Quality time with your baby
Why is the lake blue?
The sun is shining, and the sky is blue, and the water is reflecting the clear blue sky. At other times the same water is dark as lead or grey depending again on the colour of the sky.
davide-ragusa-2238 from Unsplash
Scene one
An awake young baby will be eagerly looking for her mother’s face. Depending on her age her eyes will be large and interested or later on burst into a big smile being met by the mother’s loving eyes and calming talk. The exact same thing could be said about a father and his baby boy or girl.
Scene two
An awake young baby is looking for her mother’s face and finds her buried in her iPhone. The mother just needs to send a message or read something on social media, and that takes 20 seconds. The infant gets confused and can’t wait that long. The situation is stored in the brain, and when repeated, again and again, the baby knows that it is not worth the effort to expect a quick response from her mother.
The eyes of the baby get an empty expression, and eye contact becomes challenging to acquire. The moment of awake readiness to receive impulses of love and eye contact has disappeared and to regain it the mother has to work harder to recreate confidence.
We have known the mechanisms of establishing good eye contact and an emotionally healthy bonding for at least forty years, and suddenly this essential knowledge is thrown in the gutter by so many. I guess that it’s like any other addiction. Even those who are educated and know better get hooked up in the dependence on the internet by smartphones following them all over the place day and night.
What can be done?
We should not hesitate to ask the parents if they know what it means to small babies to be hindered in their natural bonding by distracted parents occupied by their smartphones.
What if they get offended? Most parents want the best for their children so they will respect to be educated when it’s said in a kind voice.
Mother and child photo Pixabay
My good Australian blogger friend Paul Soren writes on the same subject, please have a look.
Categories: #makemotherhoodcount, New-born, Safe Motherhood Week
From one Heart to Another 
SUCH as important post, Maria and so gently expressed.
I’d also add that dog owners who are having trouble getting the attention of their dogs might wonder if their cell phone addiction is part of the problem there as well – especially if they never established the expectation of connection when the dogs were pups.
ADDICTION? Yes, it IS exactly that for folks who can’t ignore a text, etc. when LIVE beings are in their presence. (I’m no longer as patient and accepting as you are. I can no longer accept this nonsense.)
xx,
mgh
(Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
ADD/EFD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
“It takes a village to educate a world!”
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I wanted to be gentle as I know so many parents are doing things right and being too harsh won’t work
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I know, Maria – but I simply can’t stand behavior that has a negative effect on the next generation. Sorry to bring a negative vibe to your efforts.
xx,
mgh
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I totally agree with you. I am so disappointed that all that knowledge about how a child learns about interaction and that he belongs to the close family is thrown down the drain by so many for so little and seeing it played out everywhere in streets, restaurants, libraries trains and so on gives me that desperate feeling too
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Posts like your help, Maria. You are right that making people wrong never works. I wish this were taught to new parents like Lamaze, etc.
xx,
mgh
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The health visitors here do indeed teach on this but the powers behind addiction is strong unfortunately
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I would think that the hormonal soup of pregnancy might inspire some to break it for the sake of their baby’s development. No?
xx,
mgh
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Yes that’s a sensitive period to make an impact as well as the first eight weeks of the baby’s life. That’s before everything gets like a normal routine. I thought about you today as I stopped a mother with her 8 months old baby in his pram. ( baby carrier) the mother was smoking and texting so I asked her if I could ask her something? She smiled and I asked if she knew about the effect her “being distant” texting or whatever meant to him. She thought I was crazy and said she had a lot of problems. I tried to explain and she got offended. I ended minding her that she was the adult and her baby was her 👶. I didn’t mention the cigarette
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WISE! She probably already knows that is bad for the baby (and her, but it’s her choice, not her child’s)
xx,
mgh
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I saw a sad thing yesterday. A mother was taking her baby for a walk in her pram. The baby was crying and the mother was pushing the pram with one hand and holding her iphone with the other hand while she talked to her friend. I felt like taking the baby away from her stupid mother.
People crossing roads while looking at their phone is becoming a real problem. In Australia one pedestrian is killed every day and police say that in most cases they were looking at their phone.
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It’s so sad what you have witnessed and it’s like that here too and the reason I wrote the post. Things are happening very quickly now. From I have retired three years ago this has escalated. In this comment thread I wrote how I tried to talk to an ignorant mother smoking and handling her phone while her child in the pram looked with an empty expression only too used to the situation. It was the day after I wrote the post. The mother got mad at me for explaining the consequences
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…….and texting whilst driving!!!!!
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Today I saw a farmer in tractor texting and smoking driving on the road in front of Henry and me. We took a turn to the right to get rid of him
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Maria, an important reminder to parents that these formative years for our children pass very quickly. I read recently that children were suffering from lack of stimulation in language development due to the fact that mother’s aren’t even speaking but texting. The young child is not being exposed to language.
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So true Bernadette and from the age of four it’s very difficult to recreate what should have put into to the mould from the start. It’s so tragic
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One of the worst cases I saw was in England a few years ago. Actually quite a few years ago – last century 1999. There was a man driving his van with his elbows while he talked to TWO people at one time on two phones.
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I have seen horrible things like that too. You think these people are crazy
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