Attachment And Cognitive Activity

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

An excerpt from an open lecture by Lyudmila Petranovskaya at the Moscow City Pedagogical University, December 2013

The next question is a question about the reaction to difficulties. As it happens, again, in a child in a normal situation, when he grows up at home. We remember this age, when a child learns to walk, learns to climb everywhere, learns to interact with objects, learns to eat himself, to dress himself - all this. Putting wheels on the pyramid, putting cubes on top of each other, catching the ball - this is from a year to three - a period of very intensive training, very active mastering of skills. What happens at this time? At this time, the child is very actively learning everything, and we all know that in order for us to succeed, it must first fail a hundred times. The world works like that. Whatever you learn: ice skating, foreign languages, whatever. At first it doesn't work, then it works.

The same is true for these very babies: in order to start walking, he must first "flop" two hundred thousand times, but note that babies in this respect have a very high endurance to failure, to frustration, relatively speaking. He may fail a hundred times, and he still doesn't despair. Some two-year-old sits and puts a wheel on the pyramid. So once he missed, two missed, three … If something didn’t work out for us so many times, everything went to hell, we would have already decided that it wasn’t for us, we wouldn’t, we don't want to, let them do everything themselves, everyone is idiots, everyone is a fool, and so on. And he puts on over and over, over and over again. That is, he has some kind of unreal endurance, a tolerance for frustration, for disappointment, for what does not work out, for failure. The question arises: how? How can he do that? If we carefully observe the life of that very kid, we will see how he provides himself with this endurance.

So he puts on, puts on, puts on, at some point it exceeded his ability to cope, this is already too much. And it fell, rolled away, and something else fell, and he hit, something else frightened him. Accordingly, what is he doing, this very child? Yes, he immediately goes to the parent, to the adult who is next to him. He cries, he hugs his knees, he asks for his arms, he asks for silence. And as soon as an adult picks him up, he calms down, that is, he turns to an adult for such a service, so to speak, for such help, which is psychologically a clever word called "containment." When another person creates such a psychological "cocoon" for us with his embrace, his protection, care. Psychological "cocoon" in which we can live our negative feelings. At this time, it is very important that we can live our negative feelings without scanning the world around us, so that we can fully immerse ourselves in the experience. So that at this moment we can not worry about our safety, not look around, not care about how we look, how we behave, what they will think of us - nothing like that. It is important for us that at this time we are closed in this "cocoon", protected, we could indulge in a difficult experience there inside. Then all experiences are expressed, all the stress hormones that were released from us when faced with something unpleasant come out with tears, and such a complete recovery takes place. There are no consequences, no injuries.

At one time, in the seventies in the Czech Republic, Czech psychologists made films about small children, and they filmed parallel episodes in the family and in the children's home. Here they are filming a boy about a year and a half, first in the family: he climbs the room, looks at everything, and at some point he reaches a bedside table that slams shut like that. There were such before almost everywhere. He opens the lid, slams it, and at this moment pinches his handles a little. And it is clear that in his year and a half he has a very clearly formed strategy of action in these cases. He cries loudly, turns around and walks to where mom is. And mom is in the kitchen at this moment. Mom hears that he was crying, goes to meet him, takes him in her arms, calms him down. Once he's calmed down, she lowers him to the floor. Guess what he does?

- Back to the curbstone.

- Yes, he immediately goes there to see what it was. That is, he recovered completely, he had no fear left, his mother “contained” him, he survived all this. And he, like new, goes again to meet the danger and is not afraid to find out what it was. That is, his cognitive activity was immediately restored. In order for the child to have cognitive activity, so that it is preserved, so that it works, it is very important that he has this solid rear. He is interested in everything, he climbs everywhere, he is curious, he tries everything, if he comes across something that scares him too much, that hurts him, that causes him some kind of disappointment, resentment and all that, it is very important, so that he has somewhere to return, his parents create a "container" for him, he throws out his heavy feelings there and then as good as new … And he again has cognitive activity.

In order for the child to have cognitive activity, so that it is preserved, so that it works, it is very important that he has this solid rear.

This is the presence of a parent as a base, as a place where you can return and calm down - it is the most important condition for a child to develop cognitive activity. If you look at how small children walk, for example, in the courtyard, in the park, you will see that some three-year-old - he rushes, he plays in the sand, he makes Easter cakes, he climbs a hill, he looks at ants - he is completely covered in activities. Mom is sitting on a bench, in general, he does not need her at all. She is sitting, maybe reading a magazine. But he “squints” with his eyes all the time - imagine that mom got up and went somewhere to buy ice cream, right? And he turned around at some point, but mothers are not on the bench where he left her. What does the child do immediately?

- Crying.

