She said:

“My son sucks his thumb.  Even the ultrasound images showed him with his thumb in his mouth.  He’s almost six years old!  Do you have any suggestions on how to break this habit?  As cute as it was, it’s starting to affect his teeth.  We tried bargaining with him, to buy him some cowboy boots if he could stop.  He got very excited for about 5 minutes, then he just automatically started again, right after I turned away.”

My response:

Let me start by saying I can relate — my younger one was a thumb connoisseur since the womb days, too.  My older one was not.  Guess who needed braces?  Both of them.

Disclaimer:  Your son might find my point of view more helpful than you do. That’s because I think thumb-sucking is what a coping skill looks like when it is first born.

Babies are naturally inclined to interact with the world via their mouths. See MommyGarten.com blog post Does Your Baby Have a Smart Mouth? Beyond exploration, babies and young children suck their hands, fingers, and thumbs to soothe themselves.  Any time that a person can find mood-regulating tools within himself, instead of reaching for something external, it’s a good thing.

Someday, the range of healthy choices for being responsible for one’s own emotional state will include meditation, spiritual practice, having a good cry, having a good laugh, having good relationships.  The range of unhealthy choices for managing stress in adulthood is on display every day of the week on reality television: overeating, overdrinking, overspending, and hollow relationships. Braces are cheaper than psychoanalysis or rehab or divorce.

On a geeky note:  The child development “aha” that stands out about your son’s habit is that even in the womb, he was able to isolate his thumb from the rest of his hand, and bring it to his mouth. Many newborns need help bringing their hands to their mouths, so I’m noticing that your boy has always had precise motor skills.  So do all future artists, pianists, violinists, and athletes. My daughter, the former thumb aficionado, remains talented with her hands.  In fact, she quickly gets bored with sports that are not hands-on (hurdles and lacrosse), and she excels at sports where she can touch the ball (volleyball and basketball, for example) — just something I noticed over the years.

As your son matures, he will change his mechanisms for self-soothing, but let’s hope he retains the ability to be emotionally self-nurturing.  Today’s thumbsucker might be tomorrow’s yoga practitioner, compassionate dad, or prolific artist.

Autumn brings families lovely weather, festivals, and other exciting activities.  But at times, Halloween can be a little too exciting for your baby or young child.

An infant who has just discovered the joys of stranger anxiety is in no mood to put up with a bunch of folks who look even stranger than usual for a few days in October.

Keep reading to see what you can do to help your child weather this season.

1.  Talk.

Prepare your child for potentially frightening events in advance by sitting down to read Halloween-themed books together, or watching high-quality television programs that show examples of safe, fun, Halloween activities.  Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang always have some problem-solving skills to share.  Clifford (the big, red, dog of literary fame) has an adventure on Halloween night that your own family pet might aspire to (check out Norman Bridwell’s classic book, Clifford’s Halloween).

2.  Then, listen.

If your child expresses fear or apprehension, respect his boundaries.  Stern warning, parents:  if you downplay his concerns, or nudge him to overcome his reluctance, he loses a valuable opportunity to learn how to protect himself from harm — real or imagined. He needs to build up self-care muscle for that someday when he chooses his teenage friends, dares to be different, or has to break the news to you that he’s going to clown college, not Cornell (see? This Halloween stuff can go too far!)

More tomorrow on how to treat this tricky time of year…..

Emotional Safety, Part 2

Firestations and petting zoos have their place, but when you want to take your child on a journey of discovery, a walk in your own neighborhood (with curiosity as his tour guide) is more than enough.

Your young child’s natural inclination to touch and gather is a good instinct for today’s art activity, making collages. Tomorrow and the next day, your preschooler will be able to enjoy his art, and remember the process that led to the finished artistic product. Many tomorrows later, you’ll be gazing at what remains of that day.

In the warm months, he’ll notice grasses, terrain, spent feathers, flowers, lizards, and winged insects. Allow him to gather a petal here, a pebble there. The cooler months will offer a bounty of acorn shells, pine needles, pine cones, fallen leaves, and browned grasses. As he gathers items, ask him questions about his choices (i.e., his thinking processes).

