Here And Now In Contact Between Mother And Child. How To Be A Bad Mother

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I would like to share a little experience of psychotherapy with several young mothers who have recently given birth to their first child and are faced with the problems and difficulties of their new situation.

The events described relate to that recent time, when the consultation of a psychologist and work with a psychotherapist seemed to many to be something unusual and exotic. A more familiar and traditionally safe way to solve their problems was to discuss with friends, acquaintances, more experienced mothers.

There is hardly anything more consistent with total good contact than the interaction between mother and baby. All possible aspects are included in the communication process: the child feels the mother and responds to her with his whole body and voice. Their relationship is direct, they are addressed to the very depths of everyone's personality, this is a real meeting of two personalities, two "I". Feeding, feeding a child is an ideal situation for deep, genuine contact, knowing each other.

But in reality …

A woman who has decided to give birth to a child today is quite realistically threatened to be buried under a mountain of various problems: to find, buy the necessary things, feed, treat, teach, educate - in short, become everything for her child. In very few cases, a woman manages to share her responsibility for the child with someone else (her mother, husband, doctor, teacher, etc.).

Usually new requirements are added by other people. A doctor visiting a sick child asks the question: "Why are you treating him so badly?" The teacher, dissatisfied with the child's progress, may ask: "Why are you teaching him so badly?"

In such a situation, the mother takes full responsibility for the child's future, his health, his success, his character. She tries to fulfill all responsibilities, provide the best opportunities for the unborn child and - deprives herself of the opportunity to be "here and now" with the child.

She is in "his future", with his tomorrow's problems, and, for example, even when she feeds her child, she is not so much in contact with him as she is immersed in creating good health for him in the future. Focusing on the future problems and difficulties of the child, carefully peering into the tasks that have not yet arisen at this particular moment, the mother does not see her child as he is at this moment, and, therefore, cannot turn to him as a subject and only manipulates him …

I think that here is an important point of many violations of the development of the child's contact with the outside world. The child gains experience of how to be an object to others, and does not gain experience of how to be a subject.

In such a situation, one can hardly overestimate the support that a psychologist or psychotherapist can provide to the mother. To some extent, the paradox of life was that most of the young mothers turned to me for psychological help, not because I have some professional competence, appropriate university training, etc., but because in their eyes I was an "experienced mother "five children. And my existence also confirmed that many problems can actually be solved. This largely determined the nature of our "work": it did not take the form of traditional psychotherapeutic sessions, but began as an "exchange of maternal experience" and only then did the actual psychotherapeutic request arise.

Usually, the beginning was associated with some kind of medical or everyday issue related to feeding or the characteristics of the child's regimen, and already from them we moved on to discussing the psychological problems themselves.

Talking about their feelings, young mothers talked about their confusion, lack of confidence in their abilities (“I can't do everything the way it should” - it is assumed that there is such an absolutely correct way in the world. “I always do not have enough time, I can’t read or meet with friends, I don’t see anyone because I don’t have enough time to do the laundry, take a walk with the child”).

They complained about the difficulty in making a decision and the lack of confidence in its correctness ("I don't understand where to start, I start doing one thing, then I give it up, take on others and so on endlessly", "yesterday I gave my baby the first since kefir, probably, it was wrong, I will not do that anymore "), on my lack of independence in communicating with the child.

It could be seen that in this case the mother was not in contact with her child, but was absorbed in her fears, expectations, and her responsibilities. The feeling of separation from the child, fenced off from him, misunderstanding of his desires, his state was not always realized by mothers, but it manifested itself in words, and in gestures, and in looks.

Sometimes there was irritation at the child, anger from not understanding his behavior, especially screaming or crying and, consequently, the inability to help him, to fix something. One mother told me: "I cannot understand what he needs, what he wants. I am afraid that something is wrong with him."

Another mother used to say about her daughter: "When a girl cries, I get very scared, I just can't guess what is happening to her. We just cry together." Another time the same mother said: "When she cries and screams, I am so angry that I want to throw her or hit her; I know I am a very bad mother."

At the first steps of our work, it turned out that it was impossible for young mothers, who found themselves in the role of patients, to remain with their feelings for the child, with their fears and aggression, and they began to "drown out" their frantic economic and educational activity. At the same time, they constantly did something with the baby, but only by manipulating him, and this led to growing disappointment: "I try to calm him down," one mother said about her son, "I change pants, feed him, but nothing helps, I I feel terribly tired, disappointed, I am a very bad mother."

Most of our meetings took place at home, so that I could directly observe the interaction of mother and child during feeding, changing clothes, in free communication. It was seen how the mother and the baby touched each other, how free or constrained the mother's movements were, the consistency of their postures, their tension during this communication.

