baby diary

A world without a name

Let’s enter the first world of the baby and remember what we have never really forgotten. Imagine that the things you see, touch, or hear have no names or functions, and only a few of them have any memories associated with them. He perceives and experiences objects primarily as the feelings they arouse in him. The newly born child does not perceive them as objects per se, nor in terms of what to do with them or what they are called. The distinctions between “inside” and “outside” are still very vague and are therefore experienced as two elements of a single continuous space.

In every single brief moment in time, Joy’s feelings change with perception, and each time a very different picture of feeling in motion is created: a sudden burst of interest; rising and then falling wave of hunger; ebb and flow of pleasure. Joy experiences life as a succession of moments flowing on top of each other. It is still unclear to him how, after one moment, he finds himself in the next, whether something is happening between them and what exactly. His feelings all the time focus on one or another moment, and he experiences each of them very intensely.

For an infant, unlike an adult, space is not continuous and integral. It resembles, rather, a bubble that surrounds it at arm’s length. Even blind children, when they start grabbing and reaching for objects, only reach for a sounding toy when it is within that radius. They, like sighted children, divide space into two parts, achievable and unattainable, but they do it not with their eyes, but with their ears.

The infant begins to solve a task of great significance: he will have to fill with meaning almost simultaneously all the various components of his world.

EYE LOOK (4,5 months)

Children act as if the eyes really are the windows to the soul. At seven weeks old, they react to them not just as a central “geographical” landmark of the face. If you have ever played peek-a-boo with a child, you know what I mean. The child is already filled with joyful anticipation when you begin to slowly lower the handkerchief with which you covered your face, and the hair and the upper part of the forehead become visible. But a stormy expression of joy comes only at the moment when he sees your eyes.

The six-year-old child discovers the central psychological role of the eyes in a different way. Ask a six-year-old girl who covered both eyes with her hands if she thinks you can see her? Most likely, she will answer: “No!” But the reason for this answer is not that the child cannot imagine that you see him when he himself does not see you. We used to think so, but the essence of the answer lies elsewhere. She understands perfectly well that you see not only her, but also her hands covering her eyes. With your “no!” she actually says: “If you can’t see my eyes, then you can’t really see me!” Seeing someone means looking into their eyes.

Read more:

• Children are friends: this is serious!

Looking into the eyes of the person who is responding to your gaze is a very special experience. At such moments, we not only perceive someone’s inner life, the exchange of glances is unusually disturbing, so that adults are unable to withstand a direct look for more than a few seconds (except in cases of falling in love, sexual attraction or aggression, struggle). A direct silent look provokes a fit of rage in animals. It seems that in people, the exchange of views causes either strong positive or strong negative feelings. This, by the way, is the secret of the attraction of all kinds of “peeping” games for children. Adult maneuvers associated with direct eye contact are based on the same thing: who will be the first to look away? Will he lose or win by doing so?

By three and a half months, a baby can control their gaze almost as well as an adult. Using a new ability, he can now start and stop close communication. Just by looking at his mother, he can start a “meeting” with her. He may decline an invitation to socialize by averting his eyes, and end the meeting by looking decisively the other way. He becomes a real expert in the mimic regulation of this kind of face-to-face social interactions.

At this age, the communication of a child with a mother or father is not determined by anything specific. They don’t talk about a certain topic yet, like the weather or other things. They do not need to explain anything to each other, there is nothing to remember, they do not need to plan for the future. The only “theme” is the moment in which they – two human beings – experience a direct and deep connection. Their interactions have the sole purpose of extending this “experience”.

CREATING STORIES (2,5 years)

By creating a story, children create a new reality. And it turns out two realities: experienced in direct subjective experience and told. They are related to each other, but not the same, they coexist.

The task of the child in creating a story is to convey to the parents the flow of their experiences. At the same time, he does not just create a new, alternative version of what was, he offers a version that may well become “official”, generally accepted. The stories of the past do much to define for us “what really happened,” because they are a selection of only a few of the many experiences experienced. And in this sense, the child is engaged in an extraordinary thing: day by day he learns to create his past.

And what happens if the experienced past and the told past are very different or even contradict each other? In this regard, it must be borne in mind that stories about the past, especially “official” ones, are usually created by the child with the “help” of the parents. This is the result of co-creation. For example, a child who is being physically punished tells a story in which he makes excuses for his parents: “They beat me because they care so much about me.” This story can keep others from conflict with the parents of the punished child and, thereby, save the child from new beatings. But the danger is that the child himself may believe this story, it may become what he believes to be true about himself.

Read more:

• Are we raising sociable children?

Or, let’s say a father’s eyes glow with joy when he looks at his eldest son, and begin to dim when he looks at his younger son. At the same time, the youngest tells a story that has managed to become his own truth: “My dad loves us both equally. He even talks about it himself all the time.” So, the creation of such stories can lead to a distorted perception of reality and perpetuate it, thereby determining subsequent mental disorders. Indeed, a significant part of the work of psychotherapists is associated with “digging”, bringing to light and an accurate description of the reality of a person actually experienced, then comparing it with the told and bringing them into a fairly harmonious correspondence by changing one or both. The stories that are told usually change.

In normal development, the creation of stories performs an important function: it supports the constant process of self-determination, the search for answers to the questions – who am I, what am I? When a child talks about what happened in kindergarten, or what he had for breakfast, or how he went shopping with his mother, or how he had a fight with his sister, he not only defines the past – he creates his own identity. Creating and telling stories is like participating in a self-discovery workshop where you can experiment with “becoming yourself.” This is fundamentally important, because just as constantly and continuously as a child grows and develops, his identity changes. A small person needs to experiment with several versions of himself at once – from public to the most personal.

D. Stern “Diary of a Baby” (Genesis, 2001).