Collage artist Megan Coyle endorses the idea of using “found objects from outside like flowers and leaves, to create more organic works of art.”  The Washington, D.C. artist also advises using a non-toxic adhesive (like good ole’ Elmer’s School Glue) and thicker paper “like watercolor paper or perhaps even cardboard [to] make it easier to hang the collage once it’s complete.”

Young toddlers will enjoy gluing. Random gluing. Pointless gluing. Just making a glue dot on the background paper, then slapping something on it will be a sheer joy. Older toddlers and preschoolers will be capable of creating a more cohesive piece, especially with the morning’s field trip as inspiration. They might draw a picture of a bird to serve as new home for the feathers they found. A curvy line of pebbles looks like the nature trail you just walked, doesn’t it?

Ms. Coyle also offers a rainy-day back-up plan for MommyGarten.com readers: “You can use whatever you have in your craft box, such as tissue paper, wrapping paper, fabric, or magazines. The beauty to collage is that you can take common, ordinary objects and turn them into works of art.” See our blogroll for a link to the adventures of Megan Coyle’s collage canine, Bosty — your kids will love this dog!

Remember to have your artist sign his work — Megan Coyle always signs hers.  Whether your kid signs with a scribble, a paint-dipped fingerprint, a sticker, or a first initial, signing his creation is another way to be proud of his work.

We’ll use this week to make sure that all the new mommies who are enrolling at MommyGarten.com every day are caught up on the lessons of parenthood.

So, please enjoy this look back at excerpts from previously published posts on what every Mommy needs to know about her baby’s emotional development.

On what newborns can do (from February 2010)

Within the first moments of life outside the womb, your baby has reflexes that help ensure survival.  Some reflexes are strongest in the hours following birth, but subside, then disappear, within days or weeks.  Just in time for mother to bounce back from the labor of … well, labor.  And delivery.  One of the most powerful of these survival tools is the rooting reflex.  When a nipple (or even a finger) brushes by his cheek is touched baby’s mouth opens, and his head turns toward the stimulus, as he searches for the breast.  What comes next, a strong sucking action, is another survival strategy.  Your baby’s perfectly engineered taste bud system and mouth are ready to receive whatever nutrition he manages to extract with all that rooting, hoping, searching, and sucking.

On crying and spoiling (from February 2010):

When you respond to your crying baby, your crying baby learns that:

1. It works to use his words (yes, for now, those are his words),
2. His needs are valid (worth speaking up about),
3. You can be trusted, and
4. You are source of comfort in the midst of overwhelm.

Be careful with this process, parents.  You would not want baby to get the wrong impression.  If you don’t pick him up because you think that a young baby can be spoiled, you’re mistaken.  Spoiling and manipulation require a level of brain development and multitasking that your new baby simply does not possess.  Yet.

On the developmental purpose of play (from February 2010):

One year-old attention spans are not still waters, nor do they run deep.  That is why the simplest of imitative and repetitive actions, like pretending to nod and talk along while mother is on the phone, often emerge around the age of 12 or 13 months.  The older infant (second half of first year) has sufficient memory and brain development to keep track of objects and current events.  Emphasis on “current.”

Your child’s powers of observation minimally grasp and re-iterate an basic interpretation of feeding a baby:  putting a bottle to lips.  Once that imitative act is repeated, enjoyed, improved —  mastered, the child becomes able to orchestrate several factors (including tone of voice, gestures, and actions  – all of which will be repeated, enjoyed, improved, mastered) until a simple feeding becomes a longer sequence of doting on baby — complete with imaginary meal, bath, nap, and storybook.  You’ll observe play schemes that used to consist of the simple, repetitive act of placing a doll in a stroller, for example,  expand into a pretend journeys to the park or the store.

More recaps tomorrow and every day this week. Check back daily for specific, realistic, age-appropriate child development tips.

… is to let him undress. Surely you’ve noticed that your kid agrees with me.

I’ll admit (because he won’t) that undressing seems to undo the point of getting dressed in the first place.

