The articles The Amazing Power of Baby Love and A Year to Cheer (written by
Dr. Stanley Greenspan and Emily Abedon, respectively) advocate intense
coexistence between the child and the caregiver. These articles (taken from
parenting magazine) are, in essence, guidelines to be used by the parents or
caregiver to ensure proper development of their child up to the second year. The
article also educates the reader that every child develops at their own pace,
and there is no exact time table that one can easily look at to see how well
their child is doing. Either way the two articles overly support deep mutual
interaction between both the child and the caregiver. Stanley Greenspan’s The
Amazing Power of Baby Love teaches that simple gestures and interactions help
babies develop intelligence, language and character. It states that at 2 to 4
months (notice the allowance of time Greenspan gives) the child becomes more
involved with the caregiver. Notice the correlation between the authors
statement and Ainsworth’s Stages of Attachment (p463-465): Birth through 2
months- indiscriminate social responsiveness- “at first, babies do not focus
their attention exclusively on their mothers and will at times respond
positively to anyone.” 2 months through 7 months- discriminate social response-
“During the second phase, infants become more interested in the caregiver and
the other familiar people and direct their social responses to them.” From birth
to approximately 2 months the infants is does not really who cares who handles
them. Afterwards, from 2 through seven months the child develops into the next
stage. Once the child is in the second stage of Ainsworth’s theory Greenspan
insinuates that the child is intelligent enough to distinguish differences
between people: “your child seems to be more intensely involved with you. She
may look longingly into your eyes...or wiggle in anticipation when she hears you
approaching.” By 5 months the child the child should have their own ways of
expressing affection: -Responding to facial expressions -Initiating interactions
-Making sounds or moving in rhythm with motions of your own -Relaxing when being
held -Cooing when attention is given -Looking at face as if studying it -Looking
uneasy/ sad when you move away The last in the list above relate to stage three
of Ainsworth’s stage theory, focused attachment. The child suffers from
separation anxiety, or fear that the caregiver will leave and never return. This
action can relate to Piaget’s thoughts of object permanence, because the child
fears or believes that once an object is out of sight it is gone for good.
By definition: Object Permanence- The knowledge that objects have a permanent
existence that is independent of our perceptual contact with them. In Piaget’s
theory object permanence is a major achievement of the sensorimotor period.
Greenspan then begins to talk about the beginning of communication. He states
that children really do have a comprehension of language before they say their
first words. Gestures instead take place of verbal communication. At first
gestures are purposeful for requests and referential communication, later for
functioning as symbols to label objects, events and characteristics. When the
caregiver responds to the child the following interaction supposedly helps boost
the child’s self esteem. More importantly, the child learns about others moods,
and in turn learn the ability to react to them. By responding to a baby they
learn that their actions have an observable impact on their environment. Two-way
conversations also make the child more empathetic. Once they see that they have
an impact on the caregiver they see that person as an individual, some one
separate from themselves. In the end Greenspan emphasizes again that children
develop at their own pace. On top of that, they have their own response to a
stimulus. Just because the react a way that a caregiver was expecting does not
necessarily mean that there is anything wrong. When interacting with a child one
should study how the child reacts, and then do what the child seemed to enjoy to
“bring the most pleasure,” that should not be too obvious. Finally Greenspan
suggests the following: -Talk in babble, using high to low pitches -Use a
variety of faces while babbling -Massage the baby, telling them what your doing
-Move the babies arms and legs while talking and looking at them -Do not exhaust
the baby, stop when signs of fatigue/overstimulation arise Emily Abedon’s A Year
to Cheer discusses the development of a child from 12 through 24 months. The
most important thing again is that Abedon emphasizes children develop at their
own pace, and parents should not keep checking to see if their child is “lagging
behind.” She gives the example of the two 15 month old where one is running and
the other can just barely walk. Both of these situations are “perfectly normal.”
Parents really are not to blame for there child development.
