Becoming an attachment parent. Healthy Negligence

Healthy Negligence

Caring for Newborns : Developing Trust.
Exerpt from “Immaculate Deception 2” Myth Magic & Birth.
By Suzanne Arms.

For several decades, it has been known that the primary task of a baby in its first months is to develop trust. Anything that impedes that process or teaches a baby that it cannot trust is dangerous and has long-lasting implications. Current studies clearly prove that the one crucial factor in determining a child”s resiliency in tha face of difficulty is whether that child has a primary caretaker who is a constant figure and whom that child can count on and feel safe with. The age for receiving this quality and quantity of care is from birth through the first several years of life. This does not mean that a person needs to spend eight or ten hours a day giving rapt attention to a baby or toddler. Research has shown what tribal cultures have long practiced : that children of all ages, even babies, actually benefit from a fair amount of benign neglect, times when they are left to their own devices, without any outside distraction. Allowed this time, children naturally daydream and drop into meditative states and learn to meet their own spiritual needs. But benign neglect is something altogether different from failing to meet an infant’s or young child’s real needs for human contact and stimulation.

In most tribal cultures babies spend many hours a day bound to an adult’s or older child’s body and during this time, the baby is likely to have no special attention focused upon it whatsoever. The babie’s needs for food and touch, warmth and a feeling of comfort and safety are naturally met while their mothers or other caretakers go about their daily business. the baby is constantly bathed in the sounds of its mother talking or singing, and in periods of silence it listens to the rhythmic sounds of her heartbeat. It feels the swaying of her body as she walks to the stream to fetch water or stoop in the garden or the calm stillness as she rests. Meanwhile, it is free to wander through its own thoughts or feelings. It is not on show or expected to perform to please others. For many months, it seldom tries to express unmet needs, for its needs are met so quickly.

Western visitors to tribal cultures and to countries where babies and children are almost constantly in close physical contact to an adult as he or she goes about daily life remark on how rarely they see young children cry. And adults in these cultures do not find caring for their young to be difficult and stressful. These cultures support people, in maintaining close ties with their young and offer ample social support to parents.
Today, many parents who want to do the very best for their babies and children make a conscious effort to be close and loving and provide stimulation whenever they are able. But most of their day they are separated from their young children and consumed with work, so that they are exhausted during the time they can be with their children. Their attention is tainted with tension. It is difficult to be a good parent to an infant or young child in a culture that requires us to spend so much energy apart from our children, trying to earn the money required to live. Taking leave from work in the first few months of a baby’s life nurtures not only one’s baby but one’s self as well. This is one of the best ways to begin a process of healing, whether it be for a baby who had a traumatic birth or time in a hospital or a parent who long ago was traumatized as a baby.