Bedtime Stories

admin — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Lisa’s post about snuggling raises for me an image of the time-honored tradition of bedtime stories. We have the parent and child (or children) snuggled together with a book; consider how many things are going on in the scene:

1. Bonding and attachment, as Lisa has explained;

2. The beginnings of literacy, a child looking at words while the parent reads;

3. The transmission of culture (values, traditions, story themes, information) through the storybook being read;

4. An opening of the imagination and a call to empathize with another person or other people, i.e. the characters in the story;

5. Development of focus, attention, concentration and listening skills.
6. You might also notice that the child is on her mother’s left side, a preference across cultures (and regardless of right-handedness or left-handedness) and even across species. You can read more about the significance of this for right-brain development in Lisa’s post about how we hold our babes.

There are probably lots of other things going on as well. It seems like stating the obvious that this (hopefully) nightly ritual is much much more than entertainment, ideally an experience that nourishes and encourages both child and parent. What I’d like to propose is that this rich moment can involve other kinds of stories than the ones found in the pages of a picture book. Don’t get me wrong – I make my living writing books for children. I would never suggest not using books at bedtime. What I am suggesting is that we can also expand our definition of what bedtime stories might be.

If you have photographs of family and friends, print them out and put them in an album – not an elaborate scrapbook, just a plain old snapshot book. Pictures of yourself as a child, pictures of grandparents who may be far away, pictures of people you used to know but haven’t seen in years – these are all springboards for life stories.

When you share a part of your life at this relaxed and open interlude between waking and sleeping, you give a piece of yourself to your child to carry into dreams. This is what’s called a liminal moment, a threshold between one state and another. Your child is truly on her way to another world, like a hero stepping into the fairy realm; this piece of yourself is like one of the talismans the hero carries to finish the quest.

One of the things these stories help with is the creation of identity, an understanding of where the child fits in the world. If your child has an answer for the question, “Where do I come from?” then the question of “Where do I return to?” is easier to answer (even though they aren’t always the same answer). Courage to leave home (both literally and figuratively) depends on the strength of this identity. Especially in uncertain times, it seems to me, when people are losing houses or relocating to find work, giving children a secure sense of family identity is essential.

My daughter, herself, has a little snapshot book. In it are a half-dozen pictures of her family in Ethiopia, including the most precious treasure of all, a photo of her birth mother. When we look at these pictures together she can share stories of her own with me, although even she admits it’s getting hard to tell which stories are memories and which ones are dreams. “Long ago and far away” is literally true for her, but whether they are true or dreams, they are part of who she is. The lion of Ethiopia is part of her identity, and will always be part of where she comes from, and part of what will give her courage.

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The Way We Hold Our Babies

admin — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It turns out that as important as the skin-to-skin contact we have with our babies in their early years, is the way we hold them. Unrelated to handedness and widespread across cultures, mothers cradle their babies on the left side. Even chimps and gorillas favor the left arm hold. Why, you ask? Apparently, a few researchers have found that the left-cradling tendency promotes right hemisphere-to-right hemisphere communication between mother and child (Manning et al., 1997; Harris, Almergi, & Kirsch 2000).

The right hemisphere is not only deeply connected with the autonomic nervous system, but is also specialized in perception, the recall of spatial patterns of touch in nonverbal memory, and facilitates affective information necessary for normal brain maturation. What’s important to know about the right hemisphere is that as the dominant emotional processing center, it controls vital functions that enable human beings to maintain a homeostatic state to support both survival and help cope with stressors. Right hemispheric dominance in terms of facial recognition, emotional information processing, and limbic system homeostasis suggests that both emotional and social intelligence—intrinsic to the development of courage—are dependent on right hemisphere stimulation and maturation through secure attachment.

From the first moments that an infant is held, the holder is not only engaging the already on-line limbic system’s amygdalae (hence an infant’s early startle response); but right-to-right hemispheric communication also supports analysis of information conveyed directly from the body. That is to say, when an infant is experiencing discomfort, or some immunological response, his/her cues to us are best received and recognized through right-to-right hemispheric communication. Schore (1994) proposes that secure attachment relationships directly influence the development of right brain psychosocial–neuroendocrine–immune communications which, in turn, directly affect a child’s coping capacities. Think back to the first moments that you held your child, did you hold them with your left arm or your right?

The early days of holding our infant are the basis for the earliest learning of what is now commonly known as emotional intelligence (Salovey & Mayer, 1989/1990). Emotional intelligence refers to a set of skills associated with the processing of emotional information, accurate perception and appraisal of emotions in oneself and others, appropriate expression of emotion, and the adaptive regulation, planning, and motivation associated with emotions in such a manner as to enhance living.

Emotion is the linchpin that enables us to adapt psychologically, physiologically, and behaviorally to have the courage to meet the challenges in our lives.

The next time your daughter is playing with her dolls, if she does that kind of thing, check out how she holds her doll. Not your son, though, this appears to be a uniquely maternal instinct.

Tonight, cuddle up with your child in your left nook, gaze down into his/her eyes reflecting love, read or tell a story, and watch the images formed from the words dance in your child’s eyes and imagination. Delight in, celebrate, and rest easy in the wisdom of Mother Nature and the strength of your secure attachment to one another.

Upcoming post: Ways to stimulate right-brain development that don’t just include cuddling ‘n snuggling!

Sources:

Harris, L., Almergi, J., & Kirsch, E. (2000). Side preference in adults for holding infants: Contributions of sex and handedness is a test of imagination. Brain & Cognition, 43, 246–252.

Manning, J., Trivers, R., Thornhill, R., Singh, D., Denman, J., Eklo, M., & Anderton, R. (1997). Ear asymmetry and left-side cradling. Evolution and Human Behavior, 18, 327–340.

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J.D. (1989/1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, cognition, and personality. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, (3), 185–211.

Schore, A. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Schore, A. (2001). Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22, (1-2), 7-66.

http://www.allanschore.com/pdf/SchoreIMHJAttachment.pdf

right-brain development – Lion's Whiskers

Bedtime Stories

The Way We Hold Our Babies