Happiness can be learned from the cradle
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The first bonds that a baby establishes with her mother are the basis of her capacity for happiness.
It is on this reassuring basis, "psychic bearing," that young children develop their self-awareness and that they can grow up secure, serene, and happy.
Make your baby happy from birth
To feel good, when a baby is born, caregivers need to be able to reflect on what they are experiencing. It is essential that we listen to him with empathy, understand his point of view without being overwhelmed by his anguish, and help him understand what he is going through.
Help your child open up to the world
With this support, she learns to recognize her emotions, to have clearer ideas, to adapt to her social environment, to open up to the world. Gradually, over the months, the child acquires the ability to control his feelings instead of feeling overwhelmed, tolerating frustration, and controlling his impulses.
In over twenty years of pediatric consultations in Boston, pediatrician Claudia M. Gold has understood that everyday behavior problems (colic, disturbed sleep, eating disorders, repeated anger, anxiety, crying) are actually symptoms of disturbances in the body. The relationships the baby establishes with her parents. The child cannot regulate the expression of her emotions, nor her mother, there is a fight between them, they are angry, sad.
Intense and overflowing emotions
To avoid this type of problem, it is not enough to teach parents how to be with their children. There is no point in saying what to do if you don't understand your underlying motives.
What special support does the baby need to thrive? What Claudia Gold originally calls "psychic behavior". Carrying a child psychically is trying to understand her behavior and meet her needs in a climate of empathetic benevolence, while providing a framework capable of containing and calming her intense and sometimes overwhelming emotions.
In babies, the left brain, that of language and rationality, has not yet taken over the right brain, that of emotions and affects. Largely dominated by her right brain, a baby seeks to understand the world and becomes an avid reader, a true expert on the emotions she seeks in her environment.
Emotions permeate a child as deeply as the sponge absorbs water, they are their main food, and those who love them must consider their emotional needs even before their conventional needs, especially dietary needs. Much of this essential recognition comes from the loving gaze of its mother and allows the baby to feel that it exists, that it is real.
Immediate maternal empathy
It was the English psychoanalyst, John Bowlby, who first spoke of attachment to describe how a child embraces his mother in times of stress and fear. This essential and secure attachment relationship begins and grows when the parent is fully emotionally available. The child feels free to explore the world, confident that when there is fear or danger, the caregiver will have the appropriate response.
If no one is really available to him, if his mother is only intermittently available, or if he is emotionally detached, depressed, for example, the child will show insecure attachment.
The second component of a reassuring "psychic behavior" is the immediate empathy that a mother feels for her child, the fact of feeling mentally and physically what he feels, his ability to consider the experience from his point of view; put on her place. A normally sensitive mother quickly tunes into her baby's natural rhythms, observing him, discovering what is right for him, and adjusting accordingly. In short, she knows how to embrace her emotions.
The third component is how you can regulate your little one's difficult emotions. She must be able to accept his feelings by setting limits on his overflow, helping him calm down, containing his anger and frustration.
The fourth component of psychic bearing is based on the mother's ability to regulate her own feelings, her outbursts. She should never feel overwhelmed by her distress, even in times of great stress, remaining attentive and responsive to her baby.
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