Holding Our Children

While walking in my neighborhood recently, I saw a young mother holding her perhaps 5 month old baby on her hip, his body facing out, his little arms and legs outstretched stiffly while he cried loudly. Maybe it was just one of those moments in time, but I watch how parents carry their babies and sometimes I am stunned to see the infant being treated like a sack of potatoes.

I see parents mostly keeping their babies in the plastic car seats which become a carrier which becomes a seat. So Baby can go from car to parking lot to office in the convenient carrier. Kind of like a dish going from dishwasher to microwave to oven all without breaking. But these inventions do not necessitate the parent holding the child in arms, they prevent skin to skin contact and they do not promote eye contact: all the ingredients of a healthy and secure attachment between infant and parent.

I have watched a parent wildly swinging this carrier and new baby in a grocery store, I see many parents talking on cell phones while carrying baby in their carrier, babies never leaving the carrier except to be changed, babies propped with the bottle in the carrier: all convenient ways to care for baby but without giving the infant the essentials of care: eye contact, skin to skin touch and eye to eye cooing, smiling and talking. Have we lost our knowledge of the basic needs of the human infant?

Eye Contact

I have been thinking about.....................eye contact, especially between parent and child since reading A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon.  These three psychiatrists describe how gazing into the eyes of a loved one connects one limbic brain to the other which creates "limbic resonance" between the two individuals.  Our emotions originate in the limbic brain.  The eye gazing from parent to infant in the early months lays the foundation for a secure attachment by allowing emotional regulation and emotional connnection between parent and baby.  

When you wish to communicate effectively with your child, ask for his hands, gaze into her eyes and then tell the child how much you cherish him.  This emotional connection serves to strengthen the parent/child bond.  This is also an effective way to insure that your child listens to you. It is hard for children to ignore parental directions when they are delivered this intimately.  I call it Eye to Eye, Hand to Hand, Heart to Heart communicaiton.  Try this at home when you have something to communicate to your child.