Secret support if it is difficult to read with a child. Secret support
Lyudmila Vladimirovna Petranovskaya
Secret support. Attachment in a child's life
Secret support. Attachment in a child's lifeClose people
Lyudmila Petranovskaya, the author of the series of books for children “What to do if...”, a famous psychologist-teacher, leader of webinars on family relationships and winner of the Presidential Prize of the Russian Federation, presents the continuation of the series “CLOSED PEOPLE: Psychology of Relationships”. The book will be useful not only for young mothers, but also for those who want to rethink the relationship with their possibly grown-up child.
Lyudmila Vladimirovna Petranovskaya
Secret support: attachment in a child's life
Loved you for no special reason
Because you are a daughter
Because you are a son
Because baby
Because you are growing,
Because he looks like his dad and mom.
And this love until the end of your days
It will remain your secret support.
V. Berestov
Introduction
The entire evolution of life is the evolution of parental care for offspring. The most primitive living creatures are born indistinguishable from their “parents”; they do not need anything from their ancestors. Parents who are a little more complex only place them in a favorable environment, and then they do it themselves. Even more difficult - they try to leave food for the first time. This is what some insects do. Certain species of fish already protect their fry. Many reptiles protect clutches of eggs and look after hatchlings. But the birds always hatch, feed and teach the chicks, sometimes performing miracles of self-sacrifice for the sake of their offspring. Baby mammals do not survive without adult care, and their childhood is longer than that of chicks. The parents of the cubs not only feed, protect and teach them - they play with them, caress them, console them, resolve conflicts between brothers and sisters, and prepare them for communication in the pack.
If you look from this point of view, man is indeed the crown of creation. Because we have the most helpless babies and the longest childhood on the planet - a quarter of life. It takes years before a child can cope without adults. Moreover, with the course of history, the period of dependence is constantly lengthening; once upon a time, childhood definitely ended at twelve, but now at twenty-two it does not always end.
It turns out that a creature will grow up that does not just implement the programs written in the genes, like billions of his ancestors for millions of years and him, like some cockroaches, but builds his life, thinks about the structure of the universe, asks eternal questions of existence, has values, dares, believes, loves - in a word, a rational and free being, a rather long period of complete helplessness and dependence is necessary. In some miraculous way, it is dependence that transforms into freedom, it is precisely the complete initial inability to adapt to the world that transforms into the ability to creatively change this world.
Everyone who was born human and grew up has passed this path in one way or another. Everyone who raises children follows it. In this book we will go through it, step by step, from birth to adulthood, and try to understand: how does it work?
I want to say right away: this book is not strictly scientific. I would like to have another life in parallel to devote to research and verify every statement. But I don’t have a second life, and in this one I chose to be a practitioner. So, at my own peril and risk, I am simply telling you how I see, feel, and understand it. With examples from my life, from the stories of clients and readers of my blog, from observations on the street and on playgrounds.
Of course, the very essence, attachment theory is a completely scientific theory, there are many interesting studies and publications on it, some of which I will refer to throughout the story. But I am fully aware that not all statements of this theory, and certainly not all statements in this book, are fully scientifically confirmed, and some are generally difficult to verify. Attachment theory is not yet the mainstream of psychological science; there are fewer studies and books devoted specifically to it than we would like. In Russia, attachment theory is simply little known. And this is a great pity, because at the moment I do not know an approach to the study of a person, the study of childhood, an approach to education and psychotherapy that is more profound, accurate and effective in practical work. Many problems that poison the lives of many people could simply not be created if you knew how the child’s relationship with his parents works. And many already created and even familiar ones could be solved quite successfully and reliably. I am sure that someday this will be realized, the phenomenon of attachment will be studied truly deeply, and many new and important things will be revealed to us that will change people’s lives for the better.
But my clients and readers are raising kids today, and they can't wait. Therefore, today I am sharing with you what I can, without presenting what is written as the ultimate truth. Read, observe, listen to yourself, doubt and check. If something is going differently in your life, in your relationship with your child, do not immediately get scared and look for where you are going wrong. It is impossible to describe all possible options and situations in the text of the book, and real life is always more complex than the most elaborate theory. If something happens to your child later or earlier than it is written, if it happens to him differently or even exactly the opposite - just think about why this could be. The child may have his own pace of development or character traits, you may have special circumstances in your life now or some time ago, and finally, I just could be wrong. Always trust yourself more than any book, and this one is no exception. You are the parent of your child, you love him, you know him, you understand him, you feel him like no one else, even if at times it seems to you that you don’t understand him at all. A specialist’s opinion is important information for reflection; it is a way to see your situation from the outside, an opportunity to see problems in the broader context of culture, tradition, and even the evolution of our species. But it’s up to you to decide what to do right now with your own baby who is crying, fighting or scared, and if your intuition, driven by love and care, says something different from the book, listen to your intuition.
In the book we will go with the child and his parents through his entire childhood: from birth to adulthood. We'll build a road map to growing up and look at the role of attachment in this process. Of course, the development of a child is multifaceted, his body, his intellect and abilities change and develop, but we will focus only on one line: his relationships with “his” adults, how they, on the one hand, depend on the development of everything else, on the other - influence this development. Each chapter of the book is another stage of childhood. Each stage brings new challenges for the age, new needs of the child, new opportunities, but also new risks if the needs are not met. We will try to understand the logic: how dependence and helplessness turn into maturity, how our love and care year after year form in the child a secret support on which, like a pivot, his personality rests.
Our path along the road map will be accompanied by examples and observations from life, and sometimes from literature or cinema. It will be great if each time you take a brief break from the book and remember similar - or dissimilar - situations that you yourself were in or that you observed, and try to analyze them from the point of view of what you read. Or maybe you want to reread something or review it from a new angle.
