Emotional Basics?

Suppose a two-month-old baby wakes up at three in the morning and starts crying. Her mother came and for the next half hour, the baby suckled comfortably in her mother's arms, while her mother looked at the baby affectionately, stating how happy she was to see the baby, even in the middle of the night. The baby, being comfortable in the abundance of his mother's love, returns to sleep.

Now suppose there was a baby who was two months old, who also woke up and cried in the middle of the night, but was faced by a tense and angry mother, who had just fallen asleep an hour before after fighting with her husband.

Sibayi began to get tense when his mother suddenly took it, saying, "Shut up, Mother, you can't stand facing one more problem! Come on, hurry up. ”When the baby suckled, her mother looked forward with a blank look, not staring at the baby, her mind drifted to her quarrel with her husband and became increasingly annoyed when she remembered.

The baby, when he feels his mother's tension, writhes, becomes stiff and stops breastfeeding. "Just as much as you spend?" Said his mother. "Then, no need to suckle." With the same rude attitude he put the baby into the crib and passed, letting the baby cry until the baby fell asleep due to exhaustion.

Both scenarios are presented in the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs report as an example of the type of interaction that when repeated over and over, creates a very different feeling for a baby about himself and his closest relationship. (Heart Start).

The first baby learns that the person can be trusted to pay attention to his needs and depend on his help and that he can be effective in getting help; the second baby found that there was actually no one who cared, that other people could not be relied on and that his efforts to get comfort would fail.

Surely most babies have at least felt both types of interactions. But if the treatment has become a habit of parents in treating their children for years, basic emotional lessons about how safe a child is in this world, how effective he feels and how reliable others will be will be embedded in the child. In Erik Erikson's terms: Do children feel "basic beliefs" or "basic suspicions"?

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