Attachment in the life of a child (L. Petranovskaya)

Loved you for no particular reason

Because you are a daughter

Because you are a son

For being a baby

For growing up

Because he looks like mom and dad.

And this love until the end of your days

It will remain your secret support.

V. Berestov

Introduction

The whole evolution of life is the evolution of parental care for offspring. The most primitive living beings are born already indistinguishable from their «parents», they do not need anything from their ancestors. Slightly more complex parents only place in a favorable environment, and there they themselves. Even more difficult — they try to leave food for the first time. This is what some insects do. Some species of fish are already protecting their fry. Many reptiles protect the eggs and look after the hatchlings. But the birds are already necessarily hatching, feeding and teaching the chicks, sometimes performing miracles of self-sacrifice for the sake of offspring. Young mammals do not survive without adult care, and their childhood is longer than that of chicks. The parents of the young animals not only feed, protect and teach them — they play with them, caress, comfort, resolve conflicts between brothers and sisters, prepare for communication in the pack.

If you look from this point of view, man is indeed the crown of creation. Because the most helpless cubs and the longest childhood on the planet — a quarter of life — are with us. Years pass before a child can do without adults. Moreover, with the course of history, the period of dependence is constantly lengthening, once childhood ended exactly at twelve, and now at twenty-two — not always.

It turns out that a creature has grown up that not only implements the programs written in the genes, like billions of his ancestors for millions of years, yes, like some kind of cockroaches, but builds his life, thinks about the structure of the universe, asks eternal questions of being, has values, dares, believes, loves — in a word, a rational and free being, a fairly long period of complete helplessness and dependence is necessary. In some miraculous way, it is dependence that is melted into freedom, it is a complete initial inability to adapt to the world — into the ability to creatively change this world.

Everyone who was born human and grew up, one way or another went this way. Everyone who raises children follows it. In this book, we will go through it, step by step, from birth to adulthood, and try to understand: how does it work?

I want to say right away: this book is not strictly scientific. I would like to have another life in parallel to devote it to research, and to check every statement. But I don’t have a second life, but in this one I chose to be a practitioner. So I, at my own peril and risk, just tell how I see it, feel it, understand it. With examples from my own life, from the stories of clients and readers of my blog, from observations on the street and on playgrounds.

Of course, the very essence, the attachment theory, is a completely scientific theory, there are many interesting studies and publications on it, I will refer to some of them in the course of the story. But I am fully aware that not all the statements of this theory, and even more so not all the statements in this book, are fully scientifically confirmed, and some are generally difficult to verify. Attachment theory is not yet the mainstream of psychological science, research and books devoted specifically to it, so far less than we would like. In Russia, attachment theory is simply not well known. And this is a pity, because at the moment I do not know an approach to the study of a person, the study of childhood, an approach to education and psychotherapy that is deeper, more accurate and effective in practical work. A lot of problems that poison the lives of many people could simply not be created if you know how the child’s relationship with his parents works. And many already created and even familiar ones could be quite successfully and reliably solved. I am sure that someday this will be realized, the phenomenon of attachment will be studied truly deeply, and many new and important things will be revealed to us that will change people’s lives for the better.

But my clients and readers are raising kids today, and they can’t wait. Therefore, today I am sharing with you what I can, without passing off what was written as the ultimate truth. Read, observe, listen to yourself, doubt and check. If something goes differently in your life, in your relationship with your child, you should not immediately be frightened and look for where you are wrong. It is impossible to describe all possible options and situations in the text of the book, and real life is always more complicated than the most developed theory. If something happens to your child later or earlier than it is written, if it happens to him differently or even exactly the opposite — just think about why this might be so. A child may have its own pace of development or character traits, you may have special circumstances in your life now or some time ago, and finally, I just might be wrong. Always trust yourself more than any book, and this one is no exception. You are the parent of your child, you love him, you know, you understand, you feel like no one else, even if at times it seems to you that you don’t understand at all. The opinion of a specialist is important information for reflection, it is a way to see your situation as if from the outside, an opportunity to see problems in the broader context of culture, tradition and even the evolution of our species. But it is up to you to decide what to do right now with your own baby who is crying, fighting or frightened, and if your intuition, driven by love and care, does not say what the book says, listen to your intuition.

In the book, we will go through the whole childhood together with the child and his parents: from birth to adulthood. We will build a roadmap for growing up and look at the role of attachment in this process. Of course, the development of a child is multifaceted, his body, his intellect and abilities change and develop, but we will focus on only one line: his relationship with “his” adults, how they, on the one hand, depend on the development of everything else, on the other influence this development. Each chapter of the book is another stage of childhood. Each stage brings new tasks of age, new needs of the child, new opportunities, but also new risks if the needs are not met. We will try to understand the logic: how dependence and helplessness turn into maturity, how our love and care year after year form a secret support in the child, on which, like on a rod, his personality rests.

Our path along the roadmap will be accompanied by examples and observations from life, and sometimes from literature or cinema. It will be great if each time you take a short break from the book and remember similar — or dissimilar — situations that you yourself have been in or that you have observed, and try to analyze them from the point of view of what you have read. Or maybe you want to re-read something or revise it from a new angle.

Sometimes we will kind of rise above our path for small theoretical digressions to understand how it works. If the topic seems particularly interesting to you, it makes sense to find and read the books to which I provide links. I promise not to overload the narrative with terms and mention only the most, in my opinion, key to our topic.

As we move along the route, we will from time to time draw practical conclusions: how to behave as an adult, what to do and what not to do, so that the child develops in accordance with the plan of nature, is filled with affection and successfully turns it into independence. And so that it would be easier and happier with him, and parenthood would be for you a happiness that requires self-giving, and not hard labor or an exam that is always passed to God knows who with the fear of error.

By design, the book that you are holding in your hands will be the first part of the Close People series, dedicated to various aspects of attachment. In this, in the first, we will go through a “good” childhood from beginning to end, a childhood without any special problems and cataclysms, and we will try to understand what gives a person the experience of attachment, how relationships with their adults help create the core of a personality, largely determining all further a life. Hence the name: «Secret Support». Understanding the logic of the development of your relationship with your child, you can make it better, and as we will see, it is good relationships, deep and reliable attachment that underlie both good behavior and successful development of the child’s potential. Not “developing methods”, but relationships with parents give children the best start in life — and together we will see this, step by step following childhood.

The second book, «Children Wounded in the Soul,» will be sadder — it will talk about what happens if a blow of fate or difficult circumstances violated a prosperous route conceived by nature. We will talk about attachment trauma and attachment disorders. This topic is very close to me, because for many years I have been working with foster parents, parents of children wounded in the soul. However, no one is safe from attachment injuries, and the most socially prosperous family experiences losses, separations, divorces, illnesses, abrupt changes, and other circumstances that are very sensitive for the child. Parents also do not always know how to provide care: they may not understand or offend the child, even if they love. We will talk about what happens to children in such situations and how they can be helped. This book will be very closely related to the first, so in it I will often refer to here, and here to her.

The third book — it just so happened — has already been published, it is called «If it’s difficult with a child.» It is practical, dedicated to all those situations when we do not know what to do, when contact with the child is lost, when we are confused in our own educational attitudes and methods. It proposes to understand what is happening precisely from the point of view of attachment theory, so some points echo what will be discussed here. Many parents have already read it and claim that it works. Yes, it works. If you urgently need help, if it has become difficult for you with a child, you can start with it, the very essence of the theory of attachment is briefly outlined there.

And, finally, the fourth book — it will be additional and parallel to the third, and will be called, respectively, «If it’s difficult to be a parent.» I haven’t even started it yet, but I really want to, because after many years of working with parents, I know very well how hard it can be for them. How they cover their own traumas of attachment, how difficult it is to withstand the pressure of society and their own family, protecting their child and his right to grow in attachment, what heroic, unparalleled efforts to change themselves parents make for the sake of children. The more I work, the more I love and respect parents, so different, and so selfless in their love for children. And I would very much like to write a book just for them, about how you can become a better parent for your children than your own were.

Perhaps, over time, some more books will appear in the series, but I consider these four must-haves for myself and will try my best to write them in the foreseeable future. And if you are ready to make this journey through childhood along the path of attachment, then let’s begin.

Chapter 1 An invitation to life

And everyone starts the same way.

Two who are as closely related as possible, but who do not know each other at all, have not even seen each other in person. Nine months of complete fusion: common blood, common air, common experiences. Nine months of accumulation and growth, bizarre changes and subtle mutual adjustments — and several difficult hours for the transition from world to world, for leaving the warm universe of the mother’s body and separating.

Finally, they look into each other’s eyes. The mother’s gaze is blurred with tears, from fatigue, from tenderness, from relief, from pity. And the look of a newborn (if he was born without problems, not exhausted by childbirth and not pumped up with medicines) is serious, clear and focused. Full collection.