Sometimes we will, as it were, rise above our path for small theoretical excursions in order to understand how it works. If the topic seems particularly interesting to you, it makes sense to find and read the books to which I provide links. I promise not to overload the narrative with terms and to mention only those that, in my opinion, are key to our topic.
As we move along the route, we will from time to time draw practical conclusions: how to behave as an adult, what to do and what not to do, so that the child develops in accordance with nature’s plan, is filled with affection and successfully turns it into independence. And so that it would be easier and more joyful for you with him, and that parenthood would be a happiness for you that requires dedication, and not hard labor or an exam that is always passed to who knows who with the fear of making a mistake.
According to the plan, the book you are holding in your hands will be the first part of the “Close People” series, dedicated to various aspects of attachment. In this first one, we will go through a “good” childhood from beginning to end, a childhood without any special problems or disasters, and we will try to understand what the experience of attachment gives a person, how relationships with their adults help create the core of personality, largely determining all future life. Hence the name: “Secret Support”. By understanding the logic of the development of your relationship with your child, you can make it better, and as we will see, it is a good relationship, a deep and secure attachment that underlies both good behavior and the successful development of a child’s potential. It is not “developmental methods”, but relationships with parents that give children the best start in life - and we will see this together, following step by step through childhood.
The second book, “Children Wounded to the Soul,” will be sadder - it will talk about what happens if a blow of fate or difficult circumstances disrupts the prosperous route planned by nature. We'll talk about attachment trauma and attachment disorders. This topic is very close to me, because I have been working for many years with adoptive parents, parents of children who have been wounded in the soul. However, no one is immune from attachment injuries, and the most prosperous family in the social sense experiences losses, separations, divorces, illnesses, sudden changes and other circumstances that are very sensitive for the child. Parents also do not always know how to provide care: they may not understand the child or offend them, even if they love them. We will talk about what happens to children in such situations and how we can help them. This book will be very closely related to the first, so I will often refer here and here to it.
The third book - it just so happens - has already been published, it is called “If it’s difficult with a child.” It is practical, dedicated to all those situations when we do not know what to do, when contact with the child is lost, when we are confused in our own educational attitudes and methods. It proposes to understand what is happening precisely from the point of view of attachment theory, so some points resonate with what will be discussed here. Many parents have already read it and claim that it works. Yes, it works. If you urgently need help, if things have become difficult for you and your child, you can start there; the very essence of attachment theory is briefly outlined there.
And finally, the fourth book - it will be additional and parallel to the third, and will be called, accordingly, “If it’s difficult to be a parent.” I haven’t even started yet, but I really want to, because after many years of working with parents, I know well how difficult it can be for them. How one’s own attachment traumas cover oneself, how difficult it can be to withstand the pressure of society and one’s own family, protecting one’s child and his right to grow up in attachment, what heroic, unprecedented efforts parents make to change themselves for the sake of their children. The more I work, the more I love and respect parents, so different, and so selfless in their love for their children. And I would really like to write a book just for them, about how you can become a better parent for your children than your own were.
Perhaps, over time, some other books will appear in the series, but I consider these four to be a must-done and will try very hard to write them in the foreseeable future. And if you are ready to take this journey through childhood along the path of attachment, then let's begin.
From birth to one year. Invitation to life
And it starts the same for everyone.
Two people who are connected as closely as possible, but at the same time do not know each other at all, have not even seen each other in person. Nine months of complete fusion: common blood, common air, common experiences. Nine months of accumulation and growth, bizarre changes and subtle mutual adjustments - and several difficult hours to move from world to world, to leave the warm universe of the mother's body and separate.
Finally they look into each other's eyes. The mother's gaze is clouded with tears, from fatigue, from tenderness, from relief, from pity. And the look of a newborn (if he was born without problems, is not exhausted by childbirth and is not pumped full of drugs) is serious, clear and focused. Full composure.
In these minutes and hours he looks into the face of fate itself. He imprints in the depths of his memory the main face in his life, the face of a person who will become the demiurge of his world, who will disperse clouds in this world or cause cruel floods, give bliss or expel from paradise, populate the world with monsters or angels, execute or pardon, give or take away, and most likely – both intermixed. There's a reason to be serious.
Thus begins a life-long story, a story of a bond that will connect the child and mother almost as tightly as the umbilical cord connected. Holding on to this connection, he will go out into the world, like an astronaut connected to a ship goes into outer space. Unlike the umbilical cord, this connection is not material, it is woven from mental acts: from feelings, from decisions, from actions, from smiles and glances, from dreams and self-sacrifice, it is common to all people and unique to each parent and each child. It does not go from belly to belly, but from heart to heart (in fact, of course, from brain to brain, but it sounds more beautiful that way).
Attachment. A miracle no less than pregnancy itself. And no less than life itself.
A matter of life and death
The human baby is born very small and immature. This is how evolution solved the difficult task facing it: to combine upright posture (and therefore a narrow pelvis) of the mother and the developed brain (and therefore a voluminous skull) of the child. It was necessary to somehow get out. Therefore, our species used updated and improved technology invented for marsupials. A huge kangaroo gives birth to a tiny, shrimp-sized baby that is not yet able to be separated from its mother. And then she carries it in her bag for some time. If it does not immediately get into its mother’s pouch, it will die very quickly from hunger and cold.
Also children. Every baby that comes into the world knows the rules of the game on a deep, instinctive level. They are simple and harsh.
Rule one. You are not a survivor on your own. If there is an adult who considers you one of his own, who will take care of you, feed you, warm you and protect you, you will live, grow and develop. If there is no such thing, it means there is no place for you in this life, sorry, the attempt was unsuccessful.
A child’s need for adult care is a vital, vital need. It’s not about “it would be nice”, it’s not about “it’s lonely and sad without mom”, it’s about life or death. The attachment program that provides this care is our “bag” designed to carry the child, a kind of external womb, a transitional gateway between birth and exit into the world. It is embedded in those deep parts of the brain that know nothing about formula milk, incubators or children's homes. There, in the very little explored depths of the psyche of a newborn, this is exactly what is carved on the tablets: become someone - or die. There is no third.
