by guest blogger Gloria DeGaetano
The door to the apartment was left ajar, so Miriam peeked in. She knew she was expected, but after knocking several times, she wondered why no one answered. Miriam could see that the blinds were down, making the small room oddly dark for the middle of a rare Northwest sunny afternoon. She called out, “Cindy, Cindy, it’s me.” No answer. As Miriam’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could see Cindy staring at a large television. Cindy’s two year-old daughter was enraptured by a cartoon blaring from another TV in the corner of the room. Cindy’s son, ten months old, strapped into a car seat, watched a third small television. All three TVs were on different channels, yet all three people were enraptured by the same focus: a two-dimensional flat surface.
A public health nurse in one of my workshops shared this true story. At the time Cindy was a sixteen year-old single mother. Understanding the tragedy of this situation for both mother and babies, the workshop participants and I discussed the dire consequences of allowing screen machines to interfere with loving bonding experiences between parent and child.
This occurred 15 years ago. Since then, of course, times have changed dramatically to encase both parent and child in the peculiar world of mobile devices. Not exactly a world, yet a portal to many worlds of countless possibilities—worlds that continually tempt us away from the world of the here and now, the world of the living, so to speak. Yet, if we succumb too often and too unconsciously, we risk the danger of re-making ourselves into absent parents by default. Here, but not really. If parents are unapproachable, will children grow to seek validation from their machines, cementing an emotional bond with Siri and foregoing the messier relationships with parents altogether?
The startling ease by which screen machines keep children quiet, yet distant, may mean parents today have to be more intentional than ever to provide a loving presence to children that children can feel because the competition for our affection is so keen. If babies at nine months are introduced to TV (the average age in the US for beginning TV exposure) and if toddlers are using I-Pads as toys for more than a few minutes daily, then parents may have to prepare for 16 more years of hassles trying to get them to become “unglued.” Early exposure means that children will develop an emotional bond that will be very difficult to break. You can count on it.
Young mammals are programmed to attach to what is most present and available in their lives. John Bowlby, British psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, in his classic studies found that baby monkeys, for instance, actually form emotional bonds to objects. Infant monkeys who were given a “substitute mother” in the form of a cloth monkey clung to it and tried to receive nurturance from it. Separated from their real mothers, they actively “attached” to the only “mother” they knew, even if an inanimate object. We think of babies holding tight to teddy bears or blankies when their parents are out or when they are alone hearing fighting from the other room. I also recall the stories of kids sleeping with their DNS or other mobile device—not to sneak in some late night games—but rather to “cuddle” with their devices. Once hooked, young children can’t comfortably let go.
Scientific research confirms that babies and young children intentionally seek love, comfort, and nurturance from objects. Studies of children who have been separated from their mothers for extended periods of time show a sequence of behaviors that end in detachment from humans and attachment to things. With their mothers unavailable for nurturance, they experienced surprise, then protest, and finally despair. Not understanding that their mothers would come back, these children despaired profoundly. They attached emotionally to a toy or a doll, focusing attention on the object as a source of emotional comfort. As adults many of these children exhibited severe maladjustment, such as high levels of anxiety and aggressiveness. With their social capacities permanently damaged, as parents they treat their young without affection, like inanimate objects.
A loving parent-child bond is absolutely imperative to steer brain development on its right course. Love actually changes the shape and function of the human brain. Without such a bond, the child is set up early on for a wide array of future cognitive, emotional, and social problems. In fact, without on-going parental presence, most mammals grow up altered in some way. Pioneering primatologist Harry Harlow revealed how baby monkeys brought up without mothers and playmates sat in their cages alone whimpering and picking at their skin until they bled, rather than choosing to be with others of their kind, too emotionally damaged to socialize.
This is also true of human infants. The nature of the baby’s attachment to his or her parent or primary caregiver will be a primary determinant in the child’s ability to relate to others. Writing about how the infant internalizes his/her “working model” of how to be with other people from the initial relationship with the primary parent, psychiatrist Daniel Siegel emphasizes: “If this model (the first relationship to the parent) represents security, the baby will be able to explore the world and to separate and mature in a healthy way. If the attachment relationship is problematic, the internal working model of attachment will not give the infant a sense of a secure base and the development of normal behaviors (such as play, exploration, and social interactions) will be impaired.”
In an age of screens, perhaps one of the basic problems is that it becomes easier for people to look away from each other rather than toward each other. But parents and children need to look at each other—often. Rensselaer Polytechnic’s Linda Caporael points out what she refers to as “micro-coordination,” in which a baby imitates its mother’s facial expression, and the mother, in turn, imitates the baby’s. This also happens when fathers are interacting with infants. Televisions, computer screens, and digital gadgets obviously can’t accomplish such a profound, coordinated dance of intimate communication. In a sense, children don’t know their feelings until the parent expresses feelings for them. Demonstrating a facial expression allows the child to understand, and eventually name various emotions.
Facial expressions act as a pathway into understanding the other person’s inner state. When we think about it, this is an amazing capacity of the mammalian brain. We can’t read a goldfish’s mood or a turtle’s state of mind by looking at. But we can read our pet dog’s countenance when we take him for a walk. Mammals use their faces to express emotions. Turning toward each other, parents and young children form a very special interpersonal relationship merely by looking at each other. Since this exchange allows the parent to tune into the mental and emotional states of the child, the relationship bond deepens between them. When we look into the eyes of a beloved person, there is an intimate knowing. When we find vacuity behind human eyes, it can give us chills or cause us to wonder, “What’s wrong with that person?”
As parents maintain eye contact with babies and young children it allows these new brains to develop appropriate ways to filter emotional experiences. Watching strangers’ faces on flat screens, however, doesn’t have the same type of effect for the child. Love must be present and felt for brain structures to respond appropriately.
(c) 2012 by Gloria DeGaetano
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