- Well, he will not immediately start crying, but practically, at least, he will immediately stop cognitive activity. This is his stormy activity in cognizing the world, mastering new skills, knowledge, labor, observation of some kind - it immediately stops. If mom is found quickly, he will usually press to her knees and run on. If mom is not there for a long time: he is looking around there - she is not there, he will start crying. And only when mom returns, for a while she will hold him in her arms, after a while he will calm down, you need to sit next to her - it will take time for him to return to cognitive activity. That is, a child is cognitive, he is open to the world, he wants to know everything, a lot of new things - only when he is calm, when he knows that somewhere nearby there is his own adult, to whom, in case of anything, you can run and turn …

If a child has a bad situation with this situation: there is no adult of his own, or he often disappears, he is often unreliable, he does not “contain”, but says “handle yourself”, then what happens to cognitive activity? It does not develop, it is reduced. And by the time of school age we get a child who does not have the habit of being interested in the world. He spends all his energy on overcoming stress, he is not interested. We dance in front of him with all our new methods and interesting pedagogical findings, but he is not interested and does not need to, because his cognitive activity has faded away.

Cognitive activity is sometimes quite difficult to restore, if all this time the preschool child was constantly in a stressful situation, that is, such a principle “affect inhibits the intellect”. When strong feelings, and we remember that for a child the absence of an adult or his disappearance is a mortal horror, this is a state of vital anxiety so serious. Naturally, this is a strong affect. And affect inhibits the development of intelligence: it is difficult for a child. Therefore, there is a clear correlation between capable children (capable not in the sense of being gifted with an incredible memory or musicality, but what is called “normative giftedness”). When children who study well at school, who are engaged in all sorts of circles, who are interested in everything, who are prosperous, most often they have quite good relations with their parents with a variety of families in composition. That is, it can be such and such, but when you see how the child communicates with the parents, you see that they have a good relationship in some general sense.

Good relationship: the child is not afraid of his parents, the child turns to them for help, the child is in normal contact with them, and, in fact, why should he be in such a situation, why not be interested in the world around him, right? The world around us is interesting. And this is a very important position of the theory of attachment, which is sometimes formulated as follows: "development occurs from a point of rest." Children grow and develop not because we develop them, not because we pull them by the ears, not because we do something specifically for this. We create peace, we create a sense of security and care. And when a child catches this resting point, when he is sure that he is not in danger, that an adult is covering him behind his back, in fact, you cannot hold him - the inner spring unfolds, and the child begins to develop, and you cannot persuade him of this. do.

Therefore, on the other hand, you can see children who from year to year were dragged along different "development" and from morning till evening they were crammed and developed, but at the same time they did not give this feeling of protection and care, there was no unconditional acceptance, the parents all the time wanted to know what children themselves are often very dysfunctional internally, they are thrashed, they can not cope with life … This is one of the reasons why they run on “developmental”, because they are afraid of not being “excellent students” as parents. By the end of elementary school, the child does not want anything. And in the coffin I saw everyone and everything. He has no rest, he has no opportunity from the point of rest to turn around and go where it is interesting. He is always dragged there, he doesn’t have time to look around, he doesn’t have time to want, but he is already by the scruff of his neck and run and run as soon as possible. As you can imagine, for this it is not necessary to be a foster child and an orphan, and it is quite possible for yourself to be a “home” child.

The next moment. When a child does not constantly "contain", that is, he constantly does not have the opportunity to calm down in case of stress "about" an adult. We are social animals, we are animals that live in nature in “prides”, in large families. And social animals they calm down about each other. You have two options … well, three, shall we say. One option, when you are "alone in an open field," is very scary. When you are “alone in an open field,” you have no right to relax, fall asleep, because you are not protected. You have a second option when you are protecting the weak, the young, and then you have to be vigilant. But at some point everyone should relax. It is impossible to function in constant mobilization. And social animals relax against each other. When can you relax? When you know that other members of your pack, your family, your "pride" - they stand and guard the entrance to the cave, and you can feel safe behind them. We are so arranged, we are social beings, we get real peace only in the arms of another person who says to us, as it were: "Rely on me, trust me, I take care of you, I will ensure your safety."

We are social beings, we get real peace only in the arms of another person

Accordingly, if a child constantly lacks this experience, it always turns out that he feels bad, and no one "contains". He feels bad again - no one "contains". Such repeated traumatization occurs, and, accordingly, such a child in the end very often develops such a very bad reaction to any failure, to any frustration, to any even threat of failure. He reacts to this by simply falling apart, crumbling. There is no way to mobilize.

In the same film, in parallel, they show a story about a boy of the same age in a child's home. He walks, clutching a large car to his chest, children run to him, this car is forcibly pulled out, he was so spun and fell. And now it is clear that a child who lives without parents does not have the slightest strategy of action in this situation. There is a teacher nearby - the child does not seek help, he does not try to catch up with these children, he does not try to somehow agree, does not try to take away the car, does not try to somehow console himself - nothing. He just sits and cries into space, not understanding anything, in complete despair, until he is simply tired.