In these minutes and hours, he looks into the face of fate itself. Imprints in the depths of memory the main person in his life, the face of a person who will become the demiurge of his world, who will disperse clouds or arrange cruel floods in this world, give bliss or expel from paradise, populate the world with monsters or angels, execute or pardon, give or take away, and most likely — both of them interspersed. There is something to be serious about.

Thus begins a lifelong story, a story of bonding that will connect baby and mother almost as tightly as the umbilical cord did. Holding on to this connection, he will go out into the world, just as an astronaut goes into outer space connected to a ship. Unlike the umbilical cord, this connection is not material, it is woven from mental acts: from feelings, from decisions, from actions, from smiles and looks, from dreams and self-sacrifice, it is common to all people and unique to each parent and each child. It does not go from belly to belly, but from heart to heart (in fact, of course, from brain to brain, but it sounds more beautiful this way).

Attachment. A miracle no less than the pregnancy itself. And nothing less than life itself.

A matter of life and death

The human baby is born very small and immature. So evolution has solved the difficult task facing it: to combine the upright posture (and hence the narrow pelvis) of the mother, and the developed brain (and hence the voluminous skull) of the child. I had to get out somehow. Therefore, in our species, an updated and improved technology invented for marsupials was used. A huge kangaroo gives birth to a tiny, shrimp-sized cub, which is not yet able to be separated from its mother. And then for some time he wears it in a bag. If he does not immediately fall into his mother’s bag, he will die very quickly from hunger and cold.

Also the children. Every baby who comes into the world knows the rules of the game on a deep, instinctive level. They are simple and severe.

Rule one. You are not a dweller by yourself. If there is an adult who will consider you his own, who will take care of you, feed, warm and protect you, you will live, grow and develop. There is no such thing — it means that there is no place for you in this life, I’m sorry, the attempt failed.

The child’s need for adult care is a vital, vital need. This is not about “it would be nice”, not about “it’s lonely and sad without a mother”, it’s about life or death. The attachment program that provides this care is our “bag”, designed to carry a child, a kind of external womb, a transitional gateway between birth and exit into the world. It is embedded in those deep parts of the brain that know nothing about formula milk, incubators or baby houses. There, in the very little studied depths of the psyche of a newborn, this is exactly what is carved on the tablets: become someone else — or die. There is no third.

This is the first and very important property of attachment, which explains a lot in the behavior of children. Attachment is a vital need, the level of significance is the maximum. They don’t live without it.

This circumstance is associated rule two. If suddenly an adult is not around, or he is in no hurry to take care and protect, you, baby, do not give up right away. You are not just being capricious, you are fighting for your life, delicacy is out of place here. Does not come — call louder. If he doesn’t want to, make him. Forgot — remind. If you are not sure about him, double-check whether he is still your adult and whether he considers you his. Vigilance is important here. The stakes are high. Fight!

And this is the second important thing to remember: if a child is not confident in his adult, in his attachment, he will seek confirmation of the connection, strive to maintain and strengthen it at any cost. Any. Because his life is at stake.

That is why, barely born, the baby immediately gets down to business. You need to find your adult and involve him in affection. Tie to yourself, yes stronger. He has everything necessary for this, nature has equipped him as James Bond for a particularly difficult mission.

No teeth but armed

Scream is, of course, the main weapon of a newborn. What else can he do? So far, even his own arms and legs do not obey him. Therefore, in order to attract the attention of an adult, he screams. No, not just screaming, but SCREAMING. Yells. Yelling.

Objectively, the crying of a newborn is not so loud and sharp. Especially for a resident of a big city who constantly lives in noise — well, how can a tiny little man impress him in comparison with a neighbor’s drill, the roar of the subway, the roar of taking off planes, the crash of a motorcycle, music rumbling from everywhere? However, from any of these sounds, albeit unpleasant, we can somehow abstract. Learn not to hear, not to notice and even sleep under them. They say that during the wars people fell asleep under the cannonade. And we cannot ignore the crying of a baby. It penetrates “to the very liver”, it “raises the dead”, it falls into some kind of frequency range that awakens in us the instinct of a caring adult and the voice of this instinct is inexorable. It doesn’t matter that you are tired and want to sleep, or that you are sick, it doesn’t matter that you are busy with something else, it doesn’t matter if you want, if you can, quickly, right now, drop everything, get up and go to the child. This works even if someone else’s child is crying: we look around, worry, and if ours, we are ready for anything, if only it would stop: feed, warm, wash, pump — everything that is needed for the baby to be alive and healthy.

It happens that the care instinct is damaged, temporarily (for example, under the influence of mind-altering substances: alcohol, drugs) or permanently (due to a mental disorder, one’s own extremely traumatic experience, organic brain damage). Then the cry of the baby either cannot break through the dope, remains unattended, or causes a pathological reaction not provided for by nature: rage or despair. This is how tragic cases from the criminal chronicle occur, when a screaming child is beaten against a wall or a mother in a state of postpartum depression is thrown out the window.

However, attempts to break the instinct, instead of obeying it, took place in a completely respectable society, for example, at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, soundproof boxes for babies were tried to be installed on trains in very developed and prosperous countries. These were such closed boxes with thick walls and holes for air, where parents were asked to put crying children so that they would not interfere with the rest of other passengers. The idea was quickly abandoned — nevertheless, they took pity on the children, although even today violent angry discussions on the topic “save us from this sound, transport the children somehow separately or sit at home with them” flare up every now and then.

However, not all the same with a whip, there are at the disposal of the child and gingerbread.

Usually in the second month of life, at one fine moment, the child does this. That from which parents lose all self-control, they begin to call each other excitedly, run around the apartment in search of a camera, call their relatives and tell friends that their child smiled for the very first time today.

It would seem, what is it? The tiny creature stretched its toothless mouth slightly. And a little later, I learned to add a soft sound to this grimace — to laugh. However, in adults, the smile of a baby causes a state of euphoria, incomparable bliss and happiness. It is such a pleasure that from now on adults are ready to break into a cake so that he does it again. And further. And further. We are again ready to wear, swing, bounce, kiss, wave a rattle, sing, crow and snort, make a cat work in a zoo, and grandfather rustle a newspaper — yes, anything, if only he laughed more often. Just to experience this incomparable buzz again.

Guess what it looks like? Nature made sure that we sat on this hook. The child will receive everything he needs for growth and development, rewarding parents for their labors with moments of unearthly bliss. This is also how instinctive programs for caring for offspring work. Just as sex is made pleasurable so that we are not too lazy to be fruitful and multiply, caring for a baby is also rewarded in the form of the release of pleasure hormones into the blood.

In fact, a child may not even do anything special, he still draws us into affection — just by his very appearance. A large head, a plump face, a button nose, large eyes, short arms and legs — all this is addressed to the instinct of care. And how sweet it smells…

It is known that when accidentally falling into the field of view of a figure with infantile proportions, we hold our gaze on it a little longer than on any other. The instinct is to take a closer look and make sure that everything is in order with the child. In addition, figures with infantile proportions always cause involuntary sympathy, we are programmed to like them. This property of the psyche is actively used in advertising and creating brand pictures, remember even Mickey Mouse or the Olympic Bear.

The same goal — to maintain contact with an adult — is served by reflexes inherited by people from distant primate ancestors. A newborn clings tenaciously to a finger or to the hair of an adult, and if it is lowered and put too sharply, it throws up its arms and legs, as if trying to embrace the adult’s paw. This helped our ancestors not to lose a cub if they had to quickly run away from a predator in dense thickets or along tree branches.

Only a born child can already recognize his mother by the sound of her voice, the smell and taste of milk, and immediately after birth, if she feels normal, she stares into her mother’s face, imprinting it in the depths of memory — this is an instinctive imprinting (imprinting) program that exists in mammals and birds.

Animal imprinting is a simple and therefore very inflexible attachment program. For example, the Austrian researcher Konrad Lorenz described a case when goslings hatched from eggs saw in the first minutes of their lives not a mother goose, but his shoes. After that, they considered shoes to be mom and followed them everywhere. The human instinct is much more complicated, otherwise, since the advent of maternity hospitals, all children would consider only doctors in white coats to be their parents, and their parents would be ignored. Fortunately, this is not the case, and children, for one reason or another, who have not received the experience of postpartum imprinting, still love those adults who take care of them anyway.

No less important in the first hours after birth is the tactile contact of the baby with the mother, not only for him, but also for her. After all, the mother’s body and psyche are also sharpened by nature to take care of the child. Her breasts fill with milk, and if you do not attach a child to her, they swell and hurt. Her distended and bleeding postpartum uterus contracts and heals faster in response to the suckling of the baby. Mothers need to hear the baby’s breathing, feel it with their skin, smell it, kiss it, it gives pleasure and brings comfort. If the child is separated from the mother, she is restless, she does not find a place for herself, she is tormented by disturbing fantasies that something will happen to him, that he will be stolen, replaced, that he will fall ill, die. She wants to be with him, all her thoughts and feelings are about the child, she wakes up quite easily at his call, even if she is tired of childbirth.

