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{grow}
rie based parent/child classes
moving beyond assumptions
infant & toddler meal trays

{moving beyond assumptions}
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Judith Rich Harris published The Nurture Assumption in 1998. A former editor for educational textbooks, Ms. Harris was able to present her argument about the relative importance of peers and parents in children’s lives in an orderly and evidence based manner. Yet six years later, in the mainstream press such as Parents, Parenting, and the huge quasi-educational toy industry, no traces of her laissez-faire attitude are represented. Just the opposite, today’s American parents are made to feel as if every sneeze might have the potential to scar their infants and toddlers forever. Furthermore, the $29.4 billion toy industry (JBAM.org, 2003) convinces us that providing infants with the perfect toys will turn them into perfectly happy children.

The pressure to parent “correctly” is huge and all of it is based on one single premise that Harris refutes; what the parent does to the child in the first years has a marked influence on how they will be as adults. If the parenting and professional community at large did not buy into this belief of nurture over nature, surely this billion dollar industry would crumble. If parents did not have to make time every day to demonstrate to their children how to be lively and playful, Nickelodeon would have no target audience for their show, “The Playful Parent”. If providing scheduled aural stimulation to newborns did not necessarily raise I.Q.s, then where would all those Baby Mozart tapes go? If infants might actually learn to turn onto their bellies on their own (Pikler, 1940) and spend the amount of time is this position that they preferred, what would happen to the paper tiger of “tummy time” that pediatricians torture both infants and their tender hearted parents with?

Parental pressure from mainstream media is based on an outdated assumption. The challenge to this assumption is what fueled the outrage at Ms. Harris’ theory. An early view of childhood popular at the end of the seventeenth century was philosopher John Locke’s idea of the Tabula Rasa, or blank slate (Santrock, 2005). He believed that children were malleable, like a block of clay and able to be formed into valuable citizens by skilled adults. Now, there are two factors that prove the Tabula Rasa to be a rather limited view of a larger perspective. The first is that the Tabula Rasa theory came as a protest against earlier, religious beliefs that all children are born into sin, and that the purpose of life is to be redeemed through acceptance of the Catholic or Christian Church (Santrock, 2005). A more secular lifestyle in most Western countries therefore outdates this earlier point of reference. In addition, the wealth of research in early childhood, including the child’s uterine life, shows that children are born ready to learn, and even more impressive, they are born ready to influence the environment in which they will live. For example, the suckling of an infant stimulates the mother to release oxytocin, which is linked to greater calmness and sociability in post-partum mothers, leading to the probability of a more nurturing environment for the child (Uvnaes-Moberg, 1999).

Supporting Piaget’s theory of the young child’s sensorimotor stage, new research proves that to a great degree, our minds cannot be separated from our bodies, that we experience that world sensually, and that our behavior is dependent on our current physical state. This is illustrated by the perceived “misbehavior” of toddlers, whose growing ability to control their own actions stems from the maturation of the prefrontal cortex (Diamond, 1999) and not necessarily from the constant admonitions of well-meaning parents to “share” and “be nice”.

Ms. Harris’ opinion upsets us because it implies that we are not in control over the future of our children. We see humans as above natural law, different than animals and able to create our own destinies, yet is our idea of that destiny of our own creation? Might our ideas for the ideal future not come from genetic inclination and peer input? Perhaps our clinging to the “Tabula Rasa” stems from a fundamental disrespect of nature and insistence on the body as subservient to the mind.

The question now is “what can we do?” One option might be what Maria Montessori calls “The Prepared Environment”. As adults, we can take into account the individual’s natural inclinations and support them through environmental changes. Child therapist, Magda Gerber (1998), describes an environment that is “safe, emotionally nurturing, and cognitively challenging” that can allow the infants’ natural inclinations to unfold while being humanized by the social interactions with caregivers. For an eight month old infant, this might mean providing a firm, clean area on the floor with a few simple objects that the child can choose, move towards, and manipulate on their own.

Another area to consider is the child’s sensorial life. Parents can regulate the environment to help the child acclimate and self-regulate. A child has the ability to self-regulate and self-soothe but we can cue them to become dependent on adult interference by not allowing find their own ways of self-comforting, which usually involves some protest crying.

Loud music or rough handling can desensitize children. In my work as a preschool teacher, I found that children whose parents acknowledged using corporal punishment and raised voices were less responsive to voice control.

As humans we like to make assumptions, it is part of the learning process. However why not be more like children? Through trial and error we make assumptions and base our actions on those. However, when faced with a contradiction to known information, why not assimilate and accommodate, as Piaget summed up so nicely, rather than turn a blind eye and continue to see things in the same old way. After just two or three trials, a child is able to adapt to the new situation by changing their own reactions. Ironically, an adult will cling to old behavior longer. In one of my parent infant classes, a mother has been grappling with her sixteen month old daughter’s aggressive behavior since she was eight months old. She began with biting her nipple while nursing. She moved on to pulling her mother’s hair, who ended up solving that problem by getting a “buzz cut”! Last week she mentioned that her daughter hits her in the face during story time! When I asked what her response has been to these behaviors, she tells her daughter that she is “hurting Mommy”. Well, how is that for stating the obvious! The mother continues using the same behavior modification methods although they don’t work, as if just doing the same with more intensity or for longer periods of time will change the result. I see children being much more resourceful in their responses. At the snack time I provide during parent-toddler class, there are several “house rules” (Gerber, 1998) which include sitting down and wearing a bib in the color of their choice. Invariably, in the first few weeks of class, some little tester will check the limits of the word “sit”. “Am I sitting if I am on my knees? Is it sitting if I stand on the stool?, Is it sitting if my feet are on the table?” However, after just two or three sessions, they choose to change their behavior to elicit the desired snack from the facilitator.

The more I consider it, the more I think that nature vs. nurture as explained in Ms. Harris’ book is not the answer at all. In early views of childhood, we have moved from Original Sin to Tabula Rasa to Inherent Goodness (Santrock, 2005). In other words, a child is BAD, a child is BLANK, and then, a child is GOOD. Maybe it is time to consider this; a child just IS!