Child and Family – The Importance of Our Early Life Experiences

Child and Family - The Importance of Our Early Life Experiences

When psychological needs are met healthily we develop the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that enable us to feel CONNECTED, that we belong and have a bond with others. When we are born we have this need in order to survive, later this need connects us to our family and wider society giving us a sense of how we fit in and of our self-worth.

We need to feel CAPABLE, that we are competent. It is an important part of parenting to help a child feel they can do something, to build on their confidence, enabling the child to take responsibility for both their achievements and failings. We need also to feel that we COUNT, that we have value and that we can and do make a difference, we are significant!

Finally, perhaps the most important psychological need is our ability to develop COURAGE. When people encourage us we learn to be hopeful, resilient and willing to try and yet have the “courage to be imperfect”* when things are difficult and don’t go right for us. With the right encouragement we can build the ability to handle difficult situations and overcome our fears.

Dr Betty Lou Bettner and Amy Lew (1990), simplified the basics of Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology into these CRUCIAL C’s that I have just described.

They sound so simple, and yet as parents we struggle sometimes to impart these gifts of living on to our children. We may not have received them all ourselves or we are desperately trying to survive in our adult lives that we miss our own children’s needs. No one expects parents to be encouraging and imparting these things all the time, indeed, children need to know that their parents are not perfect. As children and young adults we develop our own ways of behaving in our efforts to find a role and feel secure within our group or any that we join. We strive to feel that we belong and in this sense of belonging we can develop a good, healthy sense of self and can co- operate and contribute in a positive way to the good of others also.

So you see, when a child perceives their world where one or more of the “crucial c’s” are lacking, it can affect their long-term view of themselves, others and the world around them. This naturally affects a child’s behaviour. Lew and Bettner spoke about the

Lew and Bettner spoke about the goals of misbehaviour or patterns of behaviour likely to be displayed when the Crucial C’s are unmet or even when they are felt to be unmet. When we feel we cannot connect, we are likely to engage in attention seeking; when we don’t feel capable, we are likely to seek power; when we do not feel that we count, we may seek revenge and hurt others in the ways we’ve been hurt; when we feel discouraged, we assume disability and seek to avoid life’s demands.

Misbehaviour is a child’s solution to their feelings of inadequacy and insignificance. They come from the disparity between the striving to belong and early life experiences. It is never too late to encourage a child or adult. In later life we can still develop our feelings of self-worth and belonging through the genuine friends and people we engage with who encourage us to be ourselves.


About the Author: Isobel Harries (BSc(Hons) Psych(Open))

 

Isobel is a qualified and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. Her work with clients mental health problems spans many therapeutic areas. She works in a holistic way, looking at clients physical symptoms alongside facilitating exploration of their early life experiences that have gone to form the ‘blue print’ of the beliefs they hold about themselves, others and the world.

Given the difficulties people have accessing counselling in her rural area, Isobel decided to address this issue and created her on-line counselling service ‘Mind Wellbeing

She divides her time between administering her on-line service, fund-raising for The Mind Wellbeing Charitable Trust and caring for her family in rural Wales in the UK. She also loves hill walking with her dog Diesel, the sea, reading, gardening, cooking and meeting new people.

Find out more about Isobel on her website www.mindwellbeing.co.uk or on  Facebook.

6 Comments

Abiodun

i just got to see what you wrote, but to be honest, this is amazing, i would like to be a writer too, would you like to put me through

Reply
Isobel Harries

Hello, thank you for your message.
I think if you have an article to put forward, you just need to contact Karen Young directly on this website. I hope this is helpful?

Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Join our newsletter

We would love you to follow us on Social Media to stay up to date with the latest Hey Sigmund news and upcoming events.

Follow Hey Sigmund on Instagram

We can’t fix a problem (felt disconnection) by replicating the problem (removing affection, time-out, ignoring them).

All young people at some point will feel the distance between them and their loved adult. This isn’t bad parenting. It’s life. Life gets in the way sometimes - work stress, busy-ness, other kiddos.

We can’t be everything to everybody all the time, and we don’t need to be.

Kids don’t always need our full attention. Mostly, they’ll be able to hold the idea of us and feel our connection across time and space.

