Yesterday a friend of mine told me about an experience she had in a department store. A mother and grandmother were shopping with an infant in a bucket seat in the cart.
While within hearing distance my friend heard the mother say with disgust and criticism to her baby, “Ooooh! Gross! You’re stinky!” and saw her make an unpleasant face. With dismissal and a whiny tone, the mother waved to the grandmother to take the baby to the restroom to change him.
Compare this to my brother-in-law, when he was a new father of twins who had an older sister not quite two years old. At one point in my visit, my nephew needed a change. It was obvious, as he had blown out the sides of his diapers and was starting to fuss. My B-i-L slowly reached for his son and with a tender look of compassion said, “Aw…C’mere little guy. Let’s get you all fixed up. That can’t be comfortable!”
Some may say there is no reason to worry about the tone and words we say to infants that young, believing they cannot understand anyway.
But the truth is, they can. My experience and understandings support my belief that infants actually may be able to understand the words, but at the very least, they understand – and respond to – tone and emotional messages.
The first scenario has a mother teaching her child that he disgusts her, that he is unlovable and gross. He may hear tones and emotional messages like this often, and grow up lacking in self confidence, self worth, and second guessing whether or not he “is okay.”
If we treat infants – even unborn ones – as if they can understand what we communicate to them, it becomes important to notice what comes across in our emotional tones. Communicating compassion, love, understanding and joy to an infant helps them learn that they are worthy, loved and respected.
How an infant is treated by his/her caregivers is how they learn to treat themselves when they are older. The implicit messages given to an infant become part of their personal belief system about who they are, how they relate to others and the world they are in.
So next time you are talking to, or about, your baby (or anything, for that matter), notice your tone and see if you can foster positive messages, and limit the negative ones. If you lose your cool, or are having a bad day, don’t worry…just apologize to your baby and tell him/her what’s true: He/she is loved, and good and wonderful and you are there to happily care for him/her.
ugh, that stinky diaper story is pretty upsetting. love the b-i-l story, good for him and his child.
how we spoke to our infant was something we were pretty aware of most of the time. i certainly had some uglier moments, but mostly due to sleep deprivation, not soiled diapers. and they were few and far between.
nice post
Thanks Trish.
I think its true of anyone that is human that we aren’t always perfection walking. I believe if we are aware as often as we can be, and apologize as soon as we are aware we messed up, that’s a long way ahead of what we got as children!