This is the first and very important property of attachment, which explains a lot in the behavior of children. Attachment is a vital need, the level of significance is maximum. They can't live without it.
The second rule is related to this circumstance. If suddenly an adult is not nearby, or he is in no hurry to care and protect, you, baby, do not give up right away. You’re not just being capricious, you’re fighting for your life, and delicacy is inappropriate here. If he doesn’t come, call louder. If he doesn't want to, force him. Forgot - remind me. If you’re not sure about him, double-check that he’s still your adult and considers you one of his own. Vigilance is important here. The stakes are high. Fight!
And this is the second important thing to remember: if a child is not confident in his adult, in his affection, he will seek confirmation of the connection, strive to preserve and strengthen it at any cost. Any. Because his life is at stake.
That is why, as soon as the baby is born, he immediately gets down to business. You need to find your adult and involve him in affection. Tie him to yourself, and tightly. He has everything necessary for this; nature has equipped him like James Bond for a particularly difficult mission.
No teeth, but armed
Screaming is, of course, the main weapon of a newborn. What else can he do? So far, even his own arms and legs do not obey him. Therefore, in order to attract the attention of an adult, he screams. No, not just screaming, but SCREAMING. Yells. Yelling.
Objectively, the crying of a newborn is not such a loud and sharp sound. Especially for a resident of a big city who constantly lives in noise - how can a tiny person amaze him compared to his neighbor’s drill, the rumble of the subway, the roar of taking off planes, the crackling of a motorcycle, music rumbling from everywhere? However, we can somehow abstract ourselves from any of these sounds, although unpleasant. Learn not to hear, not notice and even sleep under them. They say that during wars people fell asleep even under cannonade. But we cannot ignore the crying of a baby. It penetrates “to the very liver”, it “raises the dead”, it falls into some frequency range that awakens in us the instinct of a caring adult and the voice of this instinct is inexorable. It doesn’t matter that you’re tired and want to sleep, or you’re sick, it doesn’t matter that you’re busy with something else, it doesn’t matter whether you want to, whether you can - quickly, right now, you dropped everything, got up and went to the child. This works even if someone else’s child is crying: we look around, worry, and if it’s ours, we are ready to do anything to make it stop: feed, warm, wash, rock - everything that is needed to keep the baby alive and healthy.
It happens that the caring instinct is damaged, temporarily (for example, under the influence of mind-altering substances: alcohol, drugs) or permanently (due to a mental disorder, one’s own extremely traumatic experience, organic brain damage). Then the baby’s cry either cannot break through the dope, remains unattended, or causes a pathological reaction not intended by nature: rage or despair. This is how tragic cases from crime chronicles occur, when a screaming child is hit against a wall or a mother in a state of postpartum depression is thrown out of a window.
However, attempts to break instinct, instead of obeying it, also took place in quite respectable society, for example, at the beginning of the 20th century, they tried to install soundproof boxes for babies on trains in very developed and prosperous countries. These were closed boxes with thick walls and holes for air, where parents were asked to put crying children so that they would not interfere with the rest of other passengers. The idea was quickly abandoned - they still felt sorry for the children, although even today heated angry discussions flare up every now and then on the topic “deliver us from this sound, transport the children somehow separately or stay at home with them.”
Lyudmila Vladimirovna Petranovskaya
Secret support: attachment in a child's life
Loved you for no special reason
Because you are a daughter
Because you are a son
Because baby
Because you are growing,
Because he looks like his dad and mom.
And this love until the end of your days
It will remain your secret support.
V. Berestov
Introduction
The entire evolution of life is the evolution of parental care for offspring. The most primitive living creatures are born indistinguishable from their “parents”; they do not need anything from their ancestors. Parents who are a little more complex only place them in a favorable environment, and then they do it themselves. Even more difficult - they try to leave food for the first time. This is what some insects do. Certain species of fish already protect their fry. Many reptiles protect clutches of eggs and look after hatchlings. But the birds always hatch, feed and teach the chicks, sometimes performing miracles of self-sacrifice for the sake of their offspring. Baby mammals do not survive without adult care, and their childhood is longer than that of chicks. The parents of the cubs not only feed, protect and teach them - they play with them, caress them, console them, resolve conflicts between brothers and sisters, and prepare them for communication in the pack.
If you look from this point of view, man is indeed the crown of creation. Because we have the most helpless babies and the longest childhood on the planet - a quarter of life. It takes years before a child can cope without adults. Moreover, with the course of history, the period of dependence is constantly lengthening; once upon a time, childhood definitely ended at twelve, but now at twenty-two it does not always end.
It turns out that a creature will grow up that does not just implement the programs written in the genes, like billions of his ancestors for millions of years and him, like some cockroaches, but builds his life, thinks about the structure of the universe, asks eternal questions of existence, has values, dares, believes, loves - in a word, a rational and free being, a rather long period of complete helplessness and dependence is necessary. In some miraculous way, it is dependence that transforms into freedom, it is precisely the complete initial inability to adapt to the world that transforms into the ability to creatively change this world.
Everyone who was born human and grew up has passed this path in one way or another. Everyone who raises children follows it. In this book we will go through it, step by step, from birth to adulthood, and try to understand: how does it work?
I want to say right away: this book is not strictly scientific. I would like to have another life in parallel to devote to research and verify every statement. But I don’t have a second life, and in this one I chose to be a practitioner. So, at my own peril and risk, I am simply telling you how I see, feel, and understand it. With examples from my life, from the stories of clients and readers of my blog, from observations on the street and on playgrounds.
