Parenting is an experience that turns children from adults into adults, called parents. As soon as a child is added to a couple’s life, everything changes. Suddenly, the baby becomes the center of their lives. Everything revolves around the needs of the baby. The early formative years, from birth to five years, lay the foundation for a child’s entire life. Mistakes made in parenting during this period can sometimes be irreversible.
One of the fundamental principles of parenthood is appreciating the needs of a baby. If needs are misunderstood, parental responses will damage the bond between baby and mother. One of the first needs of the baby are: to eat, to sleep, to be clean and a feeling of security. Once these needs are met, the baby is a happy baby. The first three needs are physical, but the need to feel safe is where there is a difference of opinion among experts. In cultures, where babies can sleep freely with their parents and where the mother is available to latch on at any time of the day, the baby feels safe. In cultures where babies are made to sleep in separate rooms, and most of life is spent in daycare, there is a change in the baby’s perception of safe relationships.
Spending time in daycare has the advantage of creating bonds with people other than the mother, which can be seen as the beginning of the individual’s independence. But the frequent change of caregivers gives confusing messages to the subconscious. The more changes in the number of caregivers involve less contact, the more discouraged the nervous system feels. At the end of the day, the baby’s safety needs are paramount after feeding and cleaning. Touch plays an important role in providing your baby with a sense of security. The more tender it is available, the more secure the baby will feel. Sensory satiety is what makes a child grow into a stable individual.
When a baby does not get sensory satisfaction, the baby begins to develop several problems, one of which is hyperactivity. In my own observations, a child who has had the kind of contact that is available to a child raised full time by a mother in India or Nigeria is likely to be more emotionally stable. In this case, the behavior can be easily controlled because the nervous system has absorbed the sense of security in the subconscious. Hyperactivity occurs because the nervous system has not reached its level of satisfaction. Children in India weigh less than a baby born in Western Europe. However, they develop motor skills such as crawling, walking, and speaking earlier than children from the Westren countries. My conclusion is that the sense of security through the mother’s touch is the key to this difference. In India, in families where the baby has experiences of contact throughout the day by family members, even if the mother is working, motor skills are learned earlier.
As the baby grows to understand language, the next step is to teach him ways of life. A normal baby who feels well loved will behave well and show no problem behavior. Any reprimand from parents, by a well-attached child, is taken seriously and obeyed. The more loved the child, the less chance he will misbehave. Love is the best basis for discipline.
When a child must be reprimanded, it should be done immediately after an event and not ten minutes later. A child has a short memory. Therefore, the correction has to be immediate. In this way the child can learn to associate the event with the consequences. It is important to let the child know what the expected behavior should be rather than face up to undesirable behavior.
It is not necessary to spank or hit to correct a child. They are counterproductive. If you want a behavior to stop, inform the child of its consequences. For example, if you do not want a small child to go near a burning candle, then you should take the child’s hand and bring it a safe distance from the flame, so that the child can feel the heat. Once a child knows that fire can burn, they will not go near the flame. Such experiences demand hard work and alertness on the part of parents. But it’s worth it if you want a healthy, well-adjusted happy adult as a child.
Experience teaches a child. Words don’t mean much until they are associated with experience. For a child to learn, each mistake and its consequences must be explained in plain language without going into too much detail. And everything must be based on the truth. If a child observes that parents are not sincere in any area of life, no matter what you tell them about the truth, they will learn to be liars.
Copyright Pradeep K Chadha 2006