This month I’ve been thinking about the importance of play. I’m especially interested in it as an ongoing monitor of both our emotional and physical health.

All mammals play and of course humans are no exception, it’s the most heart breaking phenomenon to be working with children who don’t play. Very quickly there is recognition that something fundamental to their being, is absent.

the quality of our play tells us a lot about who we are

My granddaughter has started to giggle and whilst I’m yet to witness this, I do see a process of research taking place in her parents as they try to determine what she currently finds worth a giggle.

It feels like a very significant attachment step, and another important step in attunement. One that could easily be trivialised by someone, who themselves has a ‘play disability’. In other words someone who values serious learning over useless peekaboo, or what ever else engages the baby. Given that we’re currently into ticking boxes the move to interactive laughing could be seen as a big tick in the step 1 attachment box.

When we are able to be playful we are well enough loved. Through playfulness we learn about abstract thinking which provides the foundation for empathy. When we play we are teaching babies about metaphor, the distinction between the actual and the illusion, an essential concept to embed for successful navigation of our world.  In turn observing the quality of play tells us something about the relationship to self and other. Play builds neuroplasticity. We all need individual and relational play. What this looks like will vary across the life cycle.

I’m currently at the International Family Therapy Conference and there isn’t too much play happening here. It’s all very serious research. The play of ideas, and creative thinking, is almost completely absent – but more about that later. I’ll do a conference blog in the next couple of weeks.

Easter egg hunt

Play is an ongoing part of daily life – it’s fragile.  Recently I had the virus that has been going around Melbourne. As I coughed my way to health I realised I’d lost my sense of humour and consequently my playfulness. The return of my humour announced the return of my health. This is pretty simple stuff to tune in to, and yet we don’t.

When someone is depressed tracking a history of what makes/made them laugh or what activates their playfulness is not as difficult to access as one might think.Often something inconsequential can happen in a session that will make them smile, this is often a good place to start.

making a cubby under the table

In this blog I am focused on babies who arrive wanted and who have parents that are full of hope for the future. In some ways it’s this group of parents that get so knocked about by cultural and political forces.

From the minute that pregnancy is confirmed, the first step is taken to who knows where.

I’m going to ignore all the fear introduced during pregnancy about what you might be doing to your unborn child and jump straight to birth.

The minute that baby is born due to funding policy and the economic rationalist mind set – that money is all that matters. The medical team is under pressure to get that mother and baby discharged.  This is coupled with a requirement to impart compulsory knowledge. This has less impact with subsequent babies, but with the first it feels like one has just landed in a pressure cooker. With conflicting information being tossed at you and then you’re discharge into the world. It’s completely irrelevant whether you know what you’re doing, have support, or are physically ready.

I’m aware many people feel ready to leave at the 4 day mark, but I sometimes feel that this is to escape the pressure of panicked nurses, not because the new parents feels ready. Being the last of a generation who could stay 10 days with my first – hospital felt like a calm time when I could both rest and build confidence. To chuck a mother out before her milk has come in, feels like a cruel social and economic policy.

Out you go into the wilds of life – whether you sink or swim is irrelevant to the religion of economic rationalism.

From here on all support is tokenistic and disconnected. The only thing that seems clear to me is get the primary carer – even that word rather than parent – back to work. The national maternity leave scheme is linked to the assumption that the parent who is primarily responsible for consistent love – returns to work within 12 months. What has happened to our community that we no longer want our taxes to support families with young children?

And get that baby booked into child care because…. As  I did some research I noticed that 1. You may need to actually pay to go on a waiting list. 2. There are now companies that will search for places for you.(Childcare and Education – Choice 2016) What sort of society does this to people – fleece them at their most vulnerable.

At the same time there has been a shift in the policy around when the aged pension can be accessed – the age is now 67 which means many grandparents are still working, which limits the support that they can offer their own children and grandchildren. It feels safe to assume this would have a direct result on the shortage of child care places. So even if a grandparent would like to care for a grandchild they may not be able to afford to.

Then there is the social policy of having children later and so often this is reflected in a personal rigidity that can cause a lot of distress. Once in our 30s many of us have had some years of being established in a particular way of being.  Consequently the deconstruction process that occurs with the birth of a child can be monumental. The falling apart of established day-to-day practises, becomes the fodder for anxiety and depression. Whilst we know this is not good for the baby – or the new parents – there is a total lack of kindness around this. Unless you happen to be lucky enough to have a support network that can stand beside, not criticise or offer unwanted advice, you’re on your own with the medical model and the drug companies.

