Reflection
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “For Posterity.”
Like a law of nature. A baby utters different sounds and expresses his emotions of joy, energy, curiosity or maybe irritation, hunger, being tired or bored. You, as a parent have to answer and match precisely that particular emotion in words and show the mimic to “tell” the baby that you know what he is going through.
The child is so helpless and is calling to be understood. He needs caring parents who can answer and help quickly and relevantly.
All the answers are stored in the brain, and the baby will gain the feeling of security knowing that he belongs to the family in safety.
She will look back at him in a second
If the experience is that he or she is not helped or understood or the answers just come too late the baby probably will get an uneasy feeling of emptiness and confusion. If he could he would ask:
“What do I need?…… I haven’t a clue”.
Maybe some parents are occupied by their mobile phone. In former times the TV that was in between the relationship with the baby or just created a distance to him or her.
A depressed parent also loves the child but will be too slow in the interaction with the baby. The child learns to look elsewhere than in the parent’s eyes.
An emotionally deprived child will often be quick to come up and crawl and walk to find some stimulation. The quality of precious contact will not be right and the child is in danger of getting a superficial way of connecting to the parents.
Fortunately, the situation can be turned around with a lot of purposeful training. The child is a social being and “mirroring” can be used.
Emanuel in the mirror
If the child doesn’t look for the mother’s eyes, the mother should mirror every movement the baby does. If the baby is crawling the mother does the same. He lifts his arm and looks intensively or in an asking way, and the mother does the same.
This kind of imitating each other is a significant kind of game for children younger than 12 months old. But if the abilities mentioned are lacking the same can be used in older ages too to catch up on the essentials of being together.
From one Heart to Another 
Megt godt
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Jeg oversatte en af de danske
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Another good one Maria!
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Thank you. I had done it in Danish some months ago so I desided to translate it tonight
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Awesome! Great write!
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Thank you Carrie. I didn’t learn all this the first twenty years of working, but during the last ten years. But good parents just know it and do the right thing any way
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That’s cool. I don’t have children, but would think parents would know this.
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To day so much more knowledge is available. But people have to reach out for learning and if you need love and care yourself it is difficult to give. The Lord always give what we don’t already have
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That’s true
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And that is one of the reasons that I loved being a stay-at-home mom. The best years of my life were spent nurturing my children. I nursed each child for three years..and our time of bonding was so valuable. I also think it was incredibly important to sing and read to them. As such, all three love music and books. Parenting is the most important job in the world but the payoff when you turn around and see that your children have grown into caring, kind, and hard-working adults is worth more than any amount of money! Just my two cents worth!
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Wow Catherine! I am so glad to hear this from you. To help the children concentrate while reading and singing is so valuable. Knowledge on language and the feeling of belonging doesn’t just come by it self
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Maria, Thanks for posting. I hd to laugh when I looked at the first picture. Talk about reflecting back. The little girl has her mouth open as she is feeding the smaller child.
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Yes Bernadette! I love it too and I sneak to use it as the older one is my granddaughter. I think it represent the idea so well and when small children us an iPad they don’t get this fine tuned response
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It’s a wonder my beautiful daughter has turned out as well as she has! As a single parent, I was stretched very thin. I did manage to read to her though and it must have worked, because she has just bought “The Poky Little Puppy who followed his Nose Home”, again. Being dysfunctional, most of our possessions did not survive multiple relocations!
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I also had to work too much. But the very young babies just want you on when they are awake. The same principles can be used by those who take care of the babies so life will be meaningful to them
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That’s true my daughter had some great carers and teachers.
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Wonderful so did I. It’s also quite demanding to be the only one around the child 24 hours a day. Today there are so few other babies around that you have to have them out to learn how to interact and play with other small children
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Yes that’s absolutely right Maria, I remember playing many games with my brother and sister even as quite a young baby.
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My daughter-in-law took both my grandsons to baby sign language groups. I never knew there was such a thing!
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It’s incredible that infants without a spoken language can learn signs for “being thirsty” etc. One secret for this is to be very clear in mimic and language repeating the everyday situations over and over from a short distance so that the child can see it clearly
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This is so important! Child development is not something to take lightly and parents should realize this. I think you articulated this wonderfully! Thank you for sharing. 🙂
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Thank you LosilosLoco for your kind words
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