), and engaging in self-soothing activities (such as holding a favorite blanket or sucking fingers). Research indicates that infants who have not learned how to regulate their angry feelings are more likely to be noncompliant with parental directions when they get older and are thus likely to experience behavioral problems. But children who do learn how to deal with anger early on are better prepared when they reach school age and their parents aren't there to save the day when they encounter situations that make them angry.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Ages and Stages by Charles E. Schaefer Theresa Foy DiGeronimo Excerpted by permission.
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