Of course, the very essence, attachment theory is a completely scientific theory, there are many interesting studies and publications on it, some of which I will refer to throughout the story. But I am fully aware that not all statements of this theory, and certainly not all statements in this book, are fully scientifically confirmed, and some are generally difficult to verify. Attachment theory is not yet the mainstream of psychological science; there are fewer studies and books devoted specifically to it than we would like. In Russia, attachment theory is simply little known. And this is a great pity, because at the moment I do not know an approach to the study of a person, the study of childhood, an approach to education and psychotherapy that is more profound, accurate and effective in practical work. Many problems that poison the lives of many people could simply not be created if you knew how the child’s relationship with his parents works. And many already created and even familiar ones could be solved quite successfully and reliably. I am sure that someday this will be realized, the phenomenon of attachment will be studied truly deeply, and many new and important things will be revealed to us that will change people’s lives for the better.
But my clients and readers are raising kids today, and they can't wait. Therefore, today I am sharing with you what I can, without presenting what is written as the ultimate truth. Read, observe, listen to yourself, doubt and check. If something is going differently in your life, in your relationship with your child, do not immediately get scared and look for where you are going wrong. It is impossible to describe all possible options and situations in the text of the book, and real life is always more complex than the most elaborate theory. If something happens to your child later or earlier than it is written, if it happens to him differently or even exactly the opposite - just think about why this could be. The child may have his own pace of development or character traits, you may have special circumstances in your life now or some time ago, and finally, I just could be wrong. Always trust yourself more than any book, and this one is no exception. You are the parent of your child, you love him, you know him, you understand him, you feel him like no one else, even if at times it seems to you that you don’t understand him at all. A specialist’s opinion is important information for reflection; it is a way to see your situation from the outside, an opportunity to see problems in the broader context of culture, tradition, and even the evolution of our species. But it’s up to you to decide what to do right now with your own baby who is crying, fighting or scared, and if your intuition, driven by love and care, says something different from the book, listen to your intuition.
Lyudmila Vladimirovna Petranovskaya
Secret support: attachment in a child's life
Loved you for no special reason
Because you are a daughter
Because you are a son
Because baby
Because you are growing,
Because he looks like his dad and mom.
And this love until the end of your days
It will remain your secret support.
V. Berestov
Introduction
The entire evolution of life is the evolution of parental care for offspring. The most primitive living creatures are born indistinguishable from their “parents”; they do not need anything from their ancestors. Parents who are a little more complex only place them in a favorable environment, and then they do it themselves. Even more difficult - they try to leave food for the first time. This is what some insects do. Certain species of fish already protect their fry. Many reptiles protect clutches of eggs and look after hatchlings. But the birds always hatch, feed and teach the chicks, sometimes performing miracles of self-sacrifice for the sake of their offspring. Baby mammals do not survive without adult care, and their childhood is longer than that of chicks. The parents of the cubs not only feed, protect and teach them - they play with them, caress them, console them, resolve conflicts between brothers and sisters, and prepare them for communication in the pack.
If you look from this point of view, man is indeed the crown of creation. Because we have the most helpless babies and the longest childhood on the planet - a quarter of life. It takes years before a child can cope without adults. Moreover, with the course of history, the period of dependence is constantly lengthening; once upon a time, childhood definitely ended at twelve, but now at twenty-two it does not always end.
It turns out that a creature will grow up that does not just implement the programs written in the genes, like billions of his ancestors for millions of years and him, like some cockroaches, but builds his life, thinks about the structure of the universe, asks eternal questions of existence, has values, dares, believes, loves - in a word, a rational and free being, a rather long period of complete helplessness and dependence is necessary. In some miraculous way, it is dependence that transforms into freedom, it is precisely the complete initial inability to adapt to the world that transforms into the ability to creatively change this world.
Everyone who was born human and grew up has passed this path in one way or another. Everyone who raises children follows it. In this book we will go through it, step by step, from birth to adulthood, and try to understand: how does it work?
I want to say right away: this book is not strictly scientific. I would like to have another life in parallel to devote to research and verify every statement. But I don’t have a second life, and in this one I chose to be a practitioner. So, at my own peril and risk, I am simply telling you how I see, feel, and understand it. With examples from my life, from the stories of clients and readers of my blog, from observations on the street and on playgrounds.
Of course, the very essence, attachment theory is a completely scientific theory, there are many interesting studies and publications on it, some of which I will refer to throughout the story. But I am fully aware that not all statements of this theory, and certainly not all statements in this book, are fully scientifically confirmed, and some are generally difficult to verify. Attachment theory is not yet the mainstream of psychological science; there are fewer studies and books devoted specifically to it than we would like. In Russia, attachment theory is simply little known. And this is a great pity, because at the moment I do not know an approach to the study of a person, the study of childhood, an approach to education and psychotherapy that is more profound, accurate and effective in practical work. Many problems that poison the lives of many people could simply not be created if you knew how the child’s relationship with his parents works. And many already created and even familiar ones could be solved quite successfully and reliably. I am sure that someday this will be realized, the phenomenon of attachment will be studied truly deeply, and many new and important things will be revealed to us that will change people’s lives for the better.
But my clients and readers are raising kids today, and they can't wait. Therefore, today I am sharing with you what I can, without presenting what is written as the ultimate truth. Read, observe, listen to yourself, doubt and check. If something is going differently in your life, in your relationship with your child, do not immediately get scared and look for where you are going wrong. It is impossible to describe all possible options and situations in the text of the book, and real life is always more complex than the most elaborate theory. If something happens to your child later or earlier than it is written, if it happens to him differently or even exactly the opposite - just think about why this could be. The child may have his own pace of development or character traits, you may have special circumstances in your life now or some time ago, and finally, I just could be wrong. Always trust yourself more than any book, and this one is no exception. You are the parent of your child, you love him, you know him, you understand him, you feel him like no one else, even if at times it seems to you that you don’t understand him at all. A specialist’s opinion is important information for reflection; it is a way to see your situation from the outside, an opportunity to see problems in the broader context of culture, tradition, and even the evolution of our species. But it’s up to you to decide what to do right now with your own baby who is crying, fighting or scared, and if your intuition, driven by love and care, says something different from the book, listen to your intuition.
