newsletter Feb06

the newsletter, Feb 2006

When the dream fades away

An immense dream to be realised and a reality to be faced in its entirety. This is the conflicting synthesis of expecting a child. As conflicting as the feelings lived by most future mothers during the first months of pregnancy. In the follow on of hopes and truth, positive thoughts sometimes leave too much room for negative thoughts, fears for the health of the baby to be born and, above all, the fear that the pregnancy will not reach its term. These are common situations and the comprehensible worries shared by a lot of women who face an event which is marvellous but unfamiliar such as birth. These anxieties are not generally justified during pregnancy which, for most women, proceeds perfectly. Nevertheless, there are cases where reality turns out to be “particularly more insensitive” than we feared. To take this into account with just as much “substantiality” doesn't mean living the nine months with the anxiety of having to face a dra matic situation. It simply means facing the eventuality of a painful circumstance in a “realistic” manner. Recognising if not the positive sides, at least the “realistic” and unchangeable sides of a condition.

Why me? This is the question that each mother usually asks herself when faced with an interruption of pregnancy. A question to which only a “realistic” answer can be given. The experience of an interruption of pregnancy is an event that interests the life of “many different” women: according to probability surveys at least 15 - 20% of clinically recognized pregnancies terminate in a spontaneous abortion. It is therefore a frequent event. And it is in this frequency that the naturalness of an event is revealed. It is not an isolated case nor a fact that should allow you to think it is an accumulation of bad luck or fate where there are some responsibilities for what happened. Spontaneous abortions are generally due to the presence of anomalies in the foetus: anomalies which are simply “incompatible with life”. It is nature that, simply, takes its course. There is nothing that could have been done and nothing that jeopardized the situation. It is the natural answer that the body offers in the presence of pathologies which are not necessarily destined to reappear.

Pain and sadness are natural and comprehensible feelings in these circumstances. But it is important not to let yourself become overwhelmed, to keep the experience within a realistic view, as it is important to share your own negative thoughts without shame. To show your own emotions, your turbulence, your worries, is necessary to free yourself from the burden and, above all it contributes to reappraising a problem realistically. Talking with your partner, with a friend or, in the more difficult cases, with someone who can give psychological support, is the first step to be done to recuperate the serenity you need in order to go back to thinking of a project of happiness that a terminated pregnancy must not jeopardize

The hard work of the first months

Happy but tiring, full of joy but also of loneliness. The first months with a child are marked by conflicting feelings and situations that put the serenity of a lot of women to the test. According to a recent survey made in Italy on 100 mothers followed during their first 18 months of maternity, only 10 didn't have any problems facing the maternal role. The initial difficulty is therefore a common and diffused element, what does actually change is the ability to face the situation. To review one's own expectations, to share one's state of mind, to ask one's partner, family of origin or friends for help, to delegate assignments and responsibility are the first steps toward the solution.

The assignment you are called upon to perform is without doubt committing: the nursing, the desire to learn to understand the needs of the child and his way of expressing them, the necessity to build a three-some relationship and readapt the consolidated dynamics of the couple. There is nothing strange in having difficulty in adjusting one's own rhythms to those of the child. And there is nothing strange about the fact that anxiety sometimes takes the upper hand. He is so small, fragile and dependent on your care, that the doubt of not being capable of facing the situation is more than legitimate.

The main point is that healthy self-criticism, that allows you to learn to confront your own abilities, should not turn into an apprehension that constantly keeps you on tenterhooks, ready to run at his every whinge, to check him every instant while he's sleeping, to satisfy his every need or whim.

Maternal instinct, is not a mechanism which is capable of annulling the hard work of maternity. Children make us happy but inevitably they tire us and drain our energy. So there is need for rest, for time to dedicate to your thoughts and to yourself. And there is a need to accept your own limits, your own tiredness, your own vulnerability, your impelling need for help and support. Those who start, without shame, to face the hard work during the first weeks of maternity and nursing have something extra to give their child: a peaceful and appreciated physical and psychological relationship.

