Parenting Right From the Start. Vanessa Lapointe
the adult they were meant to be. This is the greatest gift of parenthood—the invitation to create a program all your own that allows for equal-opportunity growth in parent and child. Wow. Thanks, kid!
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THE BABY BOND
WHEN A BABY is born, it comes into the world knowing that the first priority is to find you. The new babe’s eyes open and immediately begin to scan the environment in search of you—her best bet for survival. She cannot see well yet, but her brain is wired to find your eyes. And as soon as she lands on your gaze, she will stop scanning. That’s when the magic happens. Well, it isn’t really magic, but years of evolution that have perfected this synergistic connection. When that newborn finds your eyes, she will invariably hold the gaze for as long as she can. And as she does you will find it all but impossible to look away. Biologically, fireworks are going off because your brain is bathed in oxytocin. Long known as the bonding hormone, oxytocin connects parent (male or female) to child, chemically and emotionally, setting the stage for a relationship that will be the ultimate determinant in a child’s health, well-being, and success in life.1
Here is some great news: parents are wired to be good at this, and so are babies. A newborn knows enough to recognize the difference between breast pads soaked with her mother’s milk and those soaked with another mother’s milk when they are placed on either side of her head; she will naturally orient to the breast pad soaked with her mother’s milk. No special training needed. No psychological support required. What a brilliant way to start!
From the first hours of life a newborn is wired to mimic a parent’s facial expressions. If you stick your tongue out at your baby or you open your mouth wide repeatedly you might find that she starts to do the same. To put into perspective how incredible this is, keep in mind that your newborn won’t have command of her muscles and movements in a determined way until many weeks down the road. It is a reflex, like blinking in bright light. This mimicry also underscores some basic rules of social psychology: that “birds of a feather flock together” and “imitation is the highest form of flattery.” We tend to like people who like us, and we determine that they like us when they appear to endorse the similarities between us.
From the first moments of life your baby is on a mission to make sure that you like her and think she’s the smartest baby in the land—and she doesn’t even know what she’s doing! Even though she has no cognitive control over this copycat impulse, your baby will instinctively try to make herself more like you to assure your acceptance. Again, no special training or psychological support required.
Parents are biologically wired too. If you are breastfeeding, you will experience a milk let-down in response to your baby’s cry. At night, when she cries out, you may find that you are up and awake with her in your arms before you even know what’s happened. You may find that the advice to let your baby cry herself to sleep, or to let her sort herself out before moving quickly to tend to her, doesn’t feel right. You may even find it difficult to be away from her at all, especially in the early days. This is nature’s way of nurturing the all-important connection between parent and child. In some cultures, it is “mandatory” that the parent, usually the mother, stay at home with the newborn for a full thirty days after birth. During this time, the mother is well taken care of by her family and friends and is released singularly to the task of caring for her new babe.
Now, consider this: nature wastes nothing. A newborn baby is biologically wired to pursue and cement connection with a parent, and most parents are wired to take care of this connection instinctually. So don’t be afraid to dive headfirst into this burgeoning new relationship and ignore the misinformation trickling in from other influences that may tempt you to overlook your parenting instincts. Everything about child development, and the human condition in general, hinges on the actualization of the attachment relationship, and it becomes the primary focus from the earliest moments of life. Whether they realize it or not, parents will spend most of their energy encouraging and fostering this bond with their children.
This primary relationship—the parent-child connection—forms the entire foundation of what it takes to parent right from the start. A human is not simply a biological entity but a “being” wired to see and to be; to be intelligent and empathic; and to attract, recognize, and participate in the dance of social connection. As a social species, we cannot survive in the absence of connection. And a sweet, new babe already knows this with her breath, with her heart, and with her wise, intuitive soul.
A wonderful dance is taking place in each moment with your newborn, one that weaves the two of you together in your developing relationship. It is so present and so natural in its emergence that you might not even realize it is happening. You are doing this. And whether or not you know it, you are really, really good at it. Remember that you don’t need to be taught how to do this; you simply need to allow yourself to fall into your child’s very natural invitation to be a facilitator of this relationship.
Think of the moments over the course of each day—and night—that are filling up your baby’s relationship cup. When you are feeding your baby and you return her gorgeous gaze, that is a drop in the cup. When she smiles at you and you smile back, another drop is added. When she starts to coo and you respond with a coo of your own—in goes another. When she shows signs of fatigue, like turning her head away or becoming fussy, and you respond with rocking and soothing, you are adding more. When you are changing her diaper and murmuring sweet-nothings, her cup grows fuller still. And when you have skin-on-skin tummy time and your little love hears your heart and feels your warmth, another droplet—or more. Your baby’s connection cup will be overflowing within minutes or hours, never mind the abundance in connection that can be created over the course of a whole day.
The key to allowing this relationship to take root is to avoid the urge to look for giant signs of connectedness or to wait for the next telltale wave of warm fuzzies. Rather, it is about being present, moment to moment, for the minutia of the relationship dance. You won’t always see neon-sign evidence of it unfolding, but rest assured that it is happening. As certainly as you breathe, the relationship blooms. This is where a little faith comes into play. When you can trust that nature knows its way, that without even understanding what is happening or how, the relationship will flourish, you are able to release yourself to the magic of the dance—that perfected-by-evolution, synergistic magic of the parent-baby bond.
Even with all of your best intentions, it can be seductively easy in our outcome-focused world to measure your progress in creating a healthy relationship with your baby by exhaustively assessing if they are developmentally on track in other ways. Is your baby getting enough tummy time? Should she be lifting her head by now? Is she developing a flat spot on her skull from spending too much time on her back? Is she growing enough, sleeping enough, eating enough? So much tracking and measuring and thinking! Although you of course need to be aware of these sorts of things, I encourage you to focus on feeling and fuelling the connection in ways that feel natural. Allow this wonderful time getting to know your new little person to unfold without being hijacked by thoughts of whether she’s met all the milestones. Connection is the foundation to healthy growth and development. With that connection underway, those measurable outcomes all but take care of themselves.
The Science of Connection
Before I explain exactly how this deeply connected relationship works in a baby’s development, let’s consider the history of attachment theory, and the significance of attachment to healthy child development as understood in the scientific literature. As we explore these topics, you’ll get a sense of how deeply attachment theory departs from that of the behaviourists discussed in chapter 1.
In a nutshell, behaviourists landed on the logic that if you deprive a child of connection at any age, desired behaviour will result: a baby left alone appears to figure out how to fall asleep; the child who is timed-out appears to behave better. Who among us isn’t going to be tempted by parenting “strategies” that result in a better-behaved child who sleeps through the night and performs as expected? The goal of these practices is to ensure desired behaviour on the part of the child—behaviour desired by the adult.