Rebecca
05-13-2008, 09:31 PM
There are so many interesting examples I've seen with very young children where how the parent is doing makes a big difference with how the baby is doing.
I was working with a mom who had brought her newborn, who was only 3 weeks old. The baby was fairly calm in general at that point and was resting on mom as we talked. As we started talking about some things that were distressing to mom, I watched as the baby started getting very fussy. Mom tried to feed her, but she didn't want to nurse. Finally, mom handed her to another very calm mom in the room and the baby went right back to sleep without another peep!
This demonstrated to me how important it is to be aware of our own stress levels and that this may very well affect the baby or young child. They are very aware of feelings even during pregnancy. Even when you don't say anything, babies are aware of how you are feeling. This is important to remember because babies think they are the world and everything is about them, so those feelings can become internalized as being about them when, in fact, you are upset about things in your own life.
Do you have examples of this in your own life? Have you seen that where you are can have a dramatic influence over what happens with your baby or young child? This can be positive, too. Certainly our happy times and times when we are calm and regulated can affect our children in positive ways. What are your experiences with this?
I was working with a mom who had brought her newborn, who was only 3 weeks old. The baby was fairly calm in general at that point and was resting on mom as we talked. As we started talking about some things that were distressing to mom, I watched as the baby started getting very fussy. Mom tried to feed her, but she didn't want to nurse. Finally, mom handed her to another very calm mom in the room and the baby went right back to sleep without another peep!
This demonstrated to me how important it is to be aware of our own stress levels and that this may very well affect the baby or young child. They are very aware of feelings even during pregnancy. Even when you don't say anything, babies are aware of how you are feeling. This is important to remember because babies think they are the world and everything is about them, so those feelings can become internalized as being about them when, in fact, you are upset about things in your own life.
Do you have examples of this in your own life? Have you seen that where you are can have a dramatic influence over what happens with your baby or young child? This can be positive, too. Certainly our happy times and times when we are calm and regulated can affect our children in positive ways. What are your experiences with this?