object permanence – Lion's Whiskers

Playing the Lion Game

admin — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Around the time of my son E.’s first birthday he took charge of managing his separation anxiety, conquering fear, and developing a capacity for courage. How exactly did he do that, you ask? Well, we’d been reading lots of books together about animals, and making the requisite oink-oink here, baa-baa there, and moo-moo everywhere to help him learn to communicate in sounds and words. I noticed that he jumped every time I made the rather dramatic ROAR! for the lion. He loved my lion, and he feared my lion at the same time.

Coinciding with my efforts to help him develop the capacity for language, we’d played plenty of “Peek-a-Boo” and his brain had developed, like most other infants around eight months, the capacity for object permanence. E. could retain and utilize visual images enough to understand that I could go away, out of sight/sound/touch, but still exist in memory. As he developed language over the next year, around eighteen months he began begging me, “Be lion, Mommy.” When I turned to him and roared in his face, he looked at me without recognition at first, startled, eyes wide, and then he’d place his sweet hands on my face and say, “Be Mommy!”

Eventually, this game evolved over the coming months whereby he would ask me to approach him, then chase him, with “Come Lion.” As soon as I would reach him, after roaring whilst I covered the distance between us, he would say “Go Away Lion!” Then, urge me in the sincerest, anxious, heart-breaking voice, to “Be Mommy ‘gain.” It probably seems a masochist game to play, but trust me he was mastering fear. He was rehearsing the limbic pathways to both experience and calm fear synapses provoking sympathetic nervous responsiveness. He could turn on the fear “Be the lion”, and turn it off “Be my mommy again.” Abracadabra, I’m in control of my fear and my fate.

E. was also learning to handle the short periods of separation distress evident in secure attachments between parent and child. According to adult attachment researcher and associate profession in the University of Illinois Department of Psychology, Chris Fraley (2010):

Bowlby observed that separated infants would go to extraordinary lengths (e.g., crying, clinging, frantically searching) to prevent separation from their parents or to reestablish proximity to a missing parent. At the time of Bowlby’s initial writings, psychoanalytic writers held that these expressions were manifestations of immature defense mechanisms that were operating to repress emotional pain, but Bowlby noted that such expressions are common to a wide variety of mammalian species, and speculated that these behaviors may serve an evolutionary function.

Bowlby argued that, over the course of evolutionary history, infants who were able to maintain proximity to an attachment figure via attachment behaviors would be more likely to survive to a reproductive age. According to Bowlby, a motivational system, what he called the attachment behavioral system, was gradually “designed” by natural selection to regulate proximity to an attachment figure.

(Source: http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/attachment.htm, ¶2-3)

My son, E., was trying to learn to survive in the wilds of our living room. I was the lion stalker, he was my prey. Then, he turned the tables on me and became my tamer, his little hands on my face taming me instantly. He also appeared to tame his own fear.

We were enacting the age-old drama associated with natural selection which requires that we learn to survive danger, seeking comfort in the arms of key attachment figures or at least camouflage in community. E. developed a game that helped him trigger not only the hormonal cascade of fight-or-flight chemical messengers, but also activated the attachment feedback loop that Bowlby, Ainsworth, and others today still observe that helps to regulate and restore limbic homeostasis:

Source: http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/attachment.htm

Hold Out Your Hand and Close Your Eyes!

admin — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Firstly, “Happy Father’s Day!” to all our readers who are dads. Here’s a great quote to start your day:

“My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.” ~ Jim Valvano
Now for today’s post:

Further to the research in previous posts that I’ve shared about the importance of baby bonding, creating healthy attachment between parent and child, separation anxiety, and the development of object permanence—these games help build trust and playfulness into your everyday life with young children.

Dr. Lisa’s Parenting Tip:

Play Peek-a-Boo and other Trust-Building Games!

The goal: Reassuring your child that you are reliable, consistent, and that you always come back.

Peek-a-Boo: You can play this game with infants to toddlers, and watch in amazement as their cognitive capacity for object permanence develops. You can start with an object, a teddy, a ball, or something else familiar. At around six months of age, begin to hide your own face, and quickly reappear after asking “Where’s Mommy?/Where’s Daddy?” Then say, “Here’s Mommy./Here’s Daddy!” As your child approaches eight months, start using the moniker “Peek-a-Boo” as you reappear, “I see you!” and/or “I love you!” to reconnect. Separation distress is normal for securely attached infants, your goal is to allow time-limited experience of separation anxiety, followed by the comfort and nervous system soothing provided by the return of a loving primary attachment figure—YOU!

Hide-and-Seek: Once your child is mobile and more confident to be left alone for a moment, introduce “Let’s play Hide and Seek.” Hide yourself in an easily accessible place and call your child to come find you, delight in their ability to find you and the pleasure that comes from being reunited. Then, teach your child to find a safe place to hide nearby and allowing for a few moments of suspense by counting to 10, go find them in their hiding place. Again, celebrating their cleverness to hide, to disappear for a short time, to be found again, and delight in your reunion. We have played a myriad array of hide-and-seek games in our family over the years including flashlights, secret nooks and crannies in the house, hidden-from-view places in tall grasses or high in the trees, favorite books to while away the waiting in secret hiding places for Mommy or Daddy to find them. They loved watching me look for them, bewildered, lost, calling out for hints about whether I was “hot” or “cold”—closer or father—from finding them. They were reassured to see me on a loving quest to reunite myself with them.