In the book we will go with the child and his parents through his entire childhood: from birth to adulthood. We'll build a road map to growing up and look at the role of attachment in this process. Of course, the development of a child is multifaceted, his body, his intellect and abilities change and develop, but we will focus only on one line: his relationships with “his” adults, how they, on the one hand, depend on the development of everything else, on the other - influence this development. Each chapter of the book is another stage of childhood. Each stage brings new challenges for the age, new needs of the child, new opportunities, but also new risks if the needs are not met. We will try to understand the logic: how dependence and helplessness turn into maturity, how our love and care year after year form in the child a secret support on which, like a pivot, his personality rests.
Our path along the road map will be accompanied by examples and observations from life, and sometimes from literature or cinema. It will be great if each time you take a brief break from the book and remember similar - or dissimilar - situations that you yourself were in or that you observed, and try to analyze them from the point of view of what you read. Or maybe you want to reread something or review it from a new angle.
Sometimes we will, as it were, rise above our path for small theoretical excursions in order to understand how it works. If the topic seems particularly interesting to you, it makes sense to find and read the books to which I provide links. I promise not to overload the narrative with terms and to mention only those that, in my opinion, are key to our topic.
As we move along the route, we will from time to time draw practical conclusions: how to behave as an adult, what to do and what not to do, so that the child develops in accordance with nature’s plan, is filled with affection and successfully turns it into independence. And so that it would be easier and more joyful for you with him, and that parenthood would be a happiness for you that requires dedication, and not hard labor or an exam that is always passed to who knows who with the fear of making a mistake.
* * *
According to the plan, the book you are holding in your hands will be the first part of the “Close People” series, dedicated to various aspects of attachment. In this first one, we will go through a “good” childhood from beginning to end, a childhood without any special problems or disasters, and we will try to understand what the experience of attachment gives a person, how relationships with their adults help create the core of personality, largely determining all future life. Hence the name: “Secret Support”. By understanding the logic of the development of your relationship with your child, you can make it better, and as we will see, it is a good relationship, a deep and secure attachment that underlies both good behavior and the successful development of a child’s potential. It is not “developmental methods”, but relationships with parents that give children the best start in life - and we will see this together, following step by step through childhood.
The second book, “Children Wounded to the Soul,” will be sadder - it will talk about what happens if a blow of fate or difficult circumstances disrupts the prosperous route planned by nature. We'll talk about attachment trauma and attachment disorders. This topic is very close to me, because I have been working for many years with adoptive parents, parents of children who have been wounded in the soul. However, no one is immune from attachment injuries, and the most prosperous family in the social sense experiences losses, separations, divorces, illnesses, sudden changes and other circumstances that are very sensitive for the child. Parents also do not always know how to provide care: they may not understand the child or offend them, even if they love them. We will talk about what happens to children in such situations and how we can help them. This book will be very closely related to the first, so I will often refer here and here to it.
The third book - it just so happens - has already been published, it is called “If it’s difficult with a child.” It is practical, dedicated to all those situations when we do not know what to do, when contact with the child is lost, when we are confused in our own educational attitudes and methods. It proposes to understand what is happening precisely from the point of view of attachment theory, so some points resonate with what will be discussed here. Many parents have already read it and claim that it works. Yes, it works. If you urgently need help, if things have become difficult for you and your child, you can start there; the very essence of attachment theory is briefly outlined there.
And finally, the fourth book - it will be additional and parallel to the third, and will be called, accordingly, “If it’s difficult to be a parent.” I haven’t even started yet, but I really want to, because after many years of working with parents, I know well how difficult it can be for them. How one’s own attachment traumas cover oneself, how difficult it can be to withstand the pressure of society and one’s own family, protecting one’s child and his right to grow up in attachment, what heroic, unprecedented efforts parents make to change themselves for the sake of their children. The more I work, the more I love and respect parents, so different, and so selfless in their love for their children. And I would really like to write a book just for them, about how you can become a better parent for your children than your own were.
Perhaps, over time, some other books will appear in the series, but I consider these four to be a must-done and will try very hard to write them in the foreseeable future. And if you are ready to take this journey through childhood along the path of attachment, then let's begin.
From birth to one year. Invitation to life
And it starts the same for everyone.
Two people who are connected as closely as possible, but at the same time do not know each other at all, have not even seen each other in person. Nine months of complete fusion: common blood, common air, common experiences. Nine months of accumulation and growth, bizarre changes and subtle mutual adjustments - and several difficult hours to move from world to world, to leave the warm universe of the mother's body and separate.
Finally they look into each other's eyes. The mother's gaze is clouded with tears, from fatigue, from tenderness, from relief, from pity. And the look of a newborn (if he was born without problems, is not exhausted by childbirth and is not pumped full of drugs) is serious, clear and focused. Full composure.
In these minutes and hours he looks into the face of fate itself. He imprints in the depths of his memory the main face in his life, the face of a person who will become the demiurge of his world, who will disperse clouds in this world or cause cruel floods, give bliss or expel from paradise, populate the world with monsters or angels, execute or pardon, give or take away, and most likely – both intermixed. There's a reason to be serious.
Thus begins a life-long story, a story of a bond that will connect the child and mother almost as tightly as the umbilical cord connected. Holding on to this connection, he will go out into the world, like an astronaut connected to a ship goes into outer space. Unlike the umbilical cord, this connection is not material, it is woven from mental acts: from feelings, from decisions, from actions, from smiles and glances, from dreams and self-sacrifice, it is common to all people and unique to each parent and each child. It does not go from belly to belly, but from heart to heart (in fact, of course, from brain to brain, but it sounds more beautiful that way).
Attachment. A miracle no less than pregnancy itself. And no less than life itself.