There is even a hypothesis that such a severe mental disorder as postpartum depression is associated with the practice of separating a newborn from the mother after childbirth “for the sake of rest” for a woman or for medical care for a child.

This is just one of the possible reasons. Postpartum depression sometimes develops in women who have had contact with a child after childbirth, and it most often does not happen, even if there was no contact. However, in some cases, apparently, the mechanism is just that. More about postpartum depression, its possible consequences and how to help mother and baby, will be discussed in the book «Children wounded in the soul.»

If the mother is deprived of the opportunity to hold the child at her breast, look at him, inhale his smell, the deep, instinctive layers of her psyche interpret this as the death of the baby. You gave birth, but it is not there — it means that the child died. After all, no “separate wards for newborns” are included in the ancient program. And the experience of losing a child begins, grief, also a very deep ancient program that many mammals have, for example, we can observe it in cats and dogs that have lost their offspring. At first, the mother suffers from excruciating anxiety, rushes about, does not find a place for herself. Then he plunges into depression and despair, interrupted by outbursts of anger.

However, the child is alive, they are returning home, they need to be looked after, others expect a happy and caring motherhood from the woman. But for the deep layers of her psyche, the child is dead. He is not. And this is some other, alien, probably. And why should she care about him? The child does not please, he does not like, does not cause tenderness, his helplessness and exactingness irritate up to rage. The family and those around usually do not understand what is happening, and the woman herself does not dare to admit that she does not love the child she was waiting for and wanted. In the most severe cases, the suffering is so unbearable, or the fear of one’s own rage against the child is so frightening that the mother may even attempt suicide.

If the maternal instinct is in order, the mother is ready and wants to belong to the child, to become her adult for him, to take responsibility for a new life. This is a strange feeling — she does not belong to herself, she is not free, tied with all her feelings to this squeaking lump — and she is happy. If the child is the first, this new state can be overwhelming.

I remember well the day my son was born. It was still an old Soviet maternity hospital, children were taken away somewhere and then not brought back for a whole day (“you have a negative Rh, it’s harmful for a child”). I saw him after birth for only five minutes. He was small, angry, and somehow all poor.

Later, in the middle of the night, I emerged from a light sleep, and then this happened. The center of the world came out of me, from somewhere in the solar plexus region, and slowly floated out of the ward, along the hospital corridor — to where, presumably, the children were lying. Where was mine. This is a strange feeling when the center of the world, the reference point of the coordinate system floats away from you. Neither good nor bad, but simply inevitable, and you understand that it will never be the same again.

So, from the very first minutes of a child’s life, the threads of future relationships begin to rapidly tie between him and his mother. Every feeding, every look, every touch, every breath of a unique smell is a thin but strong thread that connects them forever, grows into their souls. There are more and more threads, they are intertwined, superimposed on each other, and now the mother and child are connected by a new, not material, but psychological umbilical cord, along which protection and care will now go from mother to child, and from him to her — trust and reckless love. This is what it is Attachment is the psychological umbilical cord, the deep emotional bond between parent and child.

Once, on a playground, I watched a scene: a two and a half year old kid began to look around frightenedly — he lost sight of his mother, moved away somewhere, and already a finger went into his mouth, and his lips trembled, now he will roar. And then a slightly older girl turned to the adults standing around and demanded so, even stamping her foot: “Where is this boy’s mother ?!”

This is how children see the structure of the world. Each child is entitled to his own mother, together they are one whole, a set.

But we are all about mom. But what about dad? And other family members? About the same. Their interdependence with the child is less physiologically conditioned, but the principle is the same: every act of protection and care on the part of an adult ties a thread, every time the child asks for help and receives it, every time he is answered with a look at a look, a smile at a smile, a hug on outstretched handles — a thread is tied. And with dad, and with grandparents, and with sisters and brothers. And with foster parents, if it so happened that the child was left without a mother.

Forming attachment not only to the mother but also to other caring adults is nature’s strategy for the survival of the infant. We give birth rarely and hard, we usually carry one fetus at a time. The price of a child for our species is very high, so not only women of childbearing age, but also men, and slightly grown children, and the elderly are oriented towards care. They are also irresistibly affected by the cry, and the smile, and the appearance of the baby, and they are also firmly attached to the baby, providing him with the protection and care of the whole family.

The stage of wearing — the gateway between the worlds

In most cultures, in various countries of the world, a newborn is not yet considered fully come into the world. Often they don’t give him a name in the first month or two, they don’t show him to outsiders, they don’t take him out of the house.

In some traditions, it is even forbidden to say that a child was born, and everyone pretends that nothing like this happened, they begin to congratulate their parents only after the fortieth, or even the hundredth day. So that evil spirits do not find out and do no harm.

Of course, our ancestors had grounds for fear, infant mortality has always been high. Evil spirits and dangerous infections did not doze off. But everything is not reduced to superstitions and fears. Newborns really look like «out of this world.» They seem to be deeply immersed in themselves, or hovering in some distant spheres, they sleep most of the day, they are not interested in others, it is also not easy to understand them: they cry — what does they want, what is wrong? To be honest, a newborn is more like something not quite animated called a “fetus”, and not like a child. He is not yet fully here, he has not yet truly come into our world.

Remember, in childhood, and sometimes adults experience this, awakening in some new place, on a train, at a party, in a new house? You hear a voice: «Get up, it’s time», and it seems that you have already woken up, but not quite yet, you are even more there than here, the dream is still going on and you do not immediately understand that it is around, where you are and who you are, the body does not immediately obeys, and you need to lie down for some time, stay between the worlds in order to “come to your senses”. It’s good if they wake up slowly and affectionately, if mom strokes first, holds on the handles. If it smells like pancakes. If the sun shines through the curtain. Then you can gradually let in the world, light, sounds, smell. Slowly cross the bridge out of love and care from there to here, lie a little bit, squint your eyes and enter the day and the world calm and fully present.

And if you are pulled out of such a dream abruptly, and you have to immediately jump up and act? Because “there is nothing to lie down”, or “slept late, late”, or something happened? And the world around is dark, cold, promising nothing joyful. In adults, this is very common in life, some every day. After such an awakening, problems with coordination and attention remain for a long time, as if some part of consciousness has not returned, is stuck somewhere, and we sometimes need doping in the form of coffee or cold washing in order to fully wake up. Each such awakening is stress for the body, if it happens occasionally — nothing, we will survive, if it is constant — stress will affect health. All programs for fine-tuning and readjusting the work of internal organs that operated in a dream, when disconnected from the outside world, will not be completed correctly, they will be gu.e., forcibly interrupted, and this is not useful even for an ordinary computer, let alone such a complex device, like a human body.

The state of the newborn is very similar to the hovering between the worlds upon awakening, only he fully wakes up to life for longer, about two to three months. Sometimes this period is called the fourth trimester of pregnancy, so the baby does not yet look fully present here. The task of adults is to provide him with a smooth and complete transition, without stress and the painful state of «wake up, but forgot to wake up.»

The child seems to linger on the threshold, and he needs to be invited into life, met with the smells of food, warmth, affection, care and peace. It does not yet need to be developed, educated, or «accustomed» to anything. He just needs to be brought to bear. In the literal sense of the word. Therefore, pregnancy — bearing — is replaced by bearing, and the role of the umbilical cord gradually begins to take over the psychological umbilical cord — attachment. During this period, the child almost did not change its position compared to pregnancy, it is still in the same place, closely merged with the mother, only moved along the outer wall of the abdomen. And he needs to stay there for a while.

Hereinafter, in the diagrams, we draw a mother, but we mean any adult significant for the child: mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, and even an older brother or sister.

Today, battles on the topic “not to accustom to hands” are already perceived as an anachronism. But our parents (and us along with them) got the full program. I don’t know if fiction describes the suffering of a young mother who stands outside the nursery door and listens to her child’s heart-breaking cry, but does not come and take him out of the crib, because “you can’t teach him to use hands”, because “he is a little manipulator «, because «then it will sit on your head.» A young woman is ready to beat her head against this door, her whole instinctive nature demands to immediately grab the cub, cuddle it, rock it, comfort it, everything inside her screams that the child should not cry like that, this is wrong, not normal, this cannot be good, but the book says that “screaming develops the lungs”, a strict district pediatrician said that “his back is twisted” from wearing it in his arms, her own mother, who was once forced to send her daughter to a nursery two weeks after birth and return to work, repeats: “do not indulge, then you will regret it yourself,” and the husband, although he is nervous himself, tries to give arguments: “you fed him and changed clothes, he is healthy, everything is fine with him, he will scream and calm down, don’t worry.” Entire generations of mothers have gone through this.

