The Dance of Attunement
It’s not always easy to be with a newborn all day long. It can sometimes feel like all your baby does is eat, sleep, poop, and fuss in various repeating cycles, none of which are predictable! In addition, you’re most likely overtired and overwhelmed, at times even overanxious. And on top of that, your hands are constantly tied so that every waking hour is consumed but seems to produce pretty much…. nothing!
Thinking about that state of mind – one that is so familiar to moms everywhere, I’m chuckling realizing that I am writing a post asking you to do something as abstract as make a paradigm shift. Nevertheless, here goes:
Infant development is often defined by milestones – observable skills that indicate progress in learning and growth. As parents, we look forward to our baby’s earliest achievements, feeling both satisfaction and relief with each sign of advancement. Development is seen as something to witness and observe, encourage and promote. It’s your baby whose developing and you as the parent are by his side helping him make the strides that indicate that everything is on track.
What if, instead, we understand development as a process of engagement – one in which you as parent join and fully participate. In lieu of witnessing and observing your baby’s development, you become a part of it.
Think of your infant’s development as an unfolding that is happening in relationship – his moment-to-moment, day in and day out relationship with you. His whole process of becoming - of sorting out, organizing and balancing the functioning of his different body systems - is all happening in response to you. It’s an incredibly intimate and inter-personal process, with profound implications. In a sense, you are the ground in which his growth is happening… it’s not separate.
With this in mind, observing becomes more like engaging - noticing not only your baby’s responses to different things but also your own. It’s easy to be aware of how you feel when he smiles up at you or when he’s tired and grumpy and cries bitterly. It may not be quite as obvious to notice what your hands do when they feel his body tightening and arching away from your hold or how the intensity of his reactions – both positive and negative- are often mirrored in your own body’s expressions of intensity.
Even the simplest everyday activity like picking up your baby from the changing table offers an opportunity to notice this interactive “conversation.” You intuitively calibrate the speed, rhythm, and intensity of your movements and voice to match his mood and state of consciousness. When he’s happy and full of energy, you are most likely more robust with how you handle him. When he’s just waking up from a nap and feeling quiet and inner focused, you probably tend to be more gentle, slow and even with your movements and voice. As you respond to him in these ways, he notices and responds accordingly…and so the dance of attunement goes…
This kind of body sensing and responsive listening gives him the message that you are paying attention and with that comes an even deeper message that he is worth being paid attention to. Tuning into each other is happening all of the time, whether you’re aware of it or not. It’s the ground from which attachment grows and it’s the foundation underlying the development of your baby’s positive sense of self.
So, back to the challenge of being with a newborn all day long and that paradigm shift I mentioned at the start. I don’t want to leave you with the sense that this kind of engaging process means that you’re doing something wrong during those moments when you can’t be there, fully aware, responsive to your infant’s every need. Take home the essence of this conceptual framework and know that part of your little one’s learning to manage stress and grow and develop happens in the milieu of repair: when the two of you come back together after experiencing the ruptures created by exhaustion, distraction and the general busyness of real life.
Try It Yourself!
For a great demonstration of how interactive development is, go to You Tube and look up Dr. Edward Tronick’s Still Face Experiment. It’s a bit gut wrenching but clear evidence of the power of this amazing dance of attunement.