It is always nice when a science guru ratifies something you had been doing merely by instinct. In “Emotional Intelligence” (chapter 14), Daniel Goleman talks about Jerome Kagan’s research on the effects of overprotective mothers on their children. In short, Kagan’s conclusion is that those mothers of very reactive children who try to protect them in excess against frustration and anxiety, intending to help them overcome their problems, have usually the opposite effect. The reason is that, in fact, protecting a child to that extent means “stealing” from him the possibility to learn how to calm down in situations of uncertainty. Without some exposure, he has no chance to improve his set of responses, so he is obliged to stick to his “default” shyness. Those experiments made me remember a tiny incident I had lived a few weeks before.
I don’t have a vocation for fatherhood myself, and maybe that’s why I find so admirable those people devoted to a task that for me would be impossible. I always remember that advice one of my teachers gave us on fatherhood: “don’t worry about it; no matter what you do, you’ll make a mistake”. Besides, I don’t think that I miss much of the experience, because, in a way, life always pushes you, now and then, like it or not, into moments of “spontaneous fatherhood”. Children are sponges for learning, they process whatever falls in the webs of their really cunning senses; so, if you are in the nearby of a child, he’ll learn from you, and there is nothing you can do about it. In a way, during those moments you become the father, the model.
So here’s the story. I had to discuss some repairs of the house with my landlord, and he came brought his daughter with him, a girl round 2 years old I think, let’s call her Alice. While we started to discuss all those technical issues, she took possession of the house and started to explore and freak out around in the way children are supposed to do. At one moment, we went into the sleeping room to check the roof, and Alice absolutely liked my bed and jumped into it and stayed there laying face-down, in a quite convenient nirvana that allowed us to discuss the repairs without interruptions.
…but of course, she got tired in brief, and here comes the Kagan moment. Facing that huge cloth surface, surrounded by multicolored squares, she probably lost her bearings and she moaned a little, a typical call-for-attention moaning. Her father was in that moment talking to me and did not notice her, so I felt sorry and was on the verge of picking her up and taking her back to solid ground, when I decided to wait one second, just one more second, to see if she was able to manage things herself. Of course, if she had cried, that would have been the end of my little experiment. But she didn’t, and the result was amazing:
after realizing that she was not being paid attention, and maybe because the bed was quite a comfortable place to be lost after all, she stopped crying at once and looked round again, as much as she could in her position, and this time in a very different manner: fully concentrated, silent, in a more adult way. She seemed to be listening to some secret murmur; she measured her possibilities, deciding the best path for action. And then, as if by chance, one of her elbows swung back a little. She repeated the movement with the other elbow, and she seemed to like that swinging, rhythmical activity that was absolutely new to her. Little by little, in a few moments, she slipped out of the bed and into the next event, the next wonder of childhood.
Watching her was a really beautiful moment. Alice seemed to get better at her new skill as she went by, as if she had discovered that she could turn herself into a sort of fish or worm for the occasion, because the situation required it, and then return to her human state, but with a new skill that she would not forget now, a skill that she would not have acquired if a “wise” adult hand had decided to help her too soon.
There is a lot to learn from children once you leave your prejudices and categories behind. Which are your astonishing moments with children? Do you agree that everybody is a child’s father?
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The magic of journaling
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