Here, perhaps, the genre of tragedy would come up. Good people usually act and suffer in it, who torture and even kill each other not because they are villains, but because they are drawn into the wheel of Doom. Rock is a complex amalgamation of scientific errors, tragic generational history, economic processes that called women into production, fashion advice from parenting gurus that became marketing brands, and many more powerful forces that are now rolling through this woman — and through her baby.

They then deal with the consequences. A sense of guilt and inadequacy, which will take root in her soul and turn into either hyper-custody and anxiety, or a protective habit to move away from the child’s pain: “figure it out yourself, not a little one,” “do not dramatize, this is nothing.”

The despair that will overwhelm him when he still doesn’t scream and falls asleep in exhaustion. It will cover once, twice, ten times, and then this despair will take root inside, and will remain with him forever, covering in moments of life’s difficulties with an irrational conviction that comes from nowhere, that “everything is useless, no one will help, I am doomed.”

It would have seemed rather strange to our ancestors to put a child alone in something like a wooden cage and leave. How can you leave such a helpless cub alone? Yes, we do not live in a cave or even in a hut, a baby from a beautiful nursery, in which everything is matched in style and color, will not be dragged into the forest by a wild beast and rats will not bite. But he doesn’t know that! His instinct, nurtured by evolution for hundreds of thousands of years for his safety, says one thing: either you are next to your adult, or write wasted. The instinct of the mother, which for the same hundreds of thousands of years has been adjusted to the instinct of the child, like two most complex parts of one mechanism, repeats the same thing: do not leave him, do not let him scream for a long time, this is dangerous for him and for you. The saber-toothed tiger will come to the cry and eat you both. The cry of a child causes unbearable stress in an adult, and this kind of stress, the purpose of which is to make you act, to do something urgently so that the cry stops, our culture makes you slow down, extinguish it in yourself with an effort of will.

Terribly sad, this is all, terribly sorry for everyone. And it’s good that these escheat ideas that a child can be “spoiled”, “spoiled”, simply by giving him what he needs, are becoming a thing of the past today. I would like to hope that even in the years of the most stringent prohibitions, in most cases, nature took its toll, and young mothers slowly violated them, and hugged their children, and fed “out of time”, and kissed, despite the “risk of introducing an infection”.

When my son was born, few people had heard of slings, and the height of progressiveness in the available literature on parenting was the famous book by Benjamin Spock, where, among other things, often quite reasonable, there was this very “shout and get used to it.” It so happened that three weeks after the birth, I was left at home alone with the child: my mother’s vacation ended and she left, and her husband landed in the hospital. It was the middle of winter, dark and cold.

But, oddly enough, I remember this time as a wonderful one. I didn’t want to let the baby out of my arms, and I didn’t. I just kept it all the time. We slept together, ate together, read, went for bread, soaked diapers and cooked soup. Sometimes thoughts came: maybe it’s not worth standing at the stove with a child, you never know. But I just couldn’t put it down. His place was near me, so that he could sniff, kiss, touch, say something to him — as much as he wanted, that is, almost constantly. It felt so natural.

Or maybe in those unkind years of the “regime” and “unaccustomed to hands”, young mothers were helped by their own grandmothers, whose ideas about raising children happily developed in the pre-industrial era. These grandmothers — and sometimes grandfathers — took the unfortunate screaming baby in their arms, hugged it tighter, and began to walk around the room with him, shaking, swaying, dragging endless «ah-ah-ah» or «shhhh», and the little the sufferer finally calmed down and calmed down.

When my daughter was a month old, my grandmother flew to us — three thousand kilometers away — to look at her great-granddaughter. And one afternoon the child screamed something very much, fed and rocked — well, nothing helps. And this is where the real master came on the scene.

Grandmother took the baby tighter and began rocking, up and down, vigorously, and sing a song, the very one that I remember from childhood, her own composition, or maybe even her mother: “You are my dear, you are my chicken, and bye bye, and bye-bye, pump my baby ”- and so many times with variations. I remember every sound, every intonation even now.

By that time, of course, we were already tired of night awakenings and all the usual whirlwind with a newborn, we wanted to sleep all the time. And now my daughter began to calm down — give me, I think, and for now I will lie down, at least take a nap.

Grandma sings. Five minutes later my husband came, also lay down next to me and instantly fell asleep.

Then came the son, he was almost ten, and in fact he never slept during the day. But then he resolutely climbed between us — and calmed down. It was impossible to resist this «and bye-bye, and bye-bye …» Everyone slept until the evening, slept to the core.

This is one of the happiest memories in my life, how we all sleep side by side, and above us is my grandmother’s voice, which is so sweet to surrender to power, trust completely and feel peace and security with every cell. Ancient magic of wearing.

PV: The meaning of bearing is simple and understandable, if you only remember that the child has not yet been fully born: you need to let him stay again in conditions similar to his usual ones, to his life in the womb, because he does not yet know another. Closely, from all sides, embrace with soft and warm (hands, diapers), rock, as a woman’s stomach sways with any movement, fence off from the world with a cocoon of monotonous, but rather loud sounds, as it was in my mother’s stomach, when it was pounding right above the ear heart, intestines seethed, blood rustled in the arteries. Let me stay a little longer there, in half-life, sleep, mature in warmth and peace. Do not pull out into loneliness ahead of time, this will not add “independence” to the child, but peace to the parents.

Through saturation to independence

In many traditional cultures, babies spend the entire first year of life cuddled up to their mother, who holds the baby in her arms or wears it tied on her back. He feeds, not interrupting his work, he also sleeps with the child. If the fears about «spoiled, taught» were true, their children would almost have to insist on wearing them until adulthood. However, observations say exactly the opposite: these kids are much more independent and independent by the age of two than their urban peers. They are not inclined to whine, whine, constantly pull on their mother and «hang» on her, they are full of joyful curiosity and do not look «spoiled» at all. And children from modern megacities, whom they were very afraid to “accustom to hands”, or whose mothers could not be with them, insatiably demand the attention of adults, are capricious, exhaust their parents with their eternal discontent and stickiness.

Because everything is not arranged at all as it seemed to strict pediatricians, who assured: teach it — it will always demand. But exactly the opposite.

The development of a child is like a path through a complex winding maze, like in a computer quest game. There are many forks along the way, at the moments of forks you need to get an answer to a question. The choice of path depends on the answer — not completely, but significantly.

The neonatal period is the first fork in the road, when the child seems to decide whether to take root in the world or not? are they waiting here or not? Is there any chance at all to survive, or is there nothing to try? He asks a question — shouting. He yells, and it can be translated something like “There is someone to count on here, huh? Who needs me here or inopportunely? Here you have how everything is arranged: can you live and develop in peace, or will you have to fight for life all the time? Let me know soon!»

The best answer: “Hi, baby, we have been waiting for you here, you can rely on us, grow calmly, we won’t let you down. We have everything you need — grow, live, rejoice!» Of course, the child needs not words, but deeds and actions: the constant presence of the mother, warm hugs, milk as much as you want and at any time, attention to his needs, which he himself cannot yet name or even realize. Then the child grows calmly, and as soon as some need is saturated, ceases to be relevant, he simply parted with it. The time will come — it will get off your hands, and you will not hold it. If he grows big, he will demand a separate room and be happy in it. If we are full, we will not leave the table with a piece in hand. If we’ve had enough sleep, we won’t be looking all day for an opportunity to lie down. When a need is fully, deeply satisfied, there is no need to hold on to it. Satisfied need liberates.

And vice versa: if in some significant need we are limited, it becomes stronger. After a strict diet, we are ready to eat the entire contents of the refrigerator. A person who was in great need in his youth may later be dependent on money and expensive things. If we are greatly frightened by some kind of incident, we can be overly cautious and prone to reinsurance for a long time. Just like a child, if you answer your question: “Hey, am I needed here, are they waiting for me?” he receives — by the actions of adults — an uncertain answer; if they approach him, then no, if he is fed not when he is hungry, but “on schedule”, if he is left alone when he is completely unprepared for this, he remembers rule number 2: fight, get yourself attention and care adults at any cost! And then already in the course are clinging, crying for every reason and without, whining, whims, helplessness, and even illness. The need is not satisfied, the child is frightened by the experienced «attachment hunger». After that, even receiving the attention of his parents, he can no longer get enough, believe that he will have enough of everything, he is reinsured, he asks too much, because he already knows: how much is needed — they will not give, in order to get the most necessary, you have to ask for more. As in a book about Cheburashka and Crocodile Gena: in order to be given a machine of bricks, you must ask for two machines of bricks.

Every parent of a baby knows this phenomenon: if you have nowhere to hurry, if, while rocking the child, you yourself are not averse to taking a break and lying down with him in an embrace, he will fall asleep pretty quickly. But if you have urgent work waiting for you, if soup is boiling in the kitchen, if your favorite movie is on, guests are sitting in the next room and waiting for you, motion sickness can drag on. It seems that everything, fell asleep — but it is worth putting him to bed or trying to get up and leave, as he cries again. No matter how hard you try to move carefully — as if you feel that an adult wants to get rid of it as soon as possible. And he doesn’t let go.