But your toddler isn’t confused at all. From his point of view, getting undressed always follows getting dressed.  I know you think the day should elapse before changing outfits, but he thinks an hour is long enough.

Just remember —  you encouraged him.  Do you recall when he was about 12 months old, and began holding out his arm when you approached him with a shirt?  Charming wasn’t it?  You praised him didn’t you? Well, he believed you, and continued developing his self-care skills, especially the part he could, ahem, pull off by himself.

Mixed milestones

Here’s the thing:  Passivity is easier than activity.  Receptive language shows itself sooner than expressive language. Being able to get oneself dressed is more complicated than getting undressed, depending on the garment.

Removing a sock is a snap for a 12 month-old child.  But he typically won’t even try to put socks on for another year.  At 30 months, your child can unbutton or unzip.  But having the dexterity to even get the zipper started is about a year away. Buttoning a real shirt — completely — also emerges around 3 1/2 years of age. What is important about every attempt is that your child wants to learn to take responsibility for himself.

Ways you can help:

• Be patient. As I’ve cautioned before, toddler ambitions often mature before toddler abilities. This frustrates young kids, so they need their big people to be on an even keel.
• Talk about clothing. New words to learn:  socks, hat, plaid, orange, zipper, earmuffs.  Offer new words, offer him a turn to say the names of items, but don’t quiz your toddler.
• Talk about body parts. Socks go on feet, a hat belongs on the head, earmuffs are for ears, orange is …orange-y — you get the idea.
• Perhaps dressing and undressing a doll or stuffed animal will help your child practice the skills he wants to acquire.

Did I mention you should be patient?

You will see outfits that don’t match. Maybe even outfits that don’t fit. There are more worse dilemmas than a 3 year-old who cannot match up clothing — such as a 3 year-old who can.

Take my word for it: that kid will someday turn into a 15 year-old who wants to go to the mall.

He’s finally good at walking (but you keep trying to stop him), he’s talking (but the big people act like they don’t understand what he’s trying to say), he can eat alone (if somebody would just let him pick out the green things), and he remembers where you hid his best toys (you call them Hummel figurines, or some such thing).

Your child is particularly vulnerable to tantrums during his second year of life (12-24 months) because his understanding of what is happening around him is clearer than ever.  Yet his ability to determine his own destiny hasn’t caught up.  As he recognizes his own will to do things, his own independence, expect some mild disagreements.  When the refusals escalate, they become tantrums.

This, too will pass.  But until it does, here’s what you can do to minimize the stress for both of you:

Respect his schedule. The newborn baby doesn’t have one, the settled baby has done a lot of work to regulate himself into a schedule, and the toddler desperately needs one.  If his body thinks it’s naptime, and you consider it a great time to stock up on perfume samples at the mall, your child’s point of view will be heard up and down the escalators.

Keep your cool. The word “no” has had a lot of power over him lately, so who can blame him for trying it out for himself?  Expect him to engage in refusals to cooperate.  The best thing you can do is be consistent.  For example: He wears a shirt to playgroup.  Period.  It’s far better in the long run to miss one play date over the standoff, (and have him learn that you mean what you say) than to have a daily, energy-sapping cycle of boundary testing.

Have no shame. If you don’t think your child should play in the revolving door (and you’d be right about that, Mommy) — don’t give in.  Who cares who’s looking, tsk-tsk-ing, or judging?  If those strangers really cared (or mattered), they’d offer to load your groceries into the trunk while you load your screaming child into his car seat.

Hug it out. Once the tantrum is in full-on mode, stay even-tempered and compassionate with your child.  Raising your voice, or your pulse, is exhausting.  Unless somebody’s around to tuck YOU in for a guaranteed nap, save your strength.  Once the storm has passed, your toddler will need some help understanding what just happened.  Words for his feelings won’t end the tantrums right away, but over time, words will be such a useful tool that the confusing, stormy feelings won’t need to be enacted so vigorously. When his mouth can say, “I’m frustrated!” his body won’t have to.