The shock and trauma of deconstruction of our being, at any critical life stage, is rarely talked about. Having a baby is, I think, the number one deconstruction experience. And to add insult, of course, people have been having babies successfully forever.  What’s missing from this comment, whilst yes, that’s true. Is I think it’s probably unique to our era that financial wealth has been pretty much universally swamped the importance of emotional wealth. Good luck – its a harsh environment to be a parent. And remember if something goes wrong it’s your fault – is the icing of fear on an already distressing cake.  The idea that sometimes things go wrong does not sit well in a culture that likes to believe it and control and prevent any adversity.

Becoming a grandmother for the first time has been the most wonderful life cycle rite of passage. It marks so many transitions – offspring to parent, siblings to aunts and uncles, parents to grandparents and if they are still alive, grandparents to great grandparents.

Speaking as a new grandmother, I have enjoyed being able to love without the day-to-day responsibility. What is most wonderful about this is it’s easier to avoid that terrible muddling of love and control. I am defining love as the ability to accept one another as valid beings. This includes parenting decisions made by your offspring that you might not like, or agree with. Unfortunately, what is often misread as love is  compliance to the will of another, this is actually control. Someone oppressing their own beliefs or actions to get approval,confusingly defined as love. In the extreme this becomes emotionally abusive.

We all muddle love and control at times, it’s when it becomes the dominant pattern that it becomes problematic.

Just to clarify, I’m not saying the wish to impose our will on another is wrong – we all do this all the time. It’s when it’s mislabelled as an act of love that it becomes troublesome.

And then there’s knitting a very grandmotherly thing to do!

Often in my work I hear that a grandparent has been able to provide a loving relationship with a grandchild that they could never have provided for their own biological children. The removal of day-to-day responsibility, and being no longer dominated by the anxiety and fear of, am I doing the right thing, enables a connection that is often not possible when everyday worries are present.

I feel immensely sorry for the increasing number of grandparents who end up full time carers of their grandchildren – both miss an important developmental opportunity.

Through my grandmother eyes the attachment process has become a clear, and in essence, simple process. To scale it down to the barest bones: a baby makes a demand and an adult responds with kindness. Preferably the same group of adults and ideally a mother. This is true of all mammals – we are no exception. If this process is, mainly, repetitive and predictable a loving, oxytocin producing, relationship is developed enabling age appropriate neural development. Relational trust, in and between, both the significant adults and baby develops. Just the simple act of playing a game on a mobile phone whilst feeding, if this is what mostly happens, can interfere with this process – hence training the baby in relational disconnection.

And then there’s cooking with Grandma

Attachment is a relational process. The adults wait for the demand from the baby, when young via crying, and then it’s the adults job to work out what action to take in response to this cry. Adults deciding when a baby should be fed so waking it to meet the needs of the adult, is interfering with the attachment process. Of course, I hope it goes without saying, that I’m talking about healthy infants, and what is commonly practised. We all have our days when we may need to interrupt this attachment process and impose on the baby.

Over time the baby gains trust that the adults in his or her world will respond to their needs appropriately, simultaneously the adults also gain trust and confidence in their relationship with their child. This will, when the time comes, help a parent so ‘no’ with confidence. Not fearing that the loving relationship with their child will be jeopardised – in fact being able to hold the what is reasonable line is an act of love and a significant aspect of attachment. I believe it also helps parents stay emotionally present with their child, often a hard call I know, especially when they are inconsolable for whatever reason. Confidence in our attachment also helps soothe the distress in the adults – especially is something goes wrong and the distress of the infant is not able to be soothed.

What I haven’t looked at in this blog but will next month is the impact of cultural beliefs and political policy on our new mums and the attachment process. These external factors play a significant, often not helpful, role.

This month’s blog is a bit of a follow on from my November blog which was about the struggle for significance. As I think about this more, I believe this links with something that affects us all – diminishing skills in soothing our disappointments. I’m interested in how this connects with the ever increasing personal fear – even though statistically it seems we’re safer than ever (in Oz that is). I believe that the increase in fear hooks us up to looking for external ‘expert’ information. This information often undermines our intuitive sense of what feels right and, unfortunately most of us will follow the ‘expert’ rather that our own sense of what’s right.

Nothing like a cup of tea to soothe disappointment

Disappointment is generally fed by a sense of powerlessness – whether it’s as trivial as not getting through on the green light when driving, or something going wrong in a major life threatening way, the emotional process is, to some degree the same – we’re unable to influence events to suit us. If, when this happens we are unable to comfort ourselves – we’re in trouble.  We can develop the belief that we’re not competent to navigate life’s disappointments, which could slide to we’re not capable of managing life at all.

