We have learned so much from working with fragile, even impaired, infants about their potential for recovery from injuries sustained in the uterus or at birth. We can now apply that thinking to normal development. In a stressed infant, there are extra pathways still intact in the immature nervous system that can take over and help the child recover. A threatened nervous system is likely to be hypersensitive and easily disorganized by incoming stimuli and by the baby’s own efforts to respond. Even in infants who are highly stressed (by maternal undernutrition, drugs or heavy smoking), caretakers who are sensitive to them can give them the fuel they need to begin to make progress. This flexibility and power of recovery is less reachable in older children. But it’s available in infancy and early childhood even in damaged or delicate infants– so imagine how powerful an opportunity it offers to strengthen the development of normal children.
The maturation of the nervous system pushes a child from one stage to another, relentlessly. One important source of fuel comes from the internal feedback system-the baby’s own recognition of having completed a developmental task such as walking, crawling or reaching. When he achieves it, his face lights up as if to say, “I just did it! Aren’t I great?” The external feedback from parents be-comes another vital source of fueling. But if parents hover–if they never allow the child to struggle, to feel frustrated, to finally achieve for himself the developmental step and to experience his own joy at the achievement-they devalue the force of the internal system. Each completed cycle gives the child a secure sense of himself: “I did it! I can do it!” This leads to a sense of autonomy and a confidence in his capacity to master his world. And this in turn motivates the baby to take the next developmental step.
The external feedback cycle is important in other ways. With a newborn, the mother’s quiet voice helps the baby soothe herself, enabling her to stay calm enough to look around at her world. Every time in the early weeks a small baby smiles, someone smiles back. Every time she vocalizes, someone vocalizes back. At 8 to 10 weeks, these smiling, vocalizing responses get set into a rhythmic game-one that will later be reflected in speech rhythms. As she gets a few months older, she plays with this response. She plays peekaboo. “If I cover my eyes, you will cover yours. If I uncover mine, so will you. Now we can make predictable games out of it.” Each of these episodes is fueling her brain’s development. Her entire system–motor, cognitive and emotional- is intensely involved in each task. A sense of her own importance, of trust in her world and in the future, begins around each of these seemingly unimportant interactions between parent and child. An expectation quickly develops that she can control her own world. Teasing for a cookie or driving a parent to a disciplinary response becomes a toddler’s way of proving that “it’s my world and I can master it!”
Each stage offers the developing child a chance to renew her motivation and serf-confidence. And the child’s passion as she tries to walk, to master her own toileting, to read, to put together and express her own ideas, is matched by the parent’s fierce desire to help. These early opportunities are laying the groundwork for more independence, more inner security, more hunger for conquering this world. We need to help parents recognize these stages, and let parents know how valuable their own role is in reinforcing the child’s sense of self.
How does a child’s self-image begin to develop? Certainly, parents who are able to mobilize an eagerness for the baby in utero are already preparing that baby for a successful future. Then the newborn is equipped with a marvelous series of behaviors to capture a parent for him. We have developed a newborn assessment (Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, or NBAS), which identifies 28 observable behaviors that can help parents understand and relate to their newborn. As she suppresses interfering motor behavior, controls her breathing and accelerates her heart rate in order to follow her mother’s face and voice, as she turns to her mother’s (or father’s) voice in preference to mine, I have never seen a parent who didn’t automatically reach out for her newborn to say, “You know me[” When the parent’s and the newborn’s temperament fit, they are off to a winning start. When they don’t, we can find ways of helping them come to understand each other.
A child’s sense of competence, his expectation of success and his motivation to work toward it are laid down in the first years. I can tell by a child’s behavior as I test him at 8 months of age whether he expects to succeed or fail in the future.
As I offer an 8-month-old two Blocks and show him how to match them and bang them together, I watch for this expectation. I am testing him for imitation, for cognitive recognition that the two blocks match and for his motor capacity to perform for me. All of these are within an 8-month-old’s capacities. He is likely to be proud to show them to me at this age. A child who expects to succeed will drop one cube to see whether I’ll retrieve it. After I do, he tries it again. I say, “Bang them together like I showed you!” He brings them to bang them together, and then he looks up at me, as if to say, “See how great I am?” He expects to succeed. He has had an environment that approves o:[him, and he knows it.
When I test a child who comes from a non-nurturing environment or who realizes he is not able to process information as he should (he may be learning disabled or attentionally disordered), he will bring the cubes close enough to show that he knows what I’m asking. But he’ll slide them by each other, then look up at me cringingly, as if to say, “See, I’m no good. Reject me again!”
We have become aware of how vital a responsive environment can be. On the other hand, we have learned all too well that a non-responsive, neglectful, abusive or depressed environment produces angry, depressed, hopeless children by the ages of 2 and 3 years. The opportunity for recovery and reorganization is not lost, but it becomes more and more endangered and expensive. Our children can’t wait. We can’t afford to ride insensitively over these vital early years any longer. Helping parents to help their children may cost businesses or the government some money. But if we fail, the cost to our nation will be far higher. And our own children and grandchildren will pay too high a price.