]]> http://www.mommygarten.com/emotional-development/the-taming-of-the-tantrum/feed/ 0 http://www.mommygarten.com/emotional-development/conspiracy-theory/ http://www.mommygarten.com/emotional-development/conspiracy-theory/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:12:36 +0000 Carly Jennings http://www.mommygarten.com/?p=4

Your baby is in cahoots with Mother Nature.

Together, they lure you (and any other helpless adult) into feeding, touching, talking to, listening to, and bonding with the newborn members of our species. About twelve inches from target is the best distance for a newborn’s built-in binoculars to see most clearly.

You play into their hands every time you position the highly-favored roundness of your face and your eyes’ rounded irises approximately that distance from your baby’s face — an inevitable consequence of breastfeeding.

Your new infant also appreciates the easy-to-see contrast between light and dark.  That’s why you’ll notice his gaze fixed on your hairline, your eyebrows, and even your moving mouth — you are talking to him during feedings, right?

Your Baby’s Physical Tools

Within the first moments of life outside the womb, your baby has reflexes that help ensure survival.  Some reflexes are strongest in the hours following birth, but subside, then disappear, within days or weeks.  Just in time for mother to bounce back from the labor of … well, labor.  And delivery.  One of the most powerful of these survival tools is the rooting reflex.  When a nipple (or even a finger) brushes by his cheek is touched baby’s mouth opens, and his head turns toward the stimulus, as he searches for the breast.  What comes next, a strong sucking action, is another survival strategy.  Your baby’s perfectly engineered taste bud system and mouth are ready to receive whatever nutrition he manages to extract with all that rooting, hoping, searching, and sucking.

Your Baby’s Psychological Tools

Just as day-to-day Mommy rebounds from the postpartum period, layer by later of Mother Nature’s innate physical protections for the newborn melt away — to be replaced by parenting skills.  Different states of consciousness can be observed (think “hints-on-how-to-handle-me”).  No longer living in a climate-controlled, sound-insulated womb, baby learns to rely on strategies (like falling asleep in a roomful of noisy voices) to ward off sensory overload. Learning to ask to have his needs met is another valiant attempt to communicate.  My work with babies and their parents has shown me that the seemingly complex relationships between new baby and nervous parent could be much simpler, with the addition of a few tools to the parenting kit.  The moms, dads, and caregivers who learn how to observe and recognize the distinct states of consciousness will soon learn how to respond to cues, and therefore, needs.  In the school of life, displeased babies issue loud progress reports.

States of Consciousness

It might seem like there are only two states of mind for a newborn:  crying or not.   Your child is much more interesting than that!

Here are some notes for your upcoming pop quizzes:  To assess what state of consciousness your baby is experiencing, observe the level of physical activity, facial expressions and activity, breathing rhythms, responsiveness to people and things in the environment.  There are six-count-em six distinct states of consciousness that your little one will experience during the day:

• Deep sleep — my mother used to call this “sound asleep.”  That makes sense.  During this state, the baby seems oblivious to sounds, or siblings, and most other stimulation for that matter.  This is what people mean when they say “slept like a baby.”  It’s not a great time for attempting a feeding; it is a great time for caregivers to rest.
• Light sleep — there’s a lot of activity during this kind of sleep.  Fluttering eyes, sucking motions, and body movements in this state can be confusing to new parents.  It’s actually a very normal state that accounts for a lot of newborn sleeping time.
• Drowsy, but awake — I call this “to be determined.”  It really could go either way.  Your baby might sleep more, or wake on up.  He will  respond to stimulation but then again, he might have a good cry.
• Quiet, but alert — Great time for feedings, conversations, hugs, or tapping on the pages of a cardboard book.  An infant’s bright eyes, fully open, signal that he is receptive to paying attention and receiving attention.  If you shake a rattle, and he’ll look at it.  Speak his favorite language (parentese), and he might move his mouth, too.
• Active and alert — Some parents call this fussy.  Baby might be getting hungry, he might want some space, or he might want to be soothed by you.  Observant parents will note that this isn’t the best time for playing, or chatting, but it’s a great time to make sure baby is comfy, and that the environment isn’t overwhelming his senses.
• Crying — Okay, so you’re new at this, and you didn’t quite handle the “fussy” window of opportunity to his liking.  No worries, you’ll get more chances.  And you’ll get better at it.  Just so you’ll know, most babies under 3 months old have crying periods, especially toward the end of the day.  It’s important to respond immediately, knowing that it is impossible to “spoil” a baby under six months of age.  If he can soothe himself, let him.  If he needs your help, give it calmly.  Just be glad he still tells you what’s on his mind.  That will change in about 12 years.