A matter of life and death
The human baby is born very small and immature. This is how evolution solved the difficult task facing it: to combine upright posture (and therefore a narrow pelvis) of the mother and the developed brain (and therefore a voluminous skull) of the child. It was necessary to somehow get out. Therefore, our species used updated and improved technology invented for marsupials. A huge kangaroo gives birth to a tiny, shrimp-sized baby that is not yet able to be separated from its mother. And then she carries it in her bag for some time. If it does not immediately get into its mother’s pouch, it will die very quickly from hunger and cold.
Also children. Every baby that comes into the world knows the rules of the game on a deep, instinctive level. They are simple and harsh.
Rule one. You are not a survivor on your own. If there is an adult who considers you one of his own, who will take care of you, feed you, warm you and protect you, you will live, grow and develop. If there is no such thing, it means there is no place for you in this life, sorry, the attempt failed.
A child’s need for adult care is a vital, vital need. It’s not about “it would be nice”, it’s not about “it’s lonely and sad without mom”, it’s about life or death. The attachment program that provides this care is our “bag” designed to carry the child, a kind of external womb, a transitional gateway between birth and exit into the world. It is embedded in those deep parts of the brain that know nothing about formula milk, incubators or children's homes. There, in the very little explored depths of the psyche of a newborn, this is exactly what is carved on the tablets: become someone - or die. There is no third.
Related to this circumstance rule two. If suddenly an adult is not nearby, or he is in no hurry to care and protect, you, baby, do not give up right away. You’re not just being capricious, you’re fighting for your life, and delicacy is inappropriate here. If he doesn’t come, call louder. If he doesn't want to, force him. Forgot - remind me. If you’re not sure about him, double-check that he’s still your adult and considers you one of his own. Vigilance is important here. The stakes are high. Fight!
And this is the second important thing to remember: if a child is not confident in his adult, in his affection, he will seek confirmation of the connection, strive to preserve and strengthen it at any cost.
That is why, as soon as the baby is born, he immediately gets down to business. You need to find your adult and involve him in affection. Tie him to yourself, and tightly. He has everything necessary for this; nature has equipped him like James Bond for a particularly difficult mission.
Any. Because his life is at stake.
Screaming is, of course, the main weapon of a newborn. What else can he do? So far, even his own arms and legs do not obey him. Therefore, in order to attract the attention of an adult, he screams. No, not just screaming, but SCREAMING. Yells. Yelling.
Objectively, the crying of a newborn is not such a loud and sharp sound. Especially for a resident of a big city who constantly lives in noise - how can a tiny person amaze him compared to his neighbor’s drill, the rumble of the subway, the roar of taking off planes, the crackling of a motorcycle, music rumbling from everywhere? However, we can somehow abstract ourselves from any of these sounds, although unpleasant. Learn not to hear, not notice and even sleep under them. They say that during wars people fell asleep even under cannonade. But we cannot ignore the crying of a baby. It penetrates “to the very liver”, it “raises the dead”, it falls into some frequency range that awakens in us the instinct of a caring adult and the voice of this instinct is inexorable. It doesn’t matter that you’re tired and want to sleep, or you’re sick, it doesn’t matter that you’re busy with something else, it doesn’t matter whether you want to, whether you can - quickly, right now, you dropped everything, got up and went to the child. This works even if someone else’s child is crying: we look around, worry, and if it’s ours, we are ready to do anything to make it stop: feed, warm, wash, rock - everything that is needed to keep the baby alive and healthy.
It happens that the caring instinct is damaged, temporarily (for example, under the influence of mind-altering substances: alcohol, drugs) or permanently (due to a mental disorder, one’s own extremely traumatic experience, organic brain damage). Then the baby’s cry either cannot break through the dope, remains unattended, or causes a pathological reaction not intended by nature: rage or despair. This is how tragic cases from crime chronicles occur, when a screaming child is hit against a wall or a mother in a state of postpartum depression is thrown out of a window.
However, attempts to break instinct, instead of obeying it, also took place in quite respectable society, for example, at the beginning of the 20th century, they tried to install soundproof boxes for babies on trains in very developed and prosperous countries. These were closed boxes with thick walls and holes for air, where parents were asked to put crying children so that they would not interfere with the rest of other passengers. The idea was quickly abandoned - they still felt sorry for the children, although even today heated angry discussions flare up every now and then on the topic “deliver us from this sound, transport the children somehow separately or stay at home with them.”
However, not everything is a stick; the child also has carrots at his disposal.
Usually in the second month of life, at one point the child does this. What makes parents lose all self-control, start excitedly calling each other, running around the apartment looking for a camera, calling family and telling friends that their child smiled for the very first time today.
It would seem, what’s wrong? The tiny creature stretched its toothless mouth slightly. And a little later I learned to add a quiet sound to this grimace - to laugh. However, in adults, a baby’s smile evokes a state of euphoria, incomparable bliss and happiness. This is such a pleasure that from now on the adults are ready to hurt themselves so that he does it again. And further. And further. We are again ready to carry, rock, bounce, kiss, wave a rattle, sing, crow and snort, make the cat work as a zookeeper, and make grandfather rustle with a newspaper - anything to make him laugh more often. Just to experience this incomparable thrill again.
Can you guess what it looks like? Nature made sure that we sat on this hook. The child will receive everything he needs for growth and development, rewarding his parents for their efforts with moments of unearthly bliss. This is also how instinctive programs for caring for offspring work. Just as sex is made pleasant so that we are not lazy about being fruitful and multiplying, caring for a baby is also accompanied by a reward in the form of the release of pleasure hormones into the blood.
In fact, a child may not even do anything special, but he still draws us into affection - simply by his very appearance. A large head, a plump face, a button nose, big eyes, short arms and legs - all this is addressed to the instinct of care. And how sweet it smells...
