Pre-Birth to Three: - Attunement
One of the things that helps to create a really warm and loving relationship, which feeds into hopefully eventually a secure attachment relationship, is the fact of attunement, which really means that if the baby is upset, or needs to play, or is sleepy or whatever, is making signs that they are hungry, the parent is able – or the carer is able – to actually spot the signals of this child, and get into the needs of that child as the wonderful unique individual that they are, so they are able to tune into what it is that the child actually needs. And one of the key things is about being comforted, that’s really, really important.
I know that there is a lot of debate about it, and there are programmes called controlled crying, and this, that and the other, but in actual fact what we as little human beings need is to know that somebody is actually tuned into us, and is able to respond to our needs, including being comforted, and being helped to be able to feel better; which after all is going to help us initially start to feel that the world is safe, and that it’s alright. We have these horrible feelings when we are upset, and then we learn, because somebody comes and comforts us, that it’s going to be okay. They often call it the dance between a parent and a child, this wonderful thing that the baby says something – coos or gurgles – and the parent replies, and then they extend on what the baby is doing, and so on, so there is that kind of beautiful dance which happens between them, but also this realisation that the adult needs to be aware of the signals that the baby is using to say, this is what I need, this is what I want. As Ed Tronick says with his still face experiment, you are not always going to be in tune, it is not possible, but what you hope is that the parents engage, re-engage with their baby, so this beautiful kind of dance between them continues.
One of the things we need to remember is that when we communicate verbal language is only part of the way we actually communicate, and we actually communicate so much more by our facial expressions and the body language, the hand gestures that we use, and babies body language is really powerful; there was some wonderful research where they showed adults pictures of babies with their faces hidden, and they asked them what mood did they think they were in. And when they showed the babies faces they actually got it right most of the time. Because when you think about it, if you are comfortable you are relaxed, and so is a baby. Babies when they newborn their little fists are clenched, but then they open their hands, they reach out, they make a gesture, this wonderful kind of thing is a signal, the reaching out is a signal, the kind of self soothe clasping which babies can do is a signal to say that I am feeling a bit agitated and I am actually trying to soothe myself. And one of the key things that you can do before you can do any rolling or anything like that is the fact that you can just avert your gaze, you can look away from something. And the sensitive practitioner, the attuned practitioner, the attuned parent notices when the child looks away because it is the first signal to say, hang on this is all getting a little bit much for me, I just need to break this connection for a little while, and sometimes babies will actually even turn their heads to be able to tell you that that is. And what is really unhelpful for babies is if parents or practitioners follow the baby round, so they are still trying to attract the baby’s attention, and often that’s because of their needs rather than what the baby is saying to them.
And we all need to disconnect, very few of us can stare at somebody. The only time we really do it, I think, is either when we are doing a threat, or when we are terribly in love, and then we will lock eye gaze for a while. And that’s what happens with babies and their mums often in the first few weeks of life, we do get a lot of this intense gazing. But at the same time babies can still look away, babies will still turn their heads, babies will still clasp their hands, babies will still reach, babies will still make a movement with their feet. In adults, if you watch an adult’s feet it will often give you a signal of how they are actually feeling. If their feet are turning away from you then you may think that maybe they actually want to break off the chat as well. So babies too can use their feet, can squirm their feet – think about us when we are feeling a bit agitated how our legs might be going, and we don’t know we are doing it but our legs are twitching and our feet are twitching, or what do we do, we clench our fists, we open them, we grasp something; all those gestures are telling us something. And as parents and practitioners we need to get into seeing what those subtle signals are rather than the baby arching their back and getting really distressed before somebody says, oh have you had enough then. Or the signal that says, I want some more, that eager kind of (non verbal gesture) that’s a wonderful gesture, that is body language; its saying oh I really like that game, let’s have it ... or even doing this (non verbal rocking gesture) might be the signal that they want to play row, row, row the boat again. If you have done that game and then the baby is doing this again (non verbal rocking gesture) they might be saying to you, do it again, do it again, so it’s really important.