If until today you have been very particular about your home being clean and tidy, now that you have a child to look after you should, for instance, be prepared to let go a little and to take advantage instead when the baby is resting to get some sleep, to listen to music, to read, to chat with a friend. If the tiredness is becoming too much to handle, share your worries with your partner, ask him to help you, remind him of your need to rest. Delegate where possible the running of the house and the minor and more important daily appointments. It may seem strange, but a woman receives more attention and more offers to help when she is pregnant than when she is having to cope with a newborn baby. On the condition that they really want to help you and are capable of not intervening in your relationship with your baby, friends, mothers, mothers-in-law and sisters are in this case very welcome: allow them to shop for you, have them cook for you, ask them to come to the house so you can have a refreshing bath without the anguish of the baby suddenly crying. Ask for help and ask for it clearly and directly. Sharing your state of mind can sometimes not be enough. For those who have not lived through maternity and who are emerged in every day life, it is often difficult to understand the tiredness of a mother who “after all is at home all day long and only has to nurse the baby”. When you ask for help, therefore, indicate your needs and delegate the problems to be resolved personally. Free the field from the risk of incomprehension and disappointment. It is an essential step to find a new equilibrium, a new dimension in which the mother and the woman in you can both converse. It is the essential requisite to succeed in living with greater serenity the tenderness, the intimacy and the increasing joy of being a mother.

Cuddles help to grow. They are a source of security, they help communication, they teach affection. For this reason all children, and not just babies have the “right” to their daily dose of kisses, hugs and cuddles. With the only difference being that, as months go by it will be the baby who decides when and how many hugs he wants to receive. It is possible, for instance, that while you are hugging him tightly he may try to escape, pushing you away with his hand. Respect his request, but don't come to any hasty conclusions: he will still need to be hugged. The newborn baby who was always ready to answer your cuddles with a smile is growing into a child who, day after day, tries to accomplish autonomy and independence. Nevertheless, as always happens during the growth phases, to accomplish independence a child needs in any case to feel the presence of his parents, to feel their reassurance, to perceive their love. A love that is born and continuous to exist also and especially in physical contact.

It is from our hands through the skin, that all our feelings are transmitted to the child. And it is for this reason that it is just as essential that the cuddles are associated with a feeling of tenderness, true and sincere, that “humanises” our gestures. You can lie with words, but not with cuddles. The massage, like the cuddles and hugs must therefore always be lived as a pleasure, never as a duty. The affective interactions deprived of spontaneity, “calculated”, programmed, turn into something mechanical. And as such they are perceived by a child, that realises when a kiss is “forced” when there is a lack of affection and warmth which, on the contrary, he needs. Avoid cuddling the child when you are in a hurry or when you are not in the right mood. But when you decide to devote yourself to him, forget all your worries and problems. You need nothing else to communicate our love. Simply close your eyes and let yourself be guided by the sincerity of your own instinct. Your emotions, his emotions your thoughts, his thoughts.

Encourage him a lot, help him only a little. This is the main rule to bear in mind when following the growth of a child. A rule to be respected above all when you are in doubt that the growth process is advancing too slowly. Learning to walk is the result of a long and complex process, that foresees different phases at different times, in a personal dimension that, also from a psychological point of view, has a sense of simple and exclusive accomplishment. All children learn sooner or later to autonomously grab objects and sit up, as, sooner or later they all learn to walk. The only duty for adults is that of helping their natural tendency towards accomplishing autonomy offering suitable incentives and peaceful occasions for experimentation, but limiting oneself in any case to respecting their personal development times.

Once the child has acquired a sense of security he will be ready to accomplish greater autonomy. You can for instance help him by involving him in simple, but effective “games” such as putting him on his back with his feet and hands in the air, leaving him to touch some soft plastic tubes, that you tap on his feet or he tries to grab. You can also increase his security in movement by placing him with his tummy on a cylindrical pillow to help him to rock. Playing after all represents the main experience of knowledge for a child. Little is required to transform it into useful stimulus. For instance create a “wonder-world route” laying the mat near the couch, not too high, on which to put his games and objects of common use which are capable of gaining his curiosity: blocks with which to build a tower, pots and pans to make a noise, rag dolls and teddy bears, bunches of keys that jingle, small books full of pictures to be leafed through... Check that the child has seen the object and leave him then to try to get it using the couch as essential support to stand up.

Alone but not lonely

Free to express himself, free to confront his own abilities and his own limits. Free to pass, when playing as in life, from a childish need of affiliation to a more adult desire of autonomy. Between the point of departure and that of arrival there is the gradual progress of a child towards independence. A route in which parents are in any case called upon to stimulate and to encourage a child, relinquishing nevertheless the feeling, natural and comprehensible, to maintain an absolute bond with him. Here, therefore, the duties of a mother and father include that of leaving children to learn to play on their own. Turning off the television and computer is, obviously, not enough. Children should be offered the possibility above all to experiment, in the exclusive space of their own solitude, the emotion and the courage to become adults.