Precisely according to this principle, stable capricious, dependent behavior is formed: if a child often feels that an adult is not up to him, he cannot relax, he must always be on the alert, check the strength of the connection. Parents get tired, annoyed, those around them assure that the child is “too spoiled”, they begin to show strictness, “do not go on about it” — and the situation becomes even worse, because he is even more frightened and fights even more desperately. A vicious circle is formed in which everyone is unhappy and dissatisfied.

The attachment program is dialogical: a child’s request (I need it! I’m scared!) — an adult’s answer (I’ll help! I’ll protect!). If the request is reliably followed by a response, the program loop closes and the process moves on. When the need is generously and joyfully satisfied by the parent, the child is freed from it. It is the fully satisfied need to be dependent, to receive care and help that leads to independence and the ability to do without help. You have only one way to make the vessel full, and that is to fill it up.

But if the answer to the child’s request is not received, or it is given through hostility and irritation, “on, just get rid of it, there’s not enough evil against you” — the request “gets stuck” like a broken gear, the cycle scrolls idly again and again, release does not occur. The child does not become independent: he remains captive to the need, even if, due to his age, he should no longer feel it so sharply. The child who was limited in this will ask for longer. Unless, of course, he was completely disappointed in the ability of his parents to respond to his needs and did not give up — but this is already a serious trauma of attachment, which will not be discussed in this book.

NB! You don’t have to raise a newborn. No need to torture yourself and him. It is intended by nature that in the first months of life a mother should hardly part with her child. This is actually a very short time, it will quickly pass, and then you will not return it. Everything can wait: work, friends, household, all this will not go anywhere, and for a future relationship with a child, these months are priceless.

Of course, for a woman in the modern world, carrying is more difficult. In archaic cultures, the mother, having quickly recovered from childbirth, immediately returned to her usual social circle, to ordinary affairs and entertainment. It was just that a child was now attached to her — literally attached — to her. She could feed, pump, wash him among other things. In a modern city, a woman with a baby finds herself isolated: she does not go to work, it is more difficult for her to get out to her friends, she has to give up her usual pleasures like going to the cinema or shopping. This can be stressful, especially if there are no relatives and friends coming to visit.

Little by little, the modern city is being rebuilt, agreeing to «accept» a mother with a baby into its turbulent streams. More and more public places with changing rooms and cafes with high chairs, mother and baby rooms appear in the offices of large companies, slings and kangaroo backpacks are popular. It is worth using these opportunities in order not to part with the child in his first months, because the term of term is so short, you cannot return it and you cannot replace it with anything, and there are hardly many things in the world that would be worth exchanging it for.

Who is the nicest in the world?

Time passes, and by the end of the «fourth trimester» we finally see the child as a child: he holds his head, he smiles, looks around curiously, he pulls his hands to his parents. A newborn for parents is in many ways a “black box” — you won’t understand why he is crying, what he is smiling at, where he is looking. But three months is a completely different matter. His facial expressions are clear to us, his look becomes “turned on”, his face becomes pretty, his body is elastic, in a word, you can start acting in commercials. The kid shows with his whole appearance: here I am, hello, ka-a-ak here you are interested, I, perhaps, successfully entered, let’s live soon!

Since that time, communication, exchange of glances, smiles, sounds, gestures has become the most important content of a child’s life. And every act of this communication, every look and smile becomes another thin thread connecting the child with his adult, a thread in a strong rope of attachment.

This communication itself is very interesting. The way we talk to babies has been studied and described in detail by scientists, this particular style of communication is called “mother speech”, and its features are the same for different cultures and peoples. Everywhere and always, adults talk to babies, raising the timbre of the voice and stretching the vowels, using many diminutive forms and exaggerated intonation, actively using facial expressions and touching the child during the conversation. So do women, and men, and teenagers, and old people, and those who have children, and those who have never had them. This is a behavior model that we learn in our own early childhood and unconsciously turn on when we see a baby.

But it is especially interesting to think about the content of the «mother’s conversation», what exactly is said, verbatim. If you think about it, the content looks rather strange. “Who is this good boy here? And this Vasenka is such a good boy! And what is our Vasenka rubbing his eyes? He wants to sleep already, our little one. And why is Vasenka upset with us? Oh, this nipple fell, what a misfortune, where did she roll away? What is it, what happened? Oh, that’s it, Vasenka needs to be washed. That’s what a clean handsome boy has become! And what a new u.e.shechka he has, with pussies. Pussies say: “meow-meow”, they want to be friends with Vasenka. A very handsome, clean boy is going to go bye with us now, ”and everything like that, continuously, every day and hour. Agree, in written form it looks … let’s say, strange. In any case, in all our other acts of communication, we are not in the habit of continuously telling the interlocutor what his name is, his gender, what he is wearing, what he wants and what mood he is now. If we tried to communicate with people in this manner, they would definitely think that we are unhealthy. However, with babies, all people, of different cultures and social strata, communicate in exactly the same way.

Moreover, most of the communications in the family, including those between adults, revolve around the baby in the first months of life. They talk about him, worry about him, praise him, forming around him a kind of round dance of admiring admirers.

Such a “round dance” is described in a poem by Agnia Barto through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, and it seems rather strange to him:

My sister is twenty days old

but everyone keeps talking about her, about her:

she is the best, smartest of all.

And heard in the house in the morning:

— she added a hundred grams!

— Well, girl, well, smart!

She drank water —

for this again praise:

— Well, girl, well, smart!

She slept peacefully.

— Well, girl, well, smart!

And mom whispers: «Charming!»

Delighted with Alyonka.

“Look, we dressed up in new diapers!”

«Look, we’re yawning,

we open our mouths! shouts a happy dad.

And he is unrecognizable.

He is the entire color film

spent on Alyonka.

At the same time, the child himself does not like such a peculiar manner of communicating with him — he expects and demands it. In the famous “still face” experiment, mothers of infants, on the command of a psychologist, stopped motherly conversation with their children, fell silent and kept their faces impenetrably still. The reaction of the child to this quickly passed the stages of amazement, anxiety and protest and turned into frank panic with a loud roar, so that the experiment never managed to last more than two minutes. It seems that babies literally cannot live without constant “lisping” with them.

What is the essence of this special type of communication? Adults, especially parents, constantly inform the child about himself, about his needs and feelings. It is as if they are telling him: we see you, you exist for us, you are important. Indeed, how else would a child know that he exists, that he is as such, by himself? This is completely non-obvious knowledge. It must be received from another — nothing else.

Remember, in the movie «Avatar», the inhabitants of Pandora greeted each other with the words: «I see you» when they met? This is not a fantasy, in many languages ​​this is exactly how a greeting sounds when meeting. I see you, you exist, I recognize your being in the world. And after that, you can already talk about business.

And vice versa: one of the most terrible plots for a person, all the torment of which is shown in the film “Ghost”: you exist, you feel, think, you want something, but no one sees you, does not recognize your existence, you are excluded from the world of the living .

On this dependence of a person on recognition by others, a cruel and extremely effective practice of boycott is built: no one touches you, does no harm, you are simply ignored — and life becomes unsweet.

We are social creatures, we can’t do that. We need to “be visible” to others, to know that they hear and understand us.

Only from surrounding adults can an infant learn that he exists, only reflected in their eyes, only seeing his feelings mirrored on familiar faces and hearing their description from adults. It is not surprising that children who grow up in orphanages, deprived of constant contact with loving adults, many months, or even years later than ordinary babies, begin to recognize themselves in the mirror. Also, much later they switch from calling themselves in the 3rd person “Vanya wants”, “Give Vanya” to the use of the words “I”, “me”. In some deep sense, they do not exist for themselves.

So, adults serve as constant mirrors for the child, but these mirrors are not cold glass, indifferently reflecting exactly what is in front of him. «Mother’s speech» is full of ahs, ohs and delights, affectionate words, gentle intonations, smiles and soft touches. It is as if she envelops the child with an invisible luminous cocoon of admiration and approval — his every manifestation, every sound, every feeling reflected on his face, the mother welcomes, understands, calls out loud, repeats exaggeratedly on her face and emphasizes importance. She not only serves as a mirror — she serves as a mirror in which you are always good, loved and important. Such communication is called positive mirroring, that is, it is a caring, loving, approving mirror.

What conclusion will a child make, to whom, throughout the first year of life, everyone around him constantly informs about himself, about his needs, while constantly praising and touching? The conclusion is very important, fundamental for the whole development of his personality: «I exist and that’s good». Mom herself said. Dad made it clear. And everyone agrees with them, and the grandmother, and the neighbor, and even a random passerby.