When you respond to your crying baby, your crying baby learns that:

1. It works to use his words (yes, for now, those are his words),
2. His needs are valid (worth speaking up about),
3. You can be trusted, and
4. You are source of comfort in the midst of overwhelm.

Be careful with this process, parents.  You would not want baby to get the wrong impression.  If you don’t pick him up because you think that a young baby can be spoiled, you’re mistaken.  Spoiling and manipulation require a level of brain development and multitasking that your new baby simply does not possess.  Yet.

In the process of attachment, life’s first assignment, the only good outcome is for baby to understand that you are capable of keeping up your end of this bargain he finds himself in.

Simply put:  if he has a problem (hunger, pain, boredom, fatigue, an itchy tag in his onesie), you have a solution.  Like a pendulous, generous breast, or a soothing, rocking motion, or a smiling game, or safety scissors to kill the itchy onesie tag.  If your baby had bigger words, he might quote James Taylor: “you supply the satisfy, I’ll supply the need.”

Think about the future of this infancy and this attachment process:  What would you want your child to believe, understand, know about you when  he becomes a teenager?  A teenager at a party where underage drinking is happening.  A teenager who finds himself in need of a reliable ride home.

In the future, you would want your child to:

1. Use his words to call you and say, “Mom, can you come get me?  Uh … park down the street, though.”
2. Value his safety almost as much as you do (that worth-speaking-up-about thing),
3. Trust that you will not add to the stress of the difficult correct choice he’s in the midst of by showing up yelling, braless, and in your plaid jammies.  Well, in my opinion, it’s a valid choice to show up braless and in your plaid jammies….. just remember the “park down the street” piece of the negotiation.
4. And yes, he needs you to comfort him on the way home, mostly by NOT teachable-ing this moment.

Simply put, you want your lifelong bond with him to supersede his temporary, developmentally-driven bond with his peers.  The foundation for what he believes about himself, you, and this world begins now.  So does the two-way loyalty that will someday insulate against peer pressure.

One year-old attention spans are not still waters, nor do they run deep.  That is why the simplest of imitative and repetitive actions, like pretending to nod and talk along while mother is on the phone, often emerge around the age of 12 or 13 months.

Evolving from the simple to the complex, pretend play unfolds in a succession of events.  The older infant (second half of first year) has sufficient memory and brain development to keep track of objects and current events.  Emphasis on “current.”

The information (actions of other household members like folding towels, or stirring) is readily available, and tools are, as well.  At first, the accuracy of the prop matters — she thinks the best way to imitate your telephone conversation is by taking your real phone out of your real purse, and dialing!  

Later, the brain shifts from copying your behavior to creating her own, substitutes become acceptable —  a toy telephone will do, just as a Popsicle stick will easily stand in for a conductor’s baton.

Soon after, adults can observe play that includes someone or something else, such as using a bottle to feed a favorite doll.  As the toddler’s collection of events and experiences grows larger, there is a parallel expansion of the brain’s ability to grasp and keep information from those events.  The greater array of material (memories, sights, sounds) converts into much more complex scenarios of play.

Your child’s powers of observation minimally grasp and re-iterate an basic interpretation of feeding a baby:  putting a bottle to lips.  Once that imitative act is repeated, enjoyed, improved —  mastered, the child becomes able to orchestrate several factors (including tone of voice, gestures, and actions  – all of which will be repeated, enjoyed, improved, mastered) until a simple feeding becomes a longer sequence of doting on baby — complete with imaginary meal, bath, nap, and storybook.  You’ll observe play schemes that used to consist of the simple, repetitive act of placing a doll in a stroller, for example,  expand into a pretend journeys to the park or the store.