How does the emotional response of parents affect the psychological development of children?

Many new mothers encounter large and small confusions in raising children.

Some people, after becoming parents, secretly resolve that they must give their children a different original family, but sometimes, if they are not aware, they are prone to problems.

Some people will go to the other extreme because their mothers were not good to themselves when they were young, and then they desperately tried to be good to their children.

But in fact, we say that to give a child a good original family, it is not enough to just desperately love the child, but also to respect the child and respect his normal psychological development as an independent individual.

When many people grow up, they talk to their parents about the painful experiences they remember when they were young, for example, they once witnessed their father drink too much, beat his mother, or said that he was lost, standing on the road and crying.

At this time, some parents may say: "What do children remember"; or "How do you know things before the age of 3, you must have listened to what we talked about?" "I've also heard some parents say that when a child is young, he can eat and dress warmly, anyway, he doesn't know anything, and when he grows up, you can be good to him."

In the concept of some parents, they think that children do not remember things, hungry can not freeze, even if there is something unhappy when they are young, they will not remember it when they grow up.

But in fact, with the popularity of psychology, we all know that the psychological development of a child in the early stages, especially before 18 months, is very important. At this stage, the parents' emotional response to the child is equivalent to the foundation of the child's psychological development.

The phenomenon of orphanages in Romania attests to this. After world war II, Romania fell into economic difficulties and its population was decimated particularly quickly. At that time, the government introduced a policy that every woman of childbearing age should have at least 5 children. Because many families were in financial difficulty at that time and could not afford to raise so many children, many children were sent to orphanages after birth and raised by the state, and at most, there were more than 100,000 children sent to orphanages.

It is conceivable that the staff in the orphanage are not busy at all, and may have to watch dozens of children alone. In this case, the staff can ensure that the child is not hungry, it is not easy, there is no energy to play with the child, or caress ah, etc., there is no way to hug and coax in time when the child is crying. What about these children, basically every day is to look at the ceiling, look at the wall, so that to pass the time, no one can give them a little bit of love.

In such a nurturing environment, what will these children look like when they grow up? Neuroscientists and psychiatrists went to the orphanage to learn about the children, and they described it this way: In this orphanage, many children would shake back and forth when they sat or climbed, and their heads would constantly swing from side to side, even repeatedly putting their hands on their faces and slapping themselves from time to time. The children are hollow and conformist, like tigers or elephants pacing in a zoo.

This description is very vivid, these children not only look very strange behavior, but also intellectually, emotionally stunted, and have no communication skills. Later, although some children were adopted by normal families, although the adoptive parents gave these children a lot of love, they still had no way to grow up healthily, and there were still a lot of psychological problems in adulthood, and even schizophrenia.

Through such a tragic historical event, we can also see that for a child, it is not enough to eat and wear warmth, he also needs a caregiver to be able to respond to him in time and give him emotional attention. So why is it that when a child is young, the lack of caregiver attention and timely response can have such a big impact on him?

This starts with the history of a baby's growth.

A little baby comes out of his mother's belly and comes into contact with the outside world, he doesn't know what's going on around him, he doesn't have a concept of self at that time, so he doesn't know what he's like, the only thing he has is a feeling of physical tension and relaxation.

You can feel it, use all your strength to clench your fist and then let go, and the grip you feel is followed by relaxation, which is all the feelings that a baby has. At that time, he felt that the whole world was only himself, no one else, psychology called this stage a monistic relationship stage, the approximate time period is from the baby's birth to about 6 months, but specific to each baby, there will still be some discrepancies.

We know that when a baby is hungry, he will feel uncomfortable feeling in the stomach or a certain part of the body, and he will cry.

So what did his cry bring? If he had a mother who took care of him wholeheartedly, the mother would instinctively know what the little baby needed at this time, and she would come over immediately to feed her. This is a very instinctive reaction of the mother, and outsiders may not be able to see why the little baby is crying, but the mother can realize the needs of the child.

At this time, such an interaction, in fact, for the little baby, he is not aware of the existence of another person, he may think that when I am hungry, I can eat; when I am sleepy, I can sleep; when I am cold, I will be warm.

For a baby in the monistic relationship stage, everything he wants is of his own origin, the whole world is only himself and no one else, he will feel that as long as I want something, there will be something, like a god, or like a magician, there is a sense of omnipotence, this is called the primitive narcissistic state.

There may be people, as soon as they hear the word "narcissism", they will think of megalomania, everything is self-centered, think that people all over the world are jealous of me, and so on, in short, they just don't feel good. If these feelings occur in an adult, then we consider whether there is a narcissistic personality disorder.

But if these feelings, like thinking I'm the best, the world is revolving around me, and so on, some of these feelings are in a little baby, that's a very correct and very important inner feeling.

This primitive narcissism will make a little baby feel, you see how good I am, I want what I want, he will feel that his needs can be seen and can be met, which is an important basis for a person to form a sense of self-existence, to form self-esteem.

What if a small baby is not well taken care of at this stage? Although in today's life, there are hardly any extreme situations like Romanian orphanages. The more common situation is, for example, that the mother has postpartum depression, her mood is very low, there is no way to respond to the child immediately when he is crying, and can only ensure that the child will not be hungry.

Or, some parents have a wrong cognition, think that the child is using crying to manipulate the parents, if the child cries to hold, then the child will be more and more difficult to bring, so as long as the child is not hungry, pee such a situation, there is no need to respond to the child's crying, and when he is tired of crying, he will naturally not cry.

In a situation like this, although the child is hungry and there is no threat to survival, he will form psychological trauma, because when he cries, there is always no one who can respond to him, in other words, what he wants will always not appear, and such a situation, from a psychological level, will greatly destroy the child's sense of omnipotence, and his sense of self-esteem will be relatively low, and even personality disorders will occur.

If from the perspective of the nervous system, when the child is crying and making trouble, no one always pays attention to him, which will greatly increase the secretion of cortisol in the child's brain, thus affecting the development of other neurotransmitter systems.

This is why we say that it is not enough to feed and clothe a child, but more importantly, when he needs it, the parents can respond to her and protect his sense of omnipotence.

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