Marvin – responding to children

The next thing though, is that, invariably, while the child is out exploring, there are going to be times when the child is either hurt, or doesn’t feel good, or is hungry, or is scared, or something. And that, those things, that when the child is feeling those things, boy does that ever stop the exploration. And what it does is that it, it activates the child’s attachment behaviour, the child stops exploring, and he needs to go back to the parent as a haven of safety. And when that happens, we talk about the child as being on the bottom of the circle. Needing to go back, needing to be welcomed back to the parent 

First of all, the first job is, of course, “Protect me. If I’m scared or if I’m hurt or if I’m sick” or something like that. A parent needs to protect the child from the danger. In addition, of course, as parents, we all know that there’s another kind of protection that we do, we protect the child from getting in trouble himself. So we’re, in a sense we’re protecting the child from himself because again, he doesn’t have the wisdom yet, and so the parent has to provide that wisdom.   So the first job then, when the child’s on the bottom of the circle, is for the parent to welcome the child in–and some of us have a hard time doing that sometimes—but to welcome the child in and first of all protect him, and then if the child is upset, to comfort him, to soothe him, or sometimes kids just need to come back for a quick recharge. 

The next job is, again, “Delight in me”. And the parent’s job is, one of the parent’s important jobs is, even if your child is upset and coming to you with some need that he has, for you to delight in your child, and indicate to your child, “It’s fine for you to come to me when you’re feeling this way”, and “I love being your parent”, then that is really going to be helpful in the child’s development. 

And then the final one is, “Help me organize my feelings”.  That’s what we have on the graphic. What we really mean here is, “Help me organize my behaviour” and “Help me organize my feelings”. Well we all think about behaviour management, and discipline and making sure that our child is behaving appropriately, what a lot of us tend not to think about is “Help me organize my feelings”. Because little kids, especially toddlers, little kids have a lot of very, very strong feelings, but they haven’t, they’re still very young, they haven’t yet developed strategies for regulating those feelings from managing those feelings, for dealing with them and coping with them.  So we think about the circle as representing the child’s daily life. And he goes around the circle hundreds of times every day. And we know that if a child and parent can, can navigate that circle well, that most of the time, things go well when the child’s on top of the circle, on the bottom of the circle, and the child’s doing his or her job and the parent’s doing his or her job, that that child is going to be secure. That child is going to have a secure attachment. And we know that secure attachment, if a child has a secure attachment, then that hugely increases the likelihood that that child is going to develop along a good developmental pathway.