There’s a common colloquialism that children don’t come with a manual, and they don’t. This saying serves to capture the inherent difficulty with parenting; that it’s hard, though not without the potential for significant rewards. Despite this, there is no shortage of knowledge which provides suitable and effective guidance on raising children, and at the same time maintaining one’s sanity. The hard part is knowing where to look, or who to listen to. This post will explore the process of understanding behavior as a form of communication.
As with most sources of knowledge, there’s also no shortage of unhealthy, problematic, and plainly false advice, or thinking. This post will hopefully outline some broad ideas, or principles, which might serve to guide a lost parent -which is every parent at some point in their parenting career. If you never feel lost or overwhelmed, you’re probably looking at something – your child and their life, without a reasonable appreciation of its [their] nuance and complexity.
Our Ultra-social Nature
We are not like crocodiles, or lemmings. Human beings come in to the world relatively helpless, and vulnerable. From the moment of conception, through to the moment of death, we are reliant on our kin and broader communities, in some form or other, to care for aspects of us, and of our lives. Over the course of a life, the degree to which we rely on the other varies of course, but never completely disappears.
This is important to acknowledge for three reasons, firstly, we only come to understand, appreciate, and to be able to satisfy our needs through our experiences with the other. Secondly, there are some needs that cannot be satisfied without another person who acts to satisfy them. Finally, the quality of our early interpersonal experiences sets the tone for all of the subsequence relationships we will participate in over the course of our lives. The balance of this article will focus primarily on the first function of relationships, with an apparent though abbreviated exploration the second function.
Attuned Caregiving
Considering these ideas from the perspective of a parent, it becomes clear that parents are required to participate in, or provide a number of functions. Not least of which, is described by the word “attunement”. Like an old FM/AM radio, parents need to be able to tune in to, or pick up the inchoate messages transmitted by their children. In an ideal world, they receive these chaotic visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and/or tactile signals, decode them insofar as the messages they attempt to convey, and then respond to those messages in a way which appropriately addresses them.
To illustrate this in a practical way, a little baby feels the pangs of hunger in his/her belly. This motivates a hysteric tirade of tears, flailing, flushed skin, screeches, and other gestures, which are hopefully noticed and considered by their parent, along with a consideration of the sources of contextual information available in the moment. Mom, or dad, respond to the upset with a soft and soothing voice, a gentle embrace, and some warm, comforting milk. These gestural, verbal, and gustatory responses, serve to quiet both the emotional (fear/anger) and somatic (hunger) disturbance, and allow for the emergence of satiety, safety, security, and trust.
Attunement and Emotional/Cognitive Development
Most parents provide little additional thought to the aforementioned exchange, beyond what transpires at the surface. Feeding a very hungry and upset baby. Considering it more deeply though, the child was confronted by a bodily experience, of which they knew little or nothing about. Imagine experiencing hunger for the first time. The hollow, uncomfortable feeling which slowly builds beneath your diaphragm. Becoming bigger and louder. The grunts and growls from the contraction and release of the stomach and intestines. We could imagine for a brief moment; how terrifying and unbearable this feels for someone to whom it is still relatively new. Instinctively, they writhe, and squirm, cry, and shout in response to the discomfort. Hopefully, an attuned other hears their distress, and correctly interprets it for what it is. Hunger. Mom, dad, gran, grandad, or hopefully the primary or secondary persons responsible for their care, respond in kind with food, and a loving, calming voice, touch, and smell.
In the developing mind of the baby, this exchange is vital. Through the estimated 16 160 bottle feedings, breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks consumed by age five; this little person slowly comes to conceptualize hunger and how to satisfy it. From the first instances of noticing the sensations in their abdomen, to realizing that drinking milk, or eating food eases the pangs. To later learning that the discomfort is called ‘hunger’, and that these items which enter their mouth are called food and drink; through to figuring out which colours, shapes, sizes, flavours, and smells of foods they like best and not, and what these are called. Their exchange with the other, allows them to learn about and become competent in dealing with themselves.
Behaviour as a Communication
It’s possible to look at almost any infantile, childhood, adolescent, and much of adult behavior through this lens. The angry, screaming, protesting, and tantruming toddler, is loudly saying that they don’t yet know how to regulate their feelings, and that they’re needing a bit of help. Perhaps in the form of being picked up, and gently swayed until their emotional storm is calm enough to allow them to voice, with help, what they’re needing. A caregiver who does this communicates that "i love you", "you matter to me", "you're safe", "what you're going through is manageable".
The teenager who comes back after curfew, is tentatively letting you know that they are struggling to maintain safe boundaries, and may need some assistance in this regard. This support might come in the form of a new agreement that they are dropped and collected from their recreational activities, until some time has passed when they’ll be offered another opportunity to illustrate their capacity to act responsibly within the safe and agreed boundaries of the family.
The child who is defiant, and refusing to get dressed might be letting you know that they’re feeling pretty small, and wanting to feel more powerful. To this you might respond by finding appropriate opportunities for them to provide more input, or make choices about themselves, around the house. This might look like offering them options for what to wear, and encouraging them to pick for themselves. It might also look like humoring them, and sometimes allowing them to wear what they choose, regardless of how comical or consequential (It's easy to pack a change of clothes or a warm jacket for a little person who insists on wearing a tutu despite it being mid-winter).
More broadly, it might involve considering that while dad's job is to clean everybody's dishes, and mommy does all our laundry, they have a really important part to play in making sure that the family's dishes make their way to the kitchen to be washed, or that dirty laundry finds it's way to the hamper. In so doing you say to this little boy or girl that they have a place in your home, and that where they or others don't do their part, the family does not work well.
Parents or caregivers who can be firm but fair, clear without being cruel, and accomodating where there is no danger or where there are valuable/necessary lessons to be learnt say through their actions, that their teens and children belong to a family, that they are seen, and that they, their voice, opinions, and actions matter.
These examples also are by no means a concrete list of what the various behaviors might mean, nor are they an exclusive list on how the various dilemmas presented are to be dealt with. Rather, attunement requires that each parent know their child, are able to decode the encrypted messages, and respond to them with care, clarity, warmth, kindness, and firmness. This is also not to suggest that parents should be perfect, for reasons I won’t cover in this article, that creates a whole other host of complications. Rather, parents are allowed to make mistakes, and so long as these mistakes are not intentional neglect or abuse, children will usually be okay.
Conclusion and Summary
This developmental process of self-knowledge, understanding, and efficacy is dynamic and extensive. It arguably continues throughout one’s life. Though early caregiving plays a uniquely important role, all relationships contribute to it. It is especially important during childhood, immensely more so during the so-called first, one thousand days of development. This is because, in addition to facilitating concept formation, and the agency to act on, and appropriately satisfying day-to-day needs. It also importantly fosters attachment as envisioned by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and Mary Maine.
While I won’t delve in to attachment in this post, other than to say that it forms the foundation for effective interpersonal functioning later in life, I will again emphasize that it is vitally important that it develops, and securely so. To sum it up, children/adults talk through their bodies and behavior, because they may not yet possess the words and concepts to do so with language. In an ideal world, caregivers/psychotherapists/others respond to these communications with warmth, empathy, and accuracy. This allows the child (or adult), over time, to conceptualize their feelings, and learn to appropriately, and independently in some instances, act on the needs which they represent.
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