It could be noted that the movements of the mothers were very constrained and tense. They were not free and spontaneous, did not correspond to the feelings of the mother herself or the state of the child, but were dictated by some special tasks: to dress the child (and not warm him), to feed the child (and not to satisfy his hunger). This also manifested itself in the answers to my question: "What do you want to do now?" - "Dress".

Sometimes the mother did not even look at her child, at his face, in his eyes, while she was feeding him or changing his clothes. When I was near, I felt this tension and stiffness in my mother's arms and whole body, and I had a clear desire to stop the flow of these actions.

Then I asked my mother to stop, stop fussing, despite the excess of various things, to give myself time to just be with the child. This was the first step in the actual therapeutic work.

At the first moment, surprise appeared on your face - how much is it possible to take and stop? Then surprise gave way to confusion: "I don't know what I want to do with the child." A consciousness appeared that at the moment of interaction with the child she was out of actual contact with him, she was not with him "here and now", but with the experience of her inadequacy or her obligations.

During the conversation, the mother was in contact "not with her child, but with someone else who needed to prove their worth and competence." And her actions were caused not by a real situation, but by some picture of a "good mother" in her mind and a picture of a "prosperous future" for her child.

Continuing to do something with the child, this mother tried to help him by performing "correct" manipulations, but the baby did not stop yelling, he continued to suffer openly. Mom began to feel fear, despair, these feelings completely filled her, and suddenly she felt that she really wanted to "throw him and run away." She said that she would like to "close her eyes and shut her ears, she would like to go somewhere far away, but she feels that the baby is chained to her, and she cannot leave him, refuse him, she should stay with him, but does not want to watch him cry, hear his voice."

She stood near the door from the room, but did not leave, took a step towards the child and came back. She didn’t want to touch him, but when she did, she did it with force, with great tension. She hugged the child with such force, as if she wanted to squeeze him.

At that moment, I drew her attention to the fact that her child is strong and hardy enough to do without her for a while and that I am quite sure that nothing bad will happen to him if she allows herself to be in another room for a while and leaves him alone in the crib. After some hesitation, she decided to try and put her crying and loudly screaming baby in the crib, went to the door and said that somehow nothing was stopping her from leaving the room.

I asked her to come back as soon as she feels that she really wants to be with her child. A few minutes later, she returned to the room much calmer and shyly smiling. She looked at her son and began to touch and stroke him. It was now soft movements, filled with her feelings, not a commitment to being a "good mother." As soon as the mother was able to get in touch with her feelings, her feelings for the child, the need to restrain and limit herself disappeared. Her hands became freer, they could not only hold the child, but also feel his body, his movements, his tension.

I offered to take the child in my arms and feel his whole body with his hands, palms, fingers. Mom gently and gradually began to change her position, becoming more and more comfortable environment for the child. She began to follow his movements, his desire for her and from her. Their movements resembled a game or a special dance. They looked at each other, smiled at each other, forming a single circle.

Suddenly, my mother laughed and said that, it turns out, it is very easy to understand your child. She said: "I feel him well, I understand that he wants to be with me, it's clear to me." But that time later, the baby began to turn his head and the mother immediately guessed that he was looking for her breast, he was hungry. Just a few hours ago, she was talking about her son: "He screams and turns his head in all directions. I don't understand what he wants!" Now she said, "He's hungry!" At that moment, she no longer felt angry with her child, the meaning of his cry and his movements was clear to her.

It turned out to be important for the mother to feel the body of her child - his arms, legs, back, stomach, neck. This made it possible to feel, understand the meaning of the child's gestures and postures, distinguish between pain and hunger, and realize the differences in his feelings and desires. This helped to treat the child as an integral creature with a soul and consciousness, and made it possible to establish contact with him.

I tried to support young mothers in their actions with the child, in an effort not to be afraid to touch him, to move him in order to feel his answer.

There was a change from the situation "SHOULD - NOT SHOULD, POSSIBLE - NOT" to the situation of free contact with each other, from assuming and diligently fulfilling the role of a "good mother" in general to being a "bad mother" to your child. Now they were discovering the possibility of contact with their child, the opportunity for new experiences, for being a "happy mother."

A little later, when we discussed the changes taking place in themselves and in relations with children, I said that it was a kind of psychotherapy. In response, one of the mothers said: "It was as if my eyes had opened," and the other was surprised: "I did everything myself!" It seems to me that this is a very good result: the experience of contact with the child really became her personal experience.

In general, these stories developed as follows:

At first, the mother and the child were out of contact, the mother was closed from the child by her fear or anger.

During our work, they united in contact into a single figure, they merged in their feelings and movements.

In the end, they again found themselves separated at some distance, but not as flat roles, but as three-dimensional figures, as separate personalities with their own inner world.

The peculiarity of these situations was also in the fact that the mother, acting as a patient, acted simultaneously as a therapist in relation to her child, providing awareness of the need, the possibility of active actions for her child and the satisfaction of the need for intimacy, security, love.