Highlights
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What really matters is being comfortable with your child, making them feel safe and that you want to be around them. The words we use are a small part of that; a bigger part is our warmth, our touch, our goodwill and the respect we show them: respect for their feelings, their person, their opinions and their interpretation of their world. In other words, we need to show the love we feel for them when they are awake, not just when they look beautiful asleep.
Location 444
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Gottman set up another experiment where he observed 130 couples socializing together in a holiday home for a day. What he discovered was that when couples are together they make what he refers to as ‘bids’ for connection. For example, if one partner is reading and says, ‘Listen to this,’ and the other one puts down their own book ready to listen, their bid for connection has been satisfied. They are looking for a response, a sign of support or interest. Responding to someone’s bid meets their emotional needs. Gottman found that couples who were no longer together after six years (the time of the follow-up session) had on average only a three in ten response rate to such bids. These small, day-to-day interactions generate goodwill and reciprocal treatment, and without them our relationships cannot be sustained. So, this is the key to a successful partnership: be responsive and interested. And what is true for couples is true for all relationships, and especially for those with our children.
Location 760
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A baby’s emotions tend not to be subtle; when they are distressed, they sound desperate. That’s because they are. It helps if you know that wants and needs are the same thing for an infant. A baby cannot survive without you.
Location 1659
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Quite often, when we think we are listening, all we are doing is waiting for a gap for an opportunity to speak back; we use our energy to compose our response or our reply rather than to try to understand what the other person is trying to communicate.
Location 1964
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As I mentioned earlier, babies aren’t born with the capacity to believe that an object still exists when they can’t see it; psychotherapists call this ‘object permanence’. So when they are left alone, they may feel abandoned.
Location 2221
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The sitting example may sound quite specific, but it’s to make a general point about how much to help: don’t disempower your child by doing something they could learn to do themselves, especially if you back off a bit.
Location 2277
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Looking back over their childhood, many adults feel their happiest times were when there were children of all ages who they could make up games with, run around with and had plenty of space to do it in. These times usually happened on holiday, with cousins, friends, on camping trips, at festivals, on days out or days near home at a park or in a garden. And they included having trusted adults there in the background to go to if necessary, providing meals and enough boundaries to make them feel safe. I worry that with too many structured after-school activities children may not be getting enough time in a mixed-aged group to organize their own play. Most children probably need more time outside with other children and less time inside being organized or in front of screens. Screens should be used with caution. They can become addictive, but denying them altogether is another sort of deprivation.
Location 2356
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‘When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.’ – Mark Twain
Location 3126