The Tickle Game: It’s impossible not to tickle a two year-old. They are so full of wonderful reactions, giggles, and sensory pleasure. As important as loving touch, teaching our children to say “No” or “Stop” and how to establish their own healthy boundaries is vital. I started the tickle game based on the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song, where the spider eventually lands as a tickly five-finger spider climbing down my child’s arm as the water spout. They also got to be the spider starting on my head, working its way down to my most tickly bits of all, my toes. You can have a great deal of fun playing with the physical sensations of tickling. But, make sure that your child learns to both say and honor the word “No”, “Stop”, or “Enough” when the tickle game is done. Over time, as kids grow up, teaching them that their bodies are their own and that no one is allowed to tickle them without their and/or a parent’s permission is essential for their safety and security. Eventually, our tickle game resulted in years of my super-mobile spidery fingers chasing my kids around the house, them screaming in both delight and fear at being chased, and all of us tumbling into a tickle pile when I managed to catch them. My 10 year-old daughter surprised me during a sleep over with all her pals recently, to do the same with all of them! Once again, as soon as anyone says “Stop”, the game was over, often to start again with kids’ pleas to “Chase us again!”

I’ll Catch You When You Fall: Once the tumbling and living room gymnastics stage starts, variations of this trust game can be lots of fun with the proper pillows in place. Obviously, falling and hoping your child will catch you is not how this game is played. But siblings can join in together, if they are equally matched and capable. Start with your child on his/her knees with a pillow behind. Have your arms cradled under their arm pits and ask them to trust their body in your arms as they lean back to lie on the pillow with your arms as support. Then, as they develop confidence and agility, eventually they can stand “as tall as a tree”, and you can give a gentle chop to their side, ask them to count to three, “1, 2, 3”, and call out “Timber” which is, obviously, your cue to show your amazing lumberjack skills and catch your falling child, a.k.a. “Little Tree”.

See Jennifer’s post about going on trust walks in “Blindfold“.

Please post other games that you’ve found that build connection in your family. Games which are safe, fun, easy to learn, and facilitate trust between parent and child.

Peek-a-Boo!

admin — Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Little did I know that all the hours of playing Peek-a-Boo with my children actually produced necessary neuronal growth in their brains so they can feel secure in this world! Peek-a-Boo teaches our child that we are a secure object. I thought we were just having fun!? That’s the cool thing about putting psychology research into practice, it can be fun. Research now shows that many time-honored traditions in parenting help create the trust and courage in kids necessary to conquer many of life’s challenges.

Around eight months of age, children develop the cognitive capability called object permanence. Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget coined the term object permanence, that refers to the cognitive understanding that even when a secure object is out of sight, it doesn’t cease to exist. Even if we can’t see, hear, or touch someone or something, we can access the memory of its existence in our mind. Imagine how much psychological comfort this cognitive capacity we all develop brings, given healthy and normal development. Have you ever felt lonely and imagined calling someone you love and what they might say to comfort you? Have you ever run a race and imagined the people who support you waiting with smiling faces at the finish line—especially when you feel like stopping? Has it ever brought comfort and solace to remember the funny and loving memories of a relative who has died? Object permanence can be protective and inspire courage in moments when we feel alone, distressed, or stressed.

It is so fun to hide yourself from your child, just long enough to create some suspense, and then pop back into view. Careful, though, around eight months your child will begin to show the normal signs of secure attachment, called separation anxiety, and cry for your prompt return—especially if you take too long to peek back out! The game is not meant to be a psychological torture test, just helpful practice for building separation anxiety tolerance. Remember, before your child develops object permanence, you literally cease to exist. Who says parents aren’t master magicians?

The goal is to teach your child to self-soothe, be reassured that you are a permanent object in his/her life, and how to reach out and find you or someone they love for comfort.

Our family game was actually called, “Peek-a-Boo, I Love You.” As soon as I would reappear, I would reassure my child that I really was back with a big smile, open arms, eye-to-eye contact, say “I see you” and, what would eventually become one of their first phrases, “I love you!” I made sure to give the same verbal and non-verbal cues every time I would go away and come back once I started having other caregivers help in caring for my children. Consistency being an important key to unlocking the treasure trove of trust between parents and children!

Schore’s (2001) research stresses the importance of this parent/caregiver-child game in that a child gets to experience glimpses of loss, and practice emotional regulation to handle any stress associated with object loss until the attachment object returns. In other words, Peek-a-Boo helps us to teach our children the foundations of interpersonal trust. We are playing a game, but practicing and building the mental, physical, and emotional muscle to handle bigger separations, and other courage challenges, to come.

I also didn’t know that my own learning and memory were improved through motherhood—that was a shocker given how hormonally zoned-out and tired I have felt at times. According to Kinsley et al. (1999), increased neuronal connections occur in late pregnancy and in the early postpartum period reshaping the brain to handle the increasing demands of motherhood—now that I get! The benefits, it turns out, of attachment between mother and infant are not unidirectional; our infants ensure their own and their mother’s development and survival through a rich set of sensory, and primarily non-verbal, cues related to what I’ve written about previously on attunement (see my post about one of the first of life’s courage challenges). Playing Peek-a-Boo can help you not only wire your child’s brain, but any infant-caregiver game that evokes love, trust, playfulness helps us improve our own dendritic brain connections and calms our limbic system, too!

Upcoming posts will include more trust-building games to play with your kids!

Sources:

Kinsley, C., Madonia, L., Gifford, G., Tureski, K., Griffin, G., Lowry, C., Williams, J.,

Collins, J., McLearie, H., & Lambert, K.G. (1999). Motherhood improves

learning and memory. Nature, 402, 137.

Schore, A. (2001). Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain

development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22, (1-2), 7-66. http://www.allanschore.com/pdf/SchoreIMHJAttachment.pdf