The same goal - to maintain contact with an adult - is served by the reflexes inherited by people from their distant primate ancestors. The newborn tenaciously grabs the adult’s finger or hair, and if he is lowered and laid down too sharply, he throws up his arms and legs, as if trying to grasp the adult’s paw. This helped our ancestors not to lose a baby if they had to quickly run away from a predator in dense thickets or along tree branches.
Only a born child can already recognize his mother by the sound of her voice, the smell and taste of milk, and immediately after birth, if she feels normal, she looks closely at her mother’s face, imprinting it in the depths of her memory - this is an instinctive program imprinting(imprinting), existing in mammals and birds.
Animal imprinting is a simple and therefore very inflexible attachment program. For example, the Austrian researcher Konrad Lorenz described a case when goslings hatching from eggs saw in the first minutes of their lives not the mother goose, but his shoes. After that, they considered the shoes to be their mother and followed them everywhere. Human instinct is much more complex, otherwise, from the moment maternity hospitals appeared, all children would consider only doctors in white coats as parents, and would ignore their parents. Fortunately, this is not the case, and children, for one reason or another, who have not received the experience of postpartum imprinting, still love those adults who take care of them.
In the first hours after birth, the tactile contact of the baby with the mother is no less important, not only for him, but also for her. After all, the mother’s body and psyche are also designed by nature to take care of the child. Her breasts fill with milk, and if you don't put the baby on them, they swell and hurt. Her uterus, stretched and bleeding after childbirth, contracts and heals faster in response to the baby's sucking. The mother needs to hear the baby’s breathing, feel it on her skin, smell it, kiss it, this gives pleasure and brings peace. If a child is separated from his mother, she is restless, she does not find a place for herself, she is tormented by disturbing fantasies that something will happen to him, that he will be stolen, replaced, that he will get sick, that he will die. She wants to be with him, all her thoughts and feelings are about the child, she wakes up quite easily when he calls, even if she is tired from childbirth.
Loved you for no special reason
Because you are a daughter
Because you are a son
Because baby
Because you are growing,
Because he looks like his dad and mom.
And this love until the end of your days
It will remain your secret support.
V. Berestov
Introduction
The entire evolution of life is the evolution of parental care for offspring. The most primitive living creatures are born indistinguishable from their “parents”; they do not need anything from their ancestors. Parents who are a little more complex only place them in a favorable environment, and then they do it themselves. Even more difficult - they try to leave food for the first time. This is what some insects do. Certain species of fish already protect their fry. Many reptiles protect clutches of eggs and look after hatchlings. But the birds always hatch, feed and teach the chicks, sometimes performing miracles of self-sacrifice for the sake of their offspring. Baby mammals do not survive without adult care, and their childhood is longer than that of chicks. The parents of the cubs not only feed, protect and teach them - they play with them, caress them, console them, resolve conflicts between brothers and sisters, and prepare them for communication in the pack.
If you look from this point of view, man is indeed the crown of creation. Because we have the most helpless babies and the longest childhood on the planet - a quarter of life. It takes years before a child can cope without adults. Moreover, with the course of history, the period of dependence is constantly lengthening; once upon a time, childhood definitely ended at twelve, but now at twenty-two it does not always end.
It turns out that a creature will grow up that does not just implement the programs written in the genes, like billions of his ancestors for millions of years and him, like some cockroaches, but builds his life, thinks about the structure of the universe, asks eternal questions of existence, has values, dares, believes, loves - in a word, a rational and free being, a rather long period of complete helplessness and dependence is necessary. In some miraculous way, it is dependence that transforms into freedom, it is precisely the complete initial inability to adapt to the world that transforms into the ability to creatively change this world.
Everyone who was born human and grew up has passed this path in one way or another. Everyone who raises children follows it. In this book we will go through it, step by step, from birth to adulthood, and try to understand: how does it work?
I want to say right away: this book is not strictly scientific. I would like to have another life in parallel to devote to research and verify every statement. But I don’t have a second life, and in this one I chose to be a practitioner. So, at my own peril and risk, I am simply telling you how I see, feel, and understand it. With examples from my life, from the stories of clients and readers of my blog, from observations on the street and on playgrounds.
Of course, the very essence, attachment theory is a completely scientific theory, there are many interesting studies and publications on it, some of which I will refer to throughout the story. But I am fully aware that not all statements of this theory, and certainly not all statements in this book, are fully scientifically confirmed, and some are generally difficult to verify. Attachment theory is not yet the mainstream of psychological science; there are fewer studies and books devoted specifically to it than we would like. In Russia, attachment theory is simply little known. And this is a great pity, because at the moment I do not know an approach to the study of a person, the study of childhood, an approach to education and psychotherapy that is more profound, accurate and effective in practical work. Many problems that poison the lives of many people could simply not be created if you knew how the child’s relationship with his parents works. And many already created and even familiar ones could be solved quite successfully and reliably. I am sure that someday this will be realized, the phenomenon of attachment will be studied truly deeply, and many new and important things will be revealed to us that will change people’s lives for the better.
But my clients and readers are raising kids today, and they can't wait. Therefore, today I am sharing with you what I can, without presenting what is written as the ultimate truth. Read, observe, listen to yourself, doubt and check. If something is going differently in your life, in your relationship with your child, do not immediately get scared and look for where you are going wrong. It is impossible to describe all possible options and situations in the text of the book, and real life is always more complex than the most elaborate theory. If something happens to your child later or earlier than it is written, if it happens to him differently or even exactly the opposite - just think about why this could be. The child may have his own pace of development or character traits, you may have special circumstances in your life now or some time ago, and finally, I just could be wrong. Always trust yourself more than any book, and this one is no exception. You are the parent of your child, you love him, you know him, you understand him, you feel him like no one else, even if at times it seems to you that you don’t understand him at all. A specialist’s opinion is important information for reflection; it is a way to see your situation from the outside, an opportunity to see problems in the broader context of culture, tradition, and even the evolution of our species. But it’s up to you to decide what to do right now with your own baby who is crying, fighting or scared, and if your intuition, driven by love and care, says something different from the book, listen to your intuition.
