A young brain changes in response to everything encountered in the early years of life. Because human children are born 100% dependent, they require proper and consistent care to survive. By age three our brains are 80% the size of our adult brain, and 90% by age five. Parents are the first to attest to how rapidly children grow, each developmental stage presenting its own complex challenges. Discipline appropriate for a 2 year-old will not work for a 5 year-old who has access to an increased awareness of conscience.
Growing children are defined by aspects of their biology, genetics, and temperament—what we call nature. Nurture also plays an important role in who we become, especially how we experience our first intimate relationships. The environments we grow up in and individual life experiences are also important. Nature has the best chance of blossoming if children are provided proper nurturance. And since caretakers cannot control many of these factors, it becomes ever more important to be aware of, and vigilant about, those we can.
We know that many children, like dandelions, will cope reasonably well with reasonable levels of stress and hardship if, in infancy, they are provided the complete dedication that good-enough parents provide. Some children, however, are genetically more vulnerable to good and bad environments. These orchid children, as Thomas Boyce calls them, react more dramatically to changes in their environment, requiring more parental help as they learn to cope with higher levels of anxiety and/or depression.
In her book The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller identifies another type of child, who, born with high levels of empathy and emotional awareness, adapts to the needs of the parents and family at an early age. In a sense, these emotionally gifted children must be protected from themselves. Though they do remarkably well assuming adult roles, like helping raise siblings, or offering comfort (and even advice!) to emotionally distraught parents, they do so by repressing their own needs and feelings.
To add responsibility to responsibility, we know that the ways we ourselves were raised heavily informs the way we then raise our children—sometimes running parallel; sometimes radically diverging. We may be blind to elements that were missing in our family of origin, even something as enormous as emotional connection. Alternatively, we may be unable to stop ourselves from over-doing, as our parents did, by coddling or over-protecting children, thereby depriving them of tools to navigate life’s twists and turns. And we may see that the ways we still struggle with intimacy as adults, both with ourselves and others, may strongly resemble relational patterns in our families of origin.
Being a good-enough mother is a concept created by Donald Winnicott, pediatrician and psychoanalyst, in 1953. After observing thousands of babies and their mothers, he came to the conclusion that failing our children in manageable ways teaches them how to live in an imperfect world. His point was that as long as a child is safe and well-cared for, the tolerable ways we may occasionally miss coming immediately when they need us, or do not provide our undivided attention, can help children begin to build capacity to deal with frustration. This does not, of course, extend to child abuse or neglect.
Nor is it easy to define what manageable or tolerable disappointment is to children who are growing so quickly, or to assess it in the midst of relatively new distractions like social media and over-stimulating screens. Complexity builds further in a culture that values perfectionism, invulnerability, and anti-dependence; and in the midst of destabilizing mass events like pandemics and natural disaster.
It will take diligent attention to provide good-enough nurture to our children. Parenting classes specific to our children’s ages are, therefore, imperative and available.
Read on to Fundamental Guidelines for Children.
Resources: The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller
Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, Siegel and Hartzell
Positive Parenting Solutions, on-line course by Amy McCready
Love and Logic Parenting Classes: www.pylistomlinson.com
www.BigLittleFeeelings.com