Sometimes though, their tanks will feel a little empty. They’ll feel the ‘missing’ of us. This will happen in all our relationships from time to time.

Like any of us humans, our kids and teens won’t always move to restore that felt connection to us in polished or lovely ways. They won’t always have the skills or resources to do this. (Same for us as adults - we’ve all been there.)

Instead, in a desperate, urgent attempt to restore balance to the attachment system, the brain will often slide into survival mode. 

This allows the brain to act urgently (‘See me! Be with me!) but not always rationally (‘I’m missing you. I’m feeling unseen, unnoticed, unchosen. I know this doesn’t make sense because you’re right there, and I know you love me, but it’s just how I feel. Can you help me?’

If we don’t notice them enough when they’re unnoticeable, they’ll make themselves noticeable. For children, to be truly unseen is unsafe. But being seen and feeling seen are different. Just because you see them, doesn’t mean they’ll feel it.

The brain’s survival mode allows your young person to be seen, but not necessarily in a way that makes it easy for us to give them what they need.

The fix?

- First, recognise that behaviour isn’t about a bad child. It’s a child who is feeling disconnected. One of their most important safety systems - the attachment system - is struggling. Their behaviour is an unskilled, under-resourced attempt to restore it.

- Embrace them, lean in to them - reject the behaviour.

- Keep their system fuelled with micro-connections - notice them when they’re unnoticeable, play, touch, express joy when you’re with them, share laughter.♥️
Everything comes back to how safe we feel - everything: how we feel and behave, whether we can connect, learn, play - or not. It all comes back to felt safety.

The foundation of felt safety for kids and teens is connection with their important adults.

Actually, connection with our important people is the foundation of felt safety for all of us.

All kids will struggle with feeling a little disconnected at times. All of us adults do too. Why? Because our world gets busy sometimes, and ‘busy’ and ‘connected’ are often incompatible.

In trying to provide the very best we can for them, sometimes ‘busy’ takes over. This will happen in even the most loving families.

This is when you might see kiddos withdraw a little, or get bigger with their behaviour, maybe more defiant, bigger feelings. This is a really normal (though maybe very messy!) attempt to restore felt safety through connection.

We all do this in our relationships. We’re more likely to have little scrappy arguments with our partners, friends, loved adults when we’re feeling disconnected from them.

This isn’t about wilful attempt, but an instinctive, primal attempt to restore felt safety through visibility. Because for any human, (any mammal really), to feel unseen is to feel unsafe.

Here’s the fix. Notice them when they are unnoticeable. If you don’t have time for longer check-ins or conversations or play, that’s okay - dose them up with lots of micro-moments of connection.

Micro-moments matter. Repetition matters - of loving incidental comments, touch, laughter. It all matters. They might not act like it does in the moment - but it does. It really does.

And when you can, something else to add in is putting word to the things you do for them that might go unnoticed - but doing this in a joyful way - not in a ‘look at what I do for you’ way.

‘Guess what I’m making for dinner tonight because I know how much you love it … pizza!’

‘I missed you today. Here you go - I brought these car snacks for you. I know how much you love these.’

‘I feel like I haven’t had enough time with you today. I can’t wait to sit down and have dinner with you.’ ❤️

#parenting #gentleparenting #parent #parentingwithrespect
It is this way for all of us, and none of this is about perfection. 

Sometimes there will be disconnect, collisions, discomfort. Sometimes we won’t be completely emotionally available. 

What’s important is that they feel they can connect with us enough. 

If we can’t move to the connection they want in the moment, name the missing or the disconnect to help them feel less alone in it:

- ‘I missed you today.’ 
- ‘This is a busy week isn’t it. I wish I could have more time with you. Let’s go to the park or watch a movie together on Sunday.’
- ‘I know you’re annoyed with me right now. I’m right here when you’re ready to talk. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.’
- ‘I can see you need space. I’ll check in on you in a few minutes.’

Remember that micro-connections matter - the incidental chats, noticing them when they are unnoticeable, the smiles, the hugs, the shared moments of joy. They all matter, not just for your little people but for your big ones too.♥️

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This