I was at a stoplight earlier. The car directly in front of me was an older model sedan with rust on the roof, expired tags and an obvious rattle. Through the back window, I could see the top of a little head of a child about 2 years old in a car seat. In the beat up car, I saw a mother in the backseat with her child, and it appeared the father was driving. The mother was leaning forward and looking into the child's eyes and smiling. The dad was occasionally turning around to smile and engage with both the mother and the child. The little family appeared to be singing and playing while stopped at the light. In this brief glimpse into this family's life, I could tell this kid was probably going to be alright for the rest of his life.
This reminded me of the importance of the emotional needs of the 0 to 3 year old population. There is no more critical time to bond with your child than the infant, toddler, and preschool years. A lack of attachment during this age can lead to profound problems in development of personality that will last a lifetime.
If you know a family with a new baby, remind them that eye contact, conversation, singing, and playing with their new baby is vastly more important than any new video or baby toy that has ever been marketed. Home should be calm, predictable, and routine. The simple interactions and connection with a small child through feeding, naps, and structure will provide all the stimulation necessary.
1 comment:
"I could tell this kid was probably going to be alright for the rest of his life."
Apparently, an underlying assumption of your practice is that bad parenting is almost always at the heart of a child's psychiatric problems.
Yes, without a doubt, poor parenting is correlated with psychiatric problems in children. But that does not mean we can assume that every infant who is loved and attended to will probably be "alright for the rest of his life."
Environmental factors outside the parents' control, as well as genetic predispositions towards psychiatric conditions, also account for a fair share of what brings families to a psychiatrists' door.
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