We all know what it feels like to be ignored. When we ask a child or spouse to do something for us and they ignore our request — ouch! Not only is it frustrating it’s also hurtful. When we’re not responded to we feel invisible unimportant and uncared for. And yet we ourselves don’t always respond to others. We don’t intend to hurt or upset anyone; there’s always a good reason for our lack of responsiveness.
Responding to Babies
It’s hard to constantly and consistently respond to a baby. A baby demands attention 24/7 as if he or she was the only person in the world and the parent is some sort of personal slave. Mothers and fathers have other things to do besides interacting with the baby — they may be chopping vegetables for dinner helping a toddler on the toilet or speaking on the phone to a relative or business associate. Life must go on no matter what the baby needs.
And yet parental unresponsiveness impacts a baby whether it is intentional or unavoidable. Like us babies who are not attended to feel ignored unimportant uncared for frustrated and upset. Their unhappiness about the incident is evident only during the minutes they are waiting to get adult attention. For instance a baby may wail loudly for five minutes while trying to get a parental response.
Crying for five minutes may not be a big deal. But what happens when a baby experiences frequent fairly consistent non-responsiveness? In that case significant learning occurs. What would you learn for example if your new friend almost never responded to your telephone calls? You might learn that you must not be that important to her or that people don’t always want to nurture friendships and that it’s probably best to give up trying to reach her. In fact this “giving up” process is the cornerstone of getting babies to sleep through the night. With consistent parental unresponsiveness to their nighttime cries babies eventually “give up” calling in the night.
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