continuum concept

I don't normally make a big deal out of the books that I read, but I finished one today that I just want to comment on - The Continuum Concept, by Jean Liedloff. I have read a lot of material about attachment parenting topics. One of the oft-repeated suggestions is to put yourself in your baby/child's place and do to/with/for the child what you would want done to/with/for yourself in their place - in other words, see things from your child's perspective.

This book, more than any other I've read before this, convinced me of the rightness of an attachment philosophy of parenting. While the author in some cases stretches a bit in her assumption of what a baby feels or thinks in various situations to the point of sounding unrealistic, and while she makes her points in wide, blanket-statement, one-reaction-fits-all-babies ways, the gist of what she says hits home and really makes you see modern parenting methods from the baby's point of view. But then, that may have been her aim in the first place, to make generalizations that would get a person to think, not to cover every possible situation or baby personality.

The basic premise of the book is that the author spent roughly three years living with a village of native tribal folks in South America. Over the course of her time there, she noticed and then began to study how the indians behaved, both individually and as a group, and how they were almost always happy, even joyful. Happiness was their normal state of existence just as our normal state of existence is "Yeah, I'm okay" (if we're lucky) or "Enh, I could be better" (if we aren't so lucky). She concluded that the reason these people were so happy all the time was because of how they are treated from the moment of birth - constant presence in their mother's arms until they begin to crawl, and then gradually as they are physically and emotionally able, they venture farther and farther from their mother, at their own pace, knowing they can always come back to her for reassurance. That explanation doesn't begin to do justice to her theory, of course, since she took a whole book to explain what I've just got a paragraph for. Read the book, it'll make more sense.

The section of the book that keeps leaping out at me as I think back on the book - well, one of the sections - describes an infant's life among the indians and a Western infant's life. The description of the Western baby's life was exceedingly moving - moved me to tears as I read it. The author's words pound home the loneliness, fear, and deprivation that babies must feel who do not receive the attention and care they desire, when they are left to lay alone in their cribs or on the floor, crying, their needs going unmet for minutes or hours on end. While I realize that the author was describing extremes in an attempt to make a point, it was effective.

I must admit that her point was well taken as I had tears running down my cheeks thinking of the lonely, sad, heartbroken babies in the world - as I imagined myself as one of those babies, lying alone and so frightened, unsure of what is going on around me, desperate for someone to come and love me, and feeling dreadfully homesick for the warm, strong arms of my mother. It really made me put myself fully in the place of a baby, of Gavin specifically. Although I have done my best all along to see things from Gavin's perspective, it is difficult sometimes to separate myself from my thirty years of experience in this world and see the world from his two month old viewpoint. This book helped me to see more clearly from his perspective, with his lack of timesense or understanding of words or concepts like "I can't [feed you/pick you up/hold you] now, I have to [fill in the blank]. In a minute." No matter how good my intentions might be, and no matter how much love my voice conveys, he still knows only that he has a need right now and no one is taking care of it right now (because right now is the only concept of time he has).

Posted by allison at June 16, 2004 09:56 PM