It is this that a child needs to verify and to understand in order to grow serenely with himself. It often happens that we associate the idea of loneliness to something sad and negative sometimes forgetting that being alone with oneself can help an adult to reflect on his own circumstances, to verify his own emotions, to discover solutions and to find alternatives. It is no different for children. Also children need to be alone to assimilate their own knowledge, to imitate adults, to experiment the lessons received, to decide their own space to realize their own dreams. And, unlike adults, they do it by playing. A game in which the intervention of their parents is not foreseen. Just think about the natural attraction of children towards a “secret hiding place”. Whether it is a curtain of cloth or a simple tablecloth it doesn't matter. The main point is that they find a space in which to hide. A world apart in which the adults don't count an d in which they can be role leaders of their own stories and their own imagination. An corner of time to be filled with creativeness and inventiveness.

Children that don't have the possibility to learn to be alone, are children who are denied the opportunity to try to manage their own leisure time and to experiment also the “positive” consequences of boredom. And it is this need “to resolve” their boredom, in fact, that helps children express themselves, to discover their own interests, to verify their own attitudes, their own abilities, their own limits. And to use their imagination in the positive invention of games, stories and imaginary characters. Playing the “pretend” game alone means dressing the role that one wants, changing it, freely modifying rules and schemes to give life to one's own imagination: they can talk to the teddy bears, a simple jar is transformed into a drum, the plastic saucers are filled with food cooked for mothers and fathers and the same stick, between their legs, can turn within a few hours into a horse, a motorcycle, an airplane.

To often call a child, to check what he is doing, to ask him if he needs our presence or to participate at all costs in his playtime means somehow practicing a form of control over him, to want to enter his world at all costs, a world that doesn't belong to adults and from which it is sometimes useful to keep out. Out of the child's secret hiding place, away from his freedom to grow. To leave him the possibility to try to be alone, in his room and with his games, without the television on, without his mother and father around who propose things to do and feed his imagination. The freedom of a child is not being free to choose one or the other proposal made by his parents: it is having not to choose. To start to write, alone, the story of his childhood, the history of his future.

The insecurity behind shyness

They avoid joining the group, they keep to one side, they are evasive, fearful, embarrassed even by a simple hello. This is what shy children are like. Torn between the fear of expressing themselves and the desire to open up and to free themselves of the burden of an introversion that makes them increasingly silent, increasingly lonely. And increasingly more “lovable” or, on the contrary more, “worrisome” for their parents. There is nothing more self-defeating than parents who simply refer to the shyness of their own child as a question of “character”. And there is nothing more “dangerous” than a parent who is worried about the shyness. A “worried” parent tends to almost always find a simple “solution” to what he considers a “problem.” But the solution lies, for the most part, in the reasons which are at the root of the “problem”.

Shyness, introversion, difficulty in relating to others are not illnesses of which to be afraid. And neither are they “questions of character” to be underestimated or welcomed with “affection”. Children can also be born introverted or shy, but most become this way. It is without doubt in fact that the family and environmental conditionings are absolutely decisive in the development of shyness and generally asocial attitudes, whose true and main origin must be seen in the lack of self-respect, the lack of faith in oneself which allows a child “to face” the opinion of others.

A determinant point is, for instance, the reaction that parents have when faced with the discretion of their own child. To spur him to overcome shyness, to repeat to him that he is a shy child, to continually invite him “to play with the other children”, to compare his behavior with that of his brothers and friends has the self-defeating effect of confirming to the child that there is a “problem”, of confirming his inadequacy. And this simply contributes to mining an already shaky self-respect. For the same reason over-protective or authoritarian educational attitudes are quire inopportune, as they are based on excessive criticisms and reproaches or, on the contrary, marked by a lack of listening and understanding.

A shy child needs, on the contrary, parents who help him by showing him love and their complete trust, allowing him to discover and to develop his own abilities, accompanying him, with discretion and without forcing him, towards new experiences. Let's learn to listen to our children; let's teach children to express their feelings, also the more negative ones; let's accustom them to look at the positive side of the experiences they live, let's educate them to search for the solution and not to give up.

Let's support them in their difficulties, let's back them up and give them practical suggestions when they show they do not know how to overcome the insurmountable obstacle of becoming part of a group. Let's create the right occasions to allow the child to go to parks, play centres and friends' houses. Let's organise meetings with others of his own age. In short, let's allow the child to be able to “practise” socialising. But not just this. A child learns to relate himself to the other children also by observing how we relate to other adults. Our fears, our uncertainties, our limitations can make a child suspicious and he will tend, as we do, to doubt the trust in strangers. If, on the contrary, our attitude, when meeting the other parents in the park, in front of school, or a friends' houses is one of trust and open-mindedness, the child will find it easier to relate to other children with the same permissiveness. Children have to be able to coun t on the positive and forthright example of the adults that surround them. To learn to get to know himself, to achieve self-respect, to be more self-asserted, to put himself to the test. To succeed sooner or later in believing in himself. To succeed, finally, in believing in others.