It feels like every family that comes in for family therapy is dealing with this dilemma in some form or other. It’s not uncommon for parents to instantly try to fix the unhappiness of their children. No thinking, just jumping to offer solutions. An example could be a primary school child who came home from school distressed. The child had just discovered that in 2016 he/she was not going to be in a class with any of his/her friends. This child has had a difficult time through the 2015 school year which is why the family sought help. During the session the parents talked about how angry they are with the school.  When they complained the principal said that he thought it would be better for their child. The parents were distressed that they were unable to fix their child’s disappointment. This was what they focused on, not what the principal had said.

Playing leggo for children is a great way to introduce creative play as a form of self comforting

The principal believed their child’s bad year had something to do with the peer group dynamic; so he and the class room teacher decided separating him/her might help. Also the teacher allocated to their child for 2016 was an outstanding teacher who the principal thought would bring out the best in their child. A lot of thought had gone into this decision by the school. When I asked the parents if they agreed: they thought they probably did.

Captured in this story is a core problem. Parents feel under pressure to keep their children happy – but by doing this, what is in their best interests maybe overlooked.

If parents can’t cope with the disappointments of their children, how are children going to learn that they can survive things not going to plan. The more I think about this, the more I think this is becoming a critical parenting issue.

patting the dog – a great source of comfort when disappointed about something

In a country like Australia most trivial disappointments can be ‘fixed’. For example: if a child makes a mistake choosing something to eat, rather than letting them sit with the disappointment of their choice, and for peace, it’s easy to let them choose something else and just bare the cost. This same process could be around anything; a game they want to play – but then don’t, a toy they want – but then don’t. Whatever it is, if they develop a belief that it’s someone elses job to manage their disappointment tantrum, then their resilience is being eroded. Now of coure we all do this at times, especially when peace is a priority, but if it’s the most common response, that’s when it becomes problematic. Our sense of resilience is built on our history of successful problem solving.

This is generally not such a great problem when children are small it’s when they hit their teenage years that it can develop a worrying direction – when you have a 15-year-old who is either angry,depressed or anxious. To see these young people end up with a psychiatric diagnosis and sometimes medicated makes me distressed. When working with these young people what I discover is a lack of confidence to either voice or enact a solution for what is causing their angst.  They are not confident in their ability to soothe and regulate themselves, generally because they’ve had no practise at it. This, I believe is the key, the ability to self comfort through personal rituals – regular self directed actions that feed a sense of wellbeing – is the antidote to disappointments and living with relative ease with the fragility of certainty.

Just enjoying something beautiful can restore our confidence after a disappointment

The struggle for significance has been something I’ve been thinking about this month. If feeling good about ourselves is ‘other’ dependent – we’re in trouble. Handing over the evaluation of our self worth to others leaves us powerless and vulnerable.

Despite the significance or this site, it is totally dependent on the goodwill of its visitors

I think there might be a trick at play, sold by the marketing machine, that the key to great self-esteem is via the number of ‘friends or likes’ on social media. Actually the opposite is true, in order to develop and maintain a solid sense of who we are requires an ability to focus on, and listen to, our internal yearnings. This clarifies what we want to take into our relationships – this is what feeds our wellbeing.

The impact of social media on families is impossible to ignore, especially when there is an adolescent in the house. More and more it feels like social media is the medium through which self worth is gauged.

How many friends or contacts, and then the time needed to attend to all these ‘relationships’ becomes the measure of significance. Somewhere in our journey to guarantee high self-esteem in our offspring, we have lost our way.

This of course, is not a new dilemma – most parents have always wanted their children to feel confident in the world. What’s new, I think, is the very low threshold for insignificance.

It looks insignificant but can cause havoc in the vegie patch

A very ordinary rock and yet it support lichen, and provides protection for any number of insignificant creatures

It would seem we are raising a generation who have very low thresholds for not getting their own way. The results are  over entitled youths who expect to have power without responsibility. Whislt obviously there are plenty of exceptions it seems to be enough of a phenomenon to be of concern.

When the drive for significance is fed by denied powerlessness it can become dangerous, it can lead to over entitled aggressive teenagers, and for that matter, adults. Their low, reactive thresholds ignite when their insignificance and powerlessness are exposed – so they flash into irrational power asserting anger.

I’m often having conversations, usually with parents, about the importance of their children experiencing times of being insignificant. Learning that you can survive being unimportant and powerless is an essential developmental milestone.  For most people this feels counter intuitive, and yet I believe it is part of the antidote to the high levels of anxiety and depression our youth are experiencing. Knowing you can survive insignificance and feel okay feeds our sense of resilience. It also increases our ability to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of when to fight for something, and when to let something go.

Experiencing times of being centre stage and significant, as well as times of being back stage and relatively insignificant, is a balancing act that we all seem to struggle with. Knowing that you can survive both is what builds self- competence and confidence.

An insignifcant sunset and yet it enhances wellbeing

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!