It is easy for parents to get lost in an ocean of tips, strategies, and advice and to be confused by a long list of what to do and what not to do. This approach increases the amount of pressure and guilt that parents, unfortunately, already have.
Too often we look at parenting from a moral perspective—as something that you can do either well or poorly. This belief pushes us to look for standard practices in order to do the ‘right’ thing.
However, parenting actually has an essential biological meaning based on its ability to influence the development of children’s minds and bodies and the maturation of their stress response. In fact, evolution selected the parent-child relationship as a way to regulate tension and strain—not only in toddlers, but in newborns as well.
Raising a resilient adult begins with attuned interactions with your baby.
Babies are highly stressed out because they are new to the world and still don’t know what to expect from it. For example, if they need a diaper change, they don’t know that someone will take care of that. It requires many interactions for them to start associating a predictable response with a certain request. In this sense, simple events can cause stress. Despite the fact that the stress system is already fully functioning at birth, newborns are unable to regulate it because they don’t know how to turn it off. They learn how to do so with the guidance of their parents.
Such guidance takes the form of parents’ responses to their child’s cues for comfort and reassurance, as well as to their requests for physical care. Each time parents interpret and respond to a baby’s signal of distress, they are regulating the baby’s reaction to whatever is considered a threat in a specific moment. It can be the need to sleep, eat, or be held. Being responsive to a child’s needs is critical because the quality of such interaction provides the foundation for future responses to stress. This takes us to an important point.
The opposite of stress is not relaxation; it’s safety.
Contrary to our belief, the opposite of stress is not relaxation; it’s safety. In fact, we can fully relax only if we are in a secure and protected space. Therefore, the best parenting style for a stress-resilient kid is the one that—since the first days of life—provided a safe environment, both in the physical and in the emotional spheres.
In other words, talking about parenting in terms of babies and stress-regulation makes it clear that parenting is not just a style. It’s an attitude. It’s a way of being in relation to the specific characteristics of your own unique baby.
The key to helping babies building resilience is being able to sync our responses to their needs so that they learn that there is always a solution in moments of stress.
For this reason, science doesn’t support any schedule-based approach with babies, at least not in the first 6 months of life. In fact, it’s not possible to be attuned when we deliver a pre-programmed routine, because such an approach doesn’t take into account the actual emotional and physical state of the baby. It just assumes what the best thing to do is, regardless of what the baby really needs at a given moment.
If someone wonders how this is relevant for becoming a stress-resilient adult, here is the answer:
A positive adult stress response comes from being able to interpret a situation for what it is—without exaggerating it or denying it. To do that, it’s necessary to be in contact with our emotions, which is something we also learn via interactions in early life.
Instead of a fixed set of practices, what matters the most is getting to know your child, their temperament and their preferences. From this perspective, the most important parenting attitude is one that responds with consistency and predictability. In this way, parents can follow the natural development of the biological clock, and babies will gradually build a rhythm around their needs. This helps them to become less frightened because they will be able to predict what is likely about to happen and how their distress is going to be soothed. This is the most solid schedule babies need: One that enables them to know that there is an appropriate response for each longing and tension.
These mechanisms are the biological core of human emotional development and emotion regulation, which are essential for becoming resilient. Toddler years are important for strengthening this core and forming a solid basis for emotional and social development.
Toddlers need to be respected in their need for relation and connection as well as for empathic containment.
When it comes to toddlers, the main divide is between parents believing in rigid rules, control, and punishments versus parents who believe in supporting and being emotionally close to their child. It’s important to note that ‘supportive’ should not be confused with ‘permissive.’ In fact, both excessive and insufficient behavioral control, end up with higher risks for depression, anxiety, and misconduct. This tells us that either ‘warmth without rules’ or ‘rules without warmth’ aren’t good approaches for raising a resilient child.
Children need both warmth and rules. The key element is that the discipline must remain respectful of the child. This is the main difference between authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles. Authoritarian parents put themselves above the child, they ask for obedience because of their role, and they don’t listen to the needs of their child. They focus on the ‘good behavior,’ without considering that the behavior cannot be enforced because it’s always the consequence of an emotional state. Children raised in this way tend to have social difficulties; they also have fewer resources for coping with challenging situations because they associate frustration with the repression of their authentic feelings. When emotions are not regulated, it’s impossible to think clearly.
Authoritative parents instead set limits and, at the same time, are nurturing and responsive. For example, even when they are firm in their position, parents acknowledge when children are frustrated; they don’t push them away or shame them.
In conclusion, raising a stress-resilient child is a long process that starts the moment you first meet your baby. Beyond the behavioral tactics a parent decides to follow, the parenting style should always guarantee emotional closeness. When this happens, parents are in the best position to fulfill their biological role of ‘stress-regulator.’ Once emotions are not overwhelming, creative and pro-active solutions can be found. Children raised by parents who helped them handle their feelings are more likely to become adults who can go through difficulties in a healthy way and recover in a reasonable amount of time—which is exactly what resilience is.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30679898
http://persweb.wabash.edu/facstaff/hortonr/articles%20for%20class/baumrind.pdf
