Parenting
If you don't know yourself very well how are you going to get to know what is going on inside your child? I had a lovely Skype session with a woman recently who had done some therapy with me and had been trying to become pregnant. Well, she did become pregnant and her baby was by now, 2 months old.
The Skype session opened with Karen hardly visible and right in front of the camera was her 2 month old pride and joy, her two month old baby. He was so, so cute and alert and bright and she waved his tiny hand at me and I had the very pleasurable melt moment of love for a little one. Then we talked for quite a while about the birth, the new mothering experience, everything. Karen had a very long difficult labour and missed the first few hours with her new boy because he was 'kept' for observation by the hospital staff. He was a little unresponsive at birth. Karen had certainly made up for lost time. She was simply glowing in her new motherhood. She told me all about little Alexander's life and routines (not too much sleep deprivation for either of them). Great news!
What was most noticeable was Karen herself. She looked and seemed like an entirely different young woman. She had felt very sluggish when she began her work with me and had lived all of her life with a chronic underlying feeling of depression. She took a break from her therapy work to have her little guy and I could see how the experience of giving birth and being a new Mother had affected her very positively. I see this a lot. It was as though she had woken up. She was so relaxed and bright and happy herself. Breast feeding, she told me, was well established, easy, enjoyable, going very well. So, the relax- and- love- your- baby- hormones- production- line was in full swing. Suddenly Karen had a question. What did I think about her leaving in two days to fly to London for her work? I was dumbfounded. I could hardly think but I had to think, real quick. If she was going in two days everything would already have been organised. The only thing I could think to ask was, "Are you taking Alexander with you?" "Of course." she replied. Whew! Then a flurry of questions and yes, everything was cool. She had nanny type help arranged in London and was only going to be there for ten days. Lots of well thought out arrangements were in place. Sounded fine to me. It all sounded excellent to me in fact, maybe a bit early for them both but who's to say.
Little Alexander was still on Karen's lap and she paid some more attention to him......still ever so cute and beautiful to see! Then Karen told me that it might get worse when he is four or five months old because she was going to put Alexander into a 'great' child care scheme where one Mother takes care of four babies in her own home, "only for three days a week," she said.
So here is where the story begins… the story of how we increasingly fail to give our tiny children what they really need. How could I tell Karen that at five months old the mind that was developing for her sweet little guy was going to be shattered… on the very day he wakes up from his first sleep at his replacement Mum's house.
He wakes up, he squirms, opens his eyes, grizzles a bit, waiting for Karen, waiting, waiting, no Karen, no familiar warm deeply recognisable, deeply needed Mother. He looks around, nothing familiar. He starts to get scared, begins to cry. No one comes. Lovely replacement Mum of 'quadruplets' is very busy tending to one of her other three babies who is crying. Alexander hears a baby crying. He hardly knows it is not himself. He starts to cry loudly. He is sad, so lonely, so desperate, frantic. He is totally and utterly alone. For a baby of this age, gone is gone. The abandonment feelings are deep and thorough in the baby's mind. There is no future, no past. A baby just does not know of past or future. All that is known is the present living moment. Lovely well meaning Lady comes from the other crying baby and looms over Alexander. He is lying on his back and sees this looming presence. She has two huge eyes and a mouth and a nose and nothing familiar for all of his five senses to take in. So he doesn't. No familiarity. Alexander finds himself in a scary completely unfamiliar new world. He is by now terrified, crying more loudly.
Lovely Mother of four picks him up and throws him over her shoulder to calm him. The quick strong movement has him looking out at nothing familiar for his five activated senses. He is frozen. Nothing he can do. But he does feel … shocked! The effects of trauma are taking shape. Lovely Mother of four goes to the other crying baby and bends over him to pat him . Alexander feels as though he is falling from a great height as she supports his back and he experiences her manoeuvring him backwards where his eyes look toward a ceiling and his head fills with a rush of blood, his ears hear a sound of distress just like his own. His tongue wants the familiar sweet taste of his Mother's milk. His hands want to touch his Mother's skin. His nose wants to smell her sweetness along with the milk inside her breasts. This is all he has ever known. Alexander's mind is momentarily shattered. I am saying nothing other than the fact that this is the baby's experience. We say "Don't worry, he'll get used to it". This is very true. He has to get used to it. My only point is that Alexander will be a different person in this life for having to go through a cataclysmic shock/ trauma/ fear experience of abandonment at such a young age.
The fact is, he is just too young. Alexander will be an entirely different person to the Alexander who might have been had he not had to go through the shock/trauma fear experience at such a young age. The Alexander who did not have to go through the feelings of abandonment time and again (three days a week) will cease to exist. The different emerging Alexander who will form in the house of this strange woman will lay down a deep template in his mind based in fear and fury. The shock = trauma = fear experience that will set him up as a completely different person to the one I was introduced to a few days ago, will most likely come out in some form later on in his life. It depends on a combination of factors, so complex that no one will notice nor will they understand. So be it, say some. It will make him strong. Not so, say I. That belief and possibility belongs to a time when the child is three or four years of age. At that point they may be able to manage the experience quite well. What a tragic situation say I.
Let's get to know the true force of the experience for the baby which lays down a foundation of shock, trauma, fear in his developing mind and severely affects his mental state. What is Alexander going to be like? How will he form himself to compensate? This is what we parents need to be smart about. For the most part we have to get to know ourselves in order to understand the inner experience of our own children especially when they are babies. We all desperately wish for our babies to have a happy fulfilling life. Tragically we do not know that the foundation for this to happen is being formed moment by moment in an infant's mind. Some will survive abandonment experiences without becoming frozen with anxiety. Others will not. It depends entirely on the babies themselves and many, many other factors. One thing is for sure though and that is, whatever the internalised experience is for the baby, it will stay with that child and form him or her perfectly according to his or her own inner experience and how he or she responds to it. Sometimes other compounding factors will lessen the traumatic effects whilst other factors will increase them.
We have yet to understand that a well looked after baby, well looked after in any class or kind of family will go through particular traumatic experiences that will form the child who could later show all of the signs of fear and anxiety, anger and disconnection. Later on still, he or she will be the child who is suddenly discovered to be disassociated, mysteriously not bothering or wanting to make eye contact with another human being, shockingly not progressing or even worse, regressing in all developmental areas including learning to speak, learning to socialise. These children can almost never learn to realise that they are a part of a big and wonderful world. Many who are less affected will develop into angry, fear filled children with deep problems and behavioural difficulties. This will impair their ability to learn, to make sense of the world. This, of course, is just one such experience for the child who is experiencing in every single moment of their existence. There are many other kinds of experiences that could balance out these traumatic ones but we cannot guarantee this so the whole business of leaving our children while they are so young is rather risky to put it mildly. When we understand the possibilities we are free to choose whatever we wish but it is important to inform ourselves of the risks amongst the many advantages.