Think about how important it is to know: “I exist, and this is good. This means — I am in this world by right, legally, he is happy with me and accepts me. I am exactly what you need, I am accepted and loved completely, without conditions. “And this is good” — as a sign of the creation of a personal world, a microcosm, a personal universe of a person. Then he will live in it, equip it, dispose of it in his own way, but at the core — «and that’s good.»

This is the same feeling that psychologists call basic trust in the world, and it very much determines a person’s future relationship with himself and with life. There are versions that it is difficulties with basic trust that underlie some depressions, addictions and other unpleasant conditions. Because, unfortunately, not all children are lucky at the beginning of their lives to bathe in positive mirroring. If the parents are distant, cold, if the mother suffers from postpartum depression or grief, if she is too overworked, seriously ill, if he is too early in the nursery, where he is given little attention, basic trust may not develop.

Positive mirroring lays the foundations of self-esteem, becomes the core inside the personality, forming its very core. If at the heart of the personality is a solid, like a titanium, core of the belief “I exist and it’s good,” a person is much less dependent on external evaluation. Arrows of criticism, condemnation will not destroy it. So, being calm for their safety at the deepest level, an adult will be able to treat criticism reasonably, accept something, reject something, blame — correct and apologize, draw conclusions for the future. Criticism is perceived as a subjective judgment of another person, which can be either true or erroneous, both important and not of particular importance. Also with a positive assessment, praise. It is pleasant, but not urgently needed, it does not penetrate into the most hidden depths of the personality, there is no such praise that would be stronger and more important than that basic conviction “I am good” learned in infancy.

And if there is no titanium base, a strong positive attitude towards oneself? Then criticism, especially from close or significant people, is perceived as a threat to the individual as a whole, as a message to the world: “You are not good enough. It would be better if you didn’t exist.» And although the mind understands, of course, that criticism in itself cannot kill, cancel, throw them out of life, subconsciously condemnation is perceived as a death sentence. Is it any wonder that a person in this case cannot benefit from criticism, he will either defend himself at any cost, like a wounded gladiator, without ceremony in the means, attacking and wounding in response, or, again, at all costs avoid any activity, fall into paralysis so as not to risk making a mistake. Oddly enough, praise also does not go in the future: it is either extremely embarrassing, it is perceived painfully, since it always seems “undeserved”. «insincere». or it turns into a necessary dope, and then a person can be easily controlled with the help of flattery and compliments.

Both that, and another in a life meets, and, alas, more often, than it would be desirable. And in the most severe cases, it takes the form of a painful dependence on the assessments of others — narcissistic personality disorder.

How many of them are around us, people who seem not sure that they exist, that they are rightfully in the world? Not necessarily former orphans, but almost always deprived of the attention and acceptance of the most significant people in their lives.

We wake up in the middle of the night from the roar of a motorcycle, which, without a silencer, rushes through the sleeping streets of the city. What makes the rider so aggressively inform the world about his existence, why does he not believe in another way to declare himself?

We see crowds of people at auditions for stupid TV shows, people who are ready to lose not only privacy, but also self-esteem, for the amusement of the public, just in order to “get cool on TV” and, having appeared on thousands of screens, believe at least for a while, that they exist.

How many melodramas end with a happy ending, which consists in the fact that the hero sees himself on the front pages of newspapers — only after such a radical confirmation of his existence by society does he begin to believe in himself, in his right to live and be the way he is.

How many people endlessly post photos and reports on social networks about their every day, about any detail of their life, as if without reciprocal likes they are not quite sure that they really have a face, a figure, a car, a dacha, a cat, a child and a pie with berries on dessert. Remember, even in Gogol: “Tell the Sovereign Emperor that there are such Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky in the world” …

Of course, positive mirroring does not end in infancy, we continue to let the child know that he loves, it is important that we are glad to have him in our lives. The need for such a “warm soul” can again become aggravated during the crisis periods of life, during periods of severe trials or age-related difficulties, for example, in adolescence. At these moments, it is again very important for a child to see in the eyes of a parent, to hear understanding, approval and unconditional acceptance in his words, in order to be convinced again: «I exist — and that’s good.»

While positive infant mirroring itself is ubiquitous and universal, its degree of expression can vary greatly across cultures.

One of my acquaintances told how his little son got a nanny — a woman who had just arrived from a Caucasian village. Kind, caring — she really liked the young parents and the child, and dad and mom were surprised when a couple of weeks later the nanny said: “I feel like I don’t know something about the child. What are you hiding from me? I swear I won’t leave him, but tell me: why is he so sick? Parents were shocked, but word by word it became clear where the question arose.

The nanny, who spent her whole life among emotional, open-minded compatriots, raised her children and grandchildren there, was completely incomprehensible to the behavior of the inhabitants of Moscow at the sight of a child. She is used to the fact that if you are walking down the street and you have a cute plump baby in your stroller, literally every cross-counter you meet finds it absolutely necessary to stop and burst into stormy enthusiasm: “Wow, what a handsome man! What a rich man! What happiness for parents! God bless!” — and stuff like that. When people in Moscow passed their eyes over the child’s face and silently turned away, without changing the detached, depressive, irritated facial expression usual for a resident of the metropolis, the woman found only one explanation for herself: probably, the child shows that he is seriously, terribly, terminally ill . Everyone sees this at once, and delicately turn away, and only she alone does not notice something.

This story is more sad than funny — it shows how, in fact, our children are deprived of positive mirroring, this constant warm stream of admiration, in which their peers, who grow up not only in the Caucasus, but also in Turkey, Italy, Thailand, bathe — in different parts of the world, where a direct relationship with children is better preserved, where to admire them, one’s own or others, to praise and caress them is completely natural and goes without saying. Russian young mothers, traveling with a child, are often shocked and even outraged — why are they all climbing to my child? And only mothers of really sick children, on the contrary, strive at every opportunity to get to those places where their baby will hear from morning till night that he is “sweet”, “handsome” and “wonderful baby”, where he will be squeezed, to stir up and try to make him smile, and not to shy away from him and not to measure the mother herself with a condemning-pitying look.

It seems that just as there are areas with a deficiency of some important substances for health, such as iodine or vitamins, there are also areas with a lack of positive attention to children.

By the way, there are people who are terribly annoyed by “lisping” with children, it seems fake, they prefer to talk even with babies “like adults” or not communicate with them at all. Most often, if we learn more about the childhood of such a person, we will find there either a lack of communication with parents, or distant, “frozen” parents. Positive mirroring is an unconsciously assimilated behavior model, and if there was nowhere to take it from, it does not turn on when communicating with children. And the sad baton is passed on.

NB! Understanding the role of positive mirroring in the development of a child, we can appreciate how important the psychological, emotional state of the mother is at this time. Her illness, fatigue, conflicts with her husband, fear for the future can lead to the fact that she will be able to care for the child, but she will not mirror positively. Therefore, the best thing that family members and relatives can do for the baby is to help his mother be rested, calm, happy and spend more time in communication with the child. It is better not to sit instead of her with the child, but to take care of her herself: free from household chores, feed tasty food, give a massage, fill a fragrant bath. When the mother herself feels well, she will communicate with the child naturally and with pleasure.

You can’t get lost with mom

How many times does a mother come up to an infant in response to its crying during the first year of life? Three thousand? Ten? Time after time, the same “dialogue” takes place between a small child and an adult caring for him:

– Aaaaaa! I feel bad!

“I’m already here to help you. Now I will feed (I will wash, rock, I will take it in my arms). Like this.

— Chmk-chmk. Life has gotten better!

Repeating over and over again, this sequence of actions forms a circle of care: the child has discomfort — he gives a signal — the parent comes, does something — comfort sets in, and so on until the next problem.

The circle of care is a bit sluggish at first, in the early days it is difficult for parents to guess what the baby wants, especially if it is the first-born. Sometimes he can not be comforted by anything: neither by breastfeeding, nor by changing diapers, nor by carrying in his arms. The stomach hurts, the weather changes, some other discomfort — that you understand about such a small one, yells and that’s it. But already by two or three months, the “dialogue” is getting better. Parents and the child adapt to each other, the mother begins to distinguish shades of crying and facial expressions, she already knows well whether he wants to eat, sleep, or just on his hands. The wheel spins further, with each turn adding to the child’s trust in his parents: here they helped this time, and this time, and again, and always. And no one knows exactly how many turns, but somewhere towards the end of the first six months of life, we see that something very significant happens in the relationship between the child and his adult. The child begins to trust.

How does a newborn cry from hunger? Like it’s being cut. It’s like he’s dying right now. This is a sharp cry through which no persuasion can break through, his eyes are closed, he is closed from contact with the world, locked in his suffering. And this is understandable: hunger is a vital feeling, it is directly related to life and death, the child still has very little experience, how does he know that he will certainly be fed, will not be left to die of hunger? So he yells, and only when the first drops of milk get into his mouth will he shut up to start eating. There is no way to console him, except for the direct immediate satisfaction of his need.

