Smart Love - Smart Love for Parenting

Written by Martha Heineman Pieper, Ph.D. and William Joseph Pieper, M.D

Your Crying Infant Is Not Manipulating You

We cannot overemphasize that your crying infant is not trying to manipulate you, and that responding lovingly will build rather than corrupt his character. Manipulation is a word that never applies to babies. Crying is the child's way of expressing misery at feeling both overwhelmed and also incapable of eliciting your loving assistance. Crying is not a calculated act. Anger or withdrawal on your part convinces the child that he is unattractive to you (and, therefore, to himself) when he is unhappy. The child whose tears evoke parents anger or seeming indifference grows into the adult who compounds everyday sadness and disappointment by feeling unlovable when he is unhappy.

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Remember that you are the source of your young child's greatest happiness. If you freely supply your loving attention, your child gains a storehouse of well-being that will last a lifetime and see him through every disappointment and frustration.

Parents can usually find ways of soothing their infant when daily care causes distress. For example, bathing a newborn can be upsetting for the child. Many infants do not like the feeling of being lowered naked into water. The smart love principle is to try to keep your baby as happy as possible. There is no reason to give your baby a true bath until he is old enough to enjoy it. Premoisturized cleansing tissues or a well-wrung washcloth applied to face and bottom will provide acceptable hygiene without upsetting your baby unnecessarily.

You Can't Spoil Your Child with the Right Kind of Attention

You may have been warned that the constant gratification of your child's desires for your attention will make him unfit for the real world, the reality is that your child's intense desires for focused parenting will be temporary if you are consistently able to respond positively to him. Gratifying your child's wishes, especially his desires to engage your focused attention, will not spoil your child. It will not make him hopelessly self-centered or unable to postpone gratification. In fact, your child's all-encompassing need for your focused attention will decrease when he becomes certain of your unconditional wish to respond to his needs and provide the attention he wants.

In contrast, if you ration your attention out of concern that too much is harmful, your child will never feel fully certain of his ability to elicit the caregetting pleasure he wants and needs. When children find that they cannot count on their parents to respond to their needs, they initially react by intensifying their demands for parental involvement. If these demands are not responded to, children may even turn away from the ungratifying relationship and disavow their wishes for closeness.

If you try to gratify your child's needs and wishes whenever possible, you will help your child to acquire a lifelong sense of competence and inner well-being. This unshakable inner happiness, in turn, will allow your child to become good, to do good, and to do well. For this reason, on a temporary basis, try to give your child's wishes priority, provided these desires are safe and do not conflict with your essential personal aims (stopping for gas, putting away frozen foods).

By fulfilling your child's developmental needs and wishes you will not spoil your child. You will be giving him the tools to become a happy, competent, and socially engaged adult. Your smart love assures your child that he is causing you to love caring for him, and this certainty, in turn, provides him with a well-being rich enough to share with others.

How to Help Your Child Adjust to School Rules

Once in school, your child's customary freedom of choice is suddenly reined in by demands that she walk in a line, wait to talk, take turns playing with the most desirable toys, forgo eating her snack until everyone else is served, and ask permission to use the bathroom. Because your preschooler views much of the world through the unrealistic lens of her all-powerful self, she may well experience the multitude of school rules and regulations as oppressive and, more significantly, as applying to other children but not to her.

If your child resists classroom socializing, this does not mean that you should have been tougher on her; this reaction serves to emphasize the importance of her years of relative freedom. If you have consistently encouraged and facilitated your child's wish to make choices for herself, she actually will adapt more easily to the school's imposition of structure, because she will not enter school with a broken spirit or locked in a chronic battle with authority. Your child will soon realize that a few irritating rules and regulations are a small price to pay for the opportunities to engage in the exciting activities and satisfying social relationships that school can offer.

You can facilitate your child's transition to school in a number of ways:

• You can say something like "I know it's difficult not being able to eat anytime you want, the way you can at home, but, on the other hand, at school the paints are always out, and there is a water table and three hamsters! "
• When your child chafes at school rules, you can help by giving her as much latitude as possible after school. This is not the time to schedule ballet lessons or other structured activities.
• If your child is especially tired, grouchy, or fragile in the first weeks of school, try to remember that your child is experiencing emotional overload, and you may find it easier to be affectionate and understanding.

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