In the book we will go with the child and his parents through his entire childhood: from birth to adulthood. We'll build a road map to growing up and look at the role of attachment in this process. Of course, the development of a child is multifaceted, his body, his intellect and abilities change and develop, but we will focus only on one line: his relationships with “his” adults, how they, on the one hand, depend on the development of everything else, on the other - influence this development. Each chapter of the book is another stage of childhood. Each stage brings new challenges for the age, new needs of the child, new opportunities, but also new risks if the needs are not met. We will try to understand the logic: how dependence and helplessness turn into maturity, how our love and care year after year form in the child a secret support on which, like a pivot, his personality rests.
Our path along the road map will be accompanied by examples and observations from life, and sometimes from literature or cinema. It will be great if each time you take a brief break from the book and remember similar - or dissimilar - situations that you yourself were in or that you observed, and try to analyze them from the point of view of what you read. Or maybe you want to reread something or review it from a new angle.
Sometimes we will, as it were, rise above our path for small theoretical excursions in order to understand how it works. If the topic seems particularly interesting to you, it makes sense to find and read the books to which I provide links. I promise not to overload the narrative with terms and to mention only those that, in my opinion, are key to our topic.
As we move along the route, we will from time to time draw practical conclusions: how to behave as an adult, what to do and what not to do, so that the child develops in accordance with nature’s plan, is filled with affection and successfully turns it into independence. And so that it would be easier and more joyful for you with him, and that parenthood would be a happiness for you that requires dedication, and not hard labor or an exam that is always passed to who knows who with the fear of making a mistake.
Lyudmila Vladimirovna Petranovskaya
Secret support: attachment in a child's life
Loved you for no special reasonBecause you are a daughterBecause you are a son Because baby Because you are growing,Because he looks like his dad and mom.And this love until the end of your daysIt will remain your secret support.
V. Berestov
Introduction
The entire evolution of life is the evolution of parental care for offspring. The most primitive living creatures are born indistinguishable from their “parents”; they do not need anything from their ancestors. Parents who are a little more complex only place them in a favorable environment, and then they do it themselves. Even more difficult - they try to leave food for the first time. This is what some insects do. Certain species of fish already protect their fry. Many reptiles protect clutches of eggs and look after hatchlings. But the birds always hatch, feed and teach the chicks, sometimes performing miracles of self-sacrifice for the sake of their offspring. Baby mammals do not survive without adult care, and their childhood is longer than that of chicks. The parents of the cubs not only feed, protect and teach them - they play with them, caress them, console them, resolve conflicts between brothers and sisters, and prepare them for communication in the pack.
If you look from this point of view, man is indeed the crown of creation. Because we have the most helpless babies and the longest childhood on the planet - a quarter of life. It takes years before a child can cope without adults. Moreover, with the course of history, the period of dependence is constantly lengthening; once upon a time, childhood definitely ended at twelve, but now at twenty-two it does not always end.
It turns out that a creature will grow up that does not just implement the programs written in the genes, like billions of his ancestors for millions of years and him, like some cockroaches, but builds his life, thinks about the structure of the universe, asks eternal questions of existence, has values, dares, believes, loves - in a word, a rational and free being, a rather long period of complete helplessness and dependence is necessary. In some miraculous way, it is dependence that transforms into freedom, it is precisely the complete initial inability to adapt to the world that transforms into the ability to creatively change this world.
Everyone who was born human and grew up has passed this path in one way or another. Everyone who raises children follows it. In this book we will go through it, step by step, from birth to adulthood, and try to understand: how does it work?
I want to say right away: this book is not strictly scientific. I would like to have another life in parallel to devote to research and verify every statement. But I don’t have a second life, and in this one I chose to be a practitioner. So, at my own peril and risk, I am simply telling you how I see, feel, and understand it. With examples from my life, from the stories of clients and readers of my blog, from observations on the street and on playgrounds.
Of course, the very essence, attachment theory is a completely scientific theory, there are many interesting studies and publications on it, some of which I will refer to throughout the story. But I am fully aware that not all statements of this theory, and certainly not all statements in this book, are fully scientifically confirmed, and some are generally difficult to verify. Attachment theory is not yet the mainstream of psychological science; there are fewer studies and books devoted specifically to it than we would like. In Russia, attachment theory is simply little known. And this is a great pity, because at the moment I do not know an approach to the study of a person, the study of childhood, an approach to education and psychotherapy that is more profound, accurate and effective in practical work. Many problems that poison the lives of many people could simply not be created if you knew how the child’s relationship with his parents works. And many already created and even familiar ones could be solved quite successfully and reliably. I am sure that someday this will be realized, the phenomenon of attachment will be studied truly deeply, and many new and important things will be revealed to us that will change people’s lives for the better.
But my clients and readers are raising kids today, and they can't wait. Therefore, today I am sharing with you what I can, without presenting what is written as the ultimate truth. Read, observe, listen to yourself, doubt and check. If something is going differently in your life, in your relationship with your child, do not immediately get scared and look for where you are going wrong. It is impossible to describe all possible options and situations in the text of the book, and real life is always more complex than the most elaborate theory. If something happens to your child later or earlier than it is written, if it happens to him differently or even exactly the opposite - just think about why this could be. The child may have his own pace of development or character traits, you may have special circumstances in your life now or some time ago, and finally, I just could be wrong. Always trust yourself more than any book, and this one is no exception. You are the parent of your child, you love him, you know him, you understand him, you feel him like no one else, even if at times it seems to you that you don’t understand him at all. A specialist’s opinion is important information for reflection; it is a way to see your situation from the outside, an opportunity to see problems in the broader context of culture, tradition, and even the evolution of our species. But it’s up to you to decide what to do right now with your own baby who is crying, fighting or scared, and if your intuition, driven by love and care, says something different from the book, listen to your intuition.
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