Here’s a half year old. He got hungry too. Mom went to the store, lingered, and she really wants to eat, and he roars in the arms of dad or grandmother. And so — what is it? Mom’s voice in the hallway! Pause. Turn the whole body — there. Eyes wet with tears are looking for mom, hands reaching out to her. He still feels hungry, but no longer yells, rather whines impatiently. Mom has not yet approached him, has not yet had time to give a breast — and he is no longer so bad and scared. Why? Yes, because over the past six months the circle of concern has turned so many times, so many times mom came and fed, and the nasty terrible feeling of hunger receded, that his little brain concluded: a trend, however. You won’t get lost with your mom. If I see and hear her, it means that I have ALREADY been saved.

Another year will pass, and when he gets hungry at one and a half, his mother will be able to tell him: “Wait, dear, now I will cook porridge for you,” and he will wait 10–20 minutes without falling into hysterics, because here she is, which means everything will be fine.

This is how the magical property of attachment: to soothe and console with the very fact of the presence of “one’s own” adult. It’s not scary next to him, because he always somehow, yes, he will make it so that I feel good.

This conviction of the child is irrational, the objective level of comfort is of little interest to him, well, except for obvious hunger, cold and pain. There is a saying «with a sweet paradise and in a hut», although it is often questioned when it comes to adults. Like, love will pass, but the hut will remain, and no matter how the love boat breaks into everyday life. For children, the saying is true one hundred percent. They feel good in any hut, with any way of life — if they are with their family, and the family takes care of them.

A refugee child who was left without a stake and a yard, experienced shelling and experienced a lack of food, lives in a camp for immigrants, not knowing what will happen to them next, can be serenely happy if the parents themselves do not lose their presence of mind with him.

And vice versa, a child living in an expensive rich house, with the best material conditions, who is in complete safety, can be completely unhappy, because dad has a business and a mistress, and he almost never comes home, mom is depressed, and has already tried drink a pack of sleeping pills, and constantly changing housekeepers and nannies take care of the baby. And it is he, and not his peer from a refugee family, who has every chance of neurosis, enuresis, neurodermatitis and other consequences of severe long-term stress.

How many times have you heard the bewildered stories of employees of orphanages and shelters. “How come, they took the child from his mother, he was covered in lice and scabies, they spent the night in some basement on a pile of rags, but in general the child was healthy. And here, in excellent conditions, with good food, in warm clothes — the third hospitalization in a year, then pneumonia, then pyelonephritis.

That’s how it is. Because it was not scary with a mother in the basement if, although she did not have a home and work, she tried to take care of the child, fed him, shook him (If the care for the child was clearly insufficient, we can talk about the trauma of neglect. We will talk about it in detail in the book «Children wounded in the soul»). And without a mother, in warmth and comfort, but among strangers — constant stress, undermining the immune system.

With each turn of the wheel of caring, attachment is confirmed, strengthened, every act of caring, like every act of positive mirroring, caress is another thread that connects the child with the parent. The default child is sure that the wheel of care will work again and again. You won’t get lost with your mom. With dad, you can be calm for yourself. Folding, intertwining, these threads form an ever stronger and more reliable rope of attachment, and the more reliable and durable it is, the more magical power the parent has. His kisses relieve pain, his touch and voice drive away fear. He is now able to literally «spread the clouds with his hands.»

For any child, parents are demiurges, powerful gods of his world. He does not yet imagine that there may be problems with which they are unable to cope. That they may not have money or strength, that they may be afraid for their or his health, may not be sure of their future well-being — the child does not happily know all this, may not think about how exactly they will take care of him, what they will think of, than donate for this. It doesn’t interest him. He just trusts and waits for help — always. The one to whom the child is attached consoles and gives him strength simply by the fact of his presence.

Whether the family lives in a luxurious mansion or in a slum, in a metropolis or in the jungle, whether it lives like all families around, or is very different from the social norm — the child does not care. There are parents, they are nearby, they look at me with love, they respond to my crying — everything is in order. There may be an economic crisis around, global warming, a flu epidemic, a flood or a war — if the parents themselves are in order, if they are not separated from the child for too long and look confident and calm enough — he is fine. because the well-being of a child does not depend on the conditions in which he lives, but on the relationships in which he is.

NB! Do not consider yourself a bad parent because you live in crowded places, buy clothes in second-hand stores, or do not always have money for fruits. And even more so if you do not have a hotel nursery as in the picture, children’s clothes from a well-known company, a dozen grooming devices «specially designed by the best specialists in order to make your baby happy.» They won’t make him happy.

To be honest, a child doesn’t need about three-quarters of what a typical middle-income urban family buys. There is an opportunity — why not buy it, because it pleases parents so much. But to bring yourself to exhaustion with additional earnings, to go to work ahead of time so that “everything is on the level” — why? You should not sacrifice communication with the child in order to «give him all the best.» There is still nothing better than you and your hugs in the world, the trust and peace of mind of a child cannot be bought for any money.

In water and without water

I do not think that in this chapter you have found something completely new and unknown for yourself. Attachment is so natural, so common — well, of course, children need parents, their love and care. What is there to talk about, what to study?

Albert Einstein once said: «The fish will be the last to find water.» After all, water is her world, her way of life. So it is with attachment. It is so natural and so deeply sewn into us that it never occurred to people to think about it detachedly, to realize it as a special phenomenon, to start studying almost the entire history of science.

But in what situation will the fish still find water? If there is no water. In the same way, attachment as a phenomenon was discovered when observing children who have lost their parents.

The founder of attachment theory, the English psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, worked with children living in orphanages and children who were separated from their parents by the Second World War (they were sent to evacuate from English industrial cities, away from the bombings). It was Bowlby who first realized and formulated that being close to his adult is a separate and very significant need of a small child, and in separation he suffers, even if he is fed, dressed and safe. Bowlby was the first to see the evolutionary essence of attachment — as a program that provides an emotional connection between a child and an adult, literally “binding” them to each other so that the child is not left alone and disappears. The presence of “their own” adult in itself means protection and peace for the child, the child needs a mother as such, and not just her breasts or hands that do something for him. It would seem that such a natural thought, but Bowlby had to defend it in fierce disputes with the psychoanalytic theory prevailing in those years that the infant perceives the mother only as an extension of the breast, as a source of food and pleasure from sucking. “Inherent in the infant is the need to come into contact with a person and become attached to him. The need for an object of affection is independent of the need for food, the need for an object is as primary as the need for food and warmth. Bowlby wrote (1958)

After Bowlby, attachment was also studied in fish out of water situations. Only when a child is deprived of the emotional connection with his adult, so necessary for him, do we see from the consequences how important this connection is for him.

The Englishmen James and Joyce Robertson, continuing what Bowlby had begun, studied the effect of separation from parents on young children. They made the famous film «John» about a little boy who was in an orphanage for only nine days while his mother was in the hospital and the film «Laura» — about a two-year-old girl who is in the hospital and her parents are only allowed to visit her for a short time. These films, shot with emphatic calmness, cannot be watched without tears — such is the power of the suffering of a human cub separated from its mother and father, although objectively the children were in good conditions and in safety.

The classic experiments of Bowlby’s student — Mary Ainsworth — are based on the fact that the baby is briefly left without a mother in an unfamiliar room with a stranger — she leaves and returns after a while. The way in which children experience this situation acutely in different ways is related to the quality of their attachment to their mother, whether they consider their mother a source of protection and support and whether they are confident in her.

Czech psychologist Zdeněk Matejczyk has studied attachment by working with children in orphanages and XNUMX-hour nurseries, as well as with children whose birth was not wanted by their parents. Below I will talk about some of his observations.

Don’t Miss Your Children by Canadian psychologist Gordon Neufeld is about children who fall under too much peer influence because their attachment to their parents is not deep enough and reliable enough.

I also became interested in attachment theory and appreciated all its methodological and practical power in the practice of working with foster parents who have to correct, heal the traumatized attachment program in their children. The underlying ideas and methods of other approaches simply did not work with children deprived of the satisfaction of the most basic vital need. On the other hand, understanding how the attachment experience affects the behavior and development of a child often really allows you to work wonders in the rehabilitation of children whose attachment has been traumatized.

After the basic provisions of the theory of attachment were outlined, when books and films were made about them, after Bowlby’s famous report in the English Parliament, in which he summarized his research, the report was translated into dozens of languages ​​of the world, attitudes towards children began to change and their need to be with their parents.

Parents were allowed into children’s hospitals, round-the-clock nurseries and kindergartens were no longer considered the norm, children left without parents were not kept in state orphanages, but placed in foster families, in many countries paid parental leave was extended. The right of the child to be with his adult has come to be recognized as a basic right, on a par with the right to security or education.

It is hoped that as a result of all these changes, children today grow up more secure, calm and sincere. Scientific confirmation of these expectations requires serious long-term research, but it seems to me that today’s young parents, those who are 35 and younger, have become kinder to children, better feel their needs, think not only about caring for them, but also about their children. feelings. These parents themselves were born and grew up already at a time when it was considered normal in the country to sit with a child for the first two or three years of his life, and not send him to a nursery soon after birth, they received more family care, and perhaps this gives them a resource to take better care of their children.

Chapter 2. Crisis of 1 year. Yours and everyone else

«He is shy»

This usually happens suddenly when the baby is 7-8 months old. Sometimes later, closer to a year. You once again come with him to the children’s clinic. Previously, your baby was very loyal to all these aunts who want to look at him, touch him, say something to him (well, of course, if they do not hurt), favorably accepted their signs of attention, smiled, reached for a brilliant phonendoscope. Now everything is different. Inside the child, it was as if something had switched. He doesn’t want them. He is afraid of them. He tries to screw his head into his mother’s bosom, hiding from the eyes and hands of strangers. And if they insist and stretch, and even touch, then expect a grandiose roar.

Or a friend who always came to visit you, who used to aunt your baby to mutual pleasure, he walked into her arms and babbled happily, and then suddenly — once! — and he doesn’t seem to know. He turns away, hides, or even yells out loud, as if he saw not an old acquaintance, but Barmaley.

What is it with him? And he just grew up. And most likely, in the last days or weeks, he began to master the freedom of movement: he crawled, began to ask more and more often from his hands — on the floor, in free swimming.

If we remember that the behavior of the child, embedded in the natural program of attachment, is designed to ensure its survival and safety, the meaning of change becomes clear. As long as the child cannot move on its own, it is very convenient that the mother can give him to be held by any person whom she trusts. You never know why — to prevent hot soup in the boiler, for example, or to go to the toilet. The baby most often will not mind if they are held confidently and comfortably, they are affectionately spoken to, and the mother is not absent for too long.

But here he got off his hands and crawled. The situation is changing. Now he himself can follow his mother or another adult. Who knows where he goes — maybe into the forest? Maybe on the edge of a cliff? Maybe to the swamp, where the snakes are in the grass? If children start crawling after anyone and everyone, including a person who does not even know that a child is following him — after all, this is not his child, he does not have parental vigilance turned on — everything becomes very dangerous. From the moment a child gains freedom of movement, he must know who to follow and who not to follow. Separate your adults. Those who remember and think about him. By the way, it was by this time that those areas that are responsible for storing integral visual images mature in his brain. And he begins to recognize mom or dad, to distinguish them from other people even at a distance of several tens of meters.

A typical scene that everyone can watch right in their yard: evening, a baby in a stroller, his mother, nanny or grandmother walks with him, they meet dad from work. Or mother, if she left. There are many other people on the street, strangers, the child indifferently and with curiosity glides over them with his eyes, and suddenly — he beamed, moved his whole body, sounded — this is it! Native face! Here is the joy! It seems that he could — would jump out of the stroller and run towards — rather on the handles, reunite after parting. And very soon it will run …

A very small one cannot do this, he will react to his mother only if she comes close, looks into his eyes, speaks — then he will give out a “complex of revival”: a smile, active movements of arms and legs, sounds. But if mom is literally five steps away, in his field of vision, but does not talk to him, is busy with something, he can be sad and whine, as if he had lost her, although she was in his field of vision.

By this important turning point, which is called the crisis of 1 year (although we remember that it often happens a little earlier), the child develops a circle of attachments. These are all those people who regularly carried out protective and caring behavior towards him. That is, those who live with him together or come very often and take care of the child. Mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, older children, nanny, sometimes even a cat or dog. All those with whom the child has a sense of security, whom he will call for help in case of emergency, and who by his behavior has already shown many times that you can rely on him, you will not be lost with him: he will feed, warm, comfort, stay with you . The one with whom you can not be afraid and grow. These are «their» people. And everyone else is everyone else. Aliens. You can’t relax with them. It’s not worth following them. Let them touch and grab you, stay with them — you don’t have to, you never know, what to expect from them.

A five-month-old someone else’s baby can usually just be walked over and taken out of the stroller, even if it’s the first time he sees you. If you don’t frighten him, don’t grab it painfully, he won’t mind. An attempt to do this with a one-year-old will not work: he will yell, get out and turn his head in search of «his» adults.

This does not mean that after a year it is impossible to become a person close to the child, to earn his trust. It is possible, but for this you need to perform a certain ritual, “ask” for a circle and wait for a favorable consent.

Intuitively, we all know how to gain confidence in the baby. Softly, without pressure, mirror his facial expression, smile briefly. Then again. Show a toy from afar. Wave your hand — do not approach. Exchange a few words and smiles with your mother. Only when the interested look of the child stops at you — look into his eyes, say something in an affectionate cheerful voice, wink. If he smiles back, only then stretch out his hands, make an inviting gesture “do you want to come to me?”. And only when he stretches out his hands in response, you can take him — but be prepared for the fact that he immediately wants to go back to his mother.

In order for the child to be ready to be alone with you, without their adults, even more time must pass, during which you will constantly confirm that you are reliable and safe.

NB! Wanting to serve others, adults sometimes try to break this child safety program. They insistently demand communication skills from him, scold or ridicule the child for being shy, being shy of strangers, forcing him into the spotlight, forcing him to be “polite” and communicate nicely with guests or neighbors met in the elevator. For a small child, this is unnatural and rather painful. He would much more like mom or dad to let him hide his face on his chest or behind his leg, if the child is already standing, to calmly put his hand on his head and continue to communicate with other adults themselves, allowing the child to get used to, look out, take a closer look. Usually, if the new person behaves correctly, after fifteen or twenty minutes smiles will begin and things will go smoothly. Well, if a stranger, instead of performing the trust-gaining ritual described above, starts reprimanding the child for not saying hello, speaking in a loud, sharp voice, stubbornly looking into his face — you should not be surprised that the child turns away completely, and then he will cry.

It is important for a parent to understand: the baby does what the program tells him, the purpose of which is to ensure his safety, and not to give pleasure to an excessively sociable neighbor. Can you imagine how he feels when his own mother persistently pushes him to break safety rules? Can you imagine a parent who would say: “Come on, go play ball right there, on the roadway, because Anna Petrovna will really like it!” Some wildness. But for a child, forcing contact with another adult is about the same wildness.

With age, the tension when meeting strangers will weaken, but the division into friends and foes will remain as one of the basic ones for life. A little later we will see why it is very important.

Irreplaceable is

The division into one’s own strangers is associated with such an important property of attachment as selectivity. These are relationships in which the person himself is important to us, this particular one, unique.

When we come to the hairdresser to get a haircut, we can chat with the hairdresser about something and establish an informal contact. But if he cuts badly, or behaves impolitely, then with a light heart we will change him for another, more inquisitive and friendly. When we come to a new job, it is important for us that colleagues are professional enough, reliable and cooperate well with us. We can get used to them, but if tomorrow one of them is replaced by a more professional, conscientious and less conflicted one, we will rather be glad than upset. These relationships are indiscriminate, in partners we are more interested in functionality, their ability and desire to do something, their qualities, and not their uniqueness.

Another thing is attachment. When we think about our children, we, of course, with the rational part of our consciousness, understand that there are children smarter, more beautiful, healthier, more talented than ours. But if we imagine that we were offered to exchange ours for an exemplary one, for the most beautiful, we would never agree. We need ours. This is attachment. We are attached to him with our hearts, to a unique person, not just to the role of “my child”.

If, due to circumstances, the child did not have the opportunity to divide the world into friends and foes — this happens, for example, with children in orphanages, which are taken care of by many constantly changing people, this can have quite serious consequences for the development of his personality, his attachment can become indiscriminate , blurry. Who caressed, who treated — he is “his own. This means that no one is truly your own, there is no deep attachment to anyone.

In Lois Lowry’s dystopia The Giver (based on the film The Initiate), people live renouncing feelings, including the selectivity of affection. At first glance, this is an ideal world, where everyone is equally dear to each other, there are no quarrels and jealousy. Parents and teachers never get angry with their children, they are patient and reasonable, caring and considerate. The kids don’t fight or mess around. Everyone is always ready to help each other.

Children there are handed out to parents already one year old, taking into account the characteristics of families and babies, and wisely matching them to each other. And if some child turned out to be “extra”, they easily get rid of him, and no one, not even the people who raised him, object — because instead of him there will be another, healthier and better one.

The further the plot unfolds, the more terrible this “ideal” world of replaceables, a world without selective affection, turns out to be.

The selectivity of attachment dooms us to anxiety for loved ones — after all, you cannot replace them, to pain at parting and loss — after all, there is no other such person. It also makes us fight for our loved ones, sacrifice and take risks for their salvation. And it gives incredible happiness in the minutes of meetings, in the hours when we can be together — even without doing anything special, just being there, hearing, seeing, feeling each other. It makes us very vulnerable — but also very strong. You could say it makes us human.