Chapter 1 Your Job as a Parent So here you are, trying to do the world''s most important job--the psychological construction of another human being. As a parent, you find yourself in situations that challenge parts of yourself you didn''t even know existed. You learn embarrassing things about your limitations. You regularly aren''t sure what you''re doing. You are brave but exhausted. Well-meaning, but more reactive than you''d like. Some days, your stamina and resilience run low. It''s hard to keep being resilient when the stress never stops.
In this most important of all jobs--parenting--you frequently have to trust your intuitions and hope that there is such a thing as good gut instinct. How are you to approach such a mission? How do you even conceptualize such a job? It''s as if you are an intrepid explorer who has been promised a huge sum of money to show a very important, but utterly inexperienced, client how to survive in a wild and dangerous area that you''ve come to know well. They''ve heard you''re the best, and you''re the one they want. You''ve never met them before, but you will be fellow travelers, equal souls, and you''re the only one who knows the area. Your client is a fair but exceedingly demanding person, and they will be writing your review and determining what, if any, bonuses you receive. It''s bound to take years, and due to their inexperience, they will inevitably make hair-raising mistakes and endanger you both. You know that your tact and respect are going to be necessary if you''re to get along on this journey of survival, not to mention get your bonus at the end. You watch out for them and show them all the tricks you''ve learned in this challenging place.
After a while, you start to enjoy their curiosity and companionship and manage to still like them even when they begin exploring on their own and put both of you at risk. You started out treating them well for the bonus, but you soon realized that they really are just as smart as you and just as worthy of respect, even though they would surely die out here without you. You notice how weirdly satisfying it is that they''ve got so much to learn and you''re the only one to teach them. You were always equal as human beings, certainly, but toward the end of their training with you, you two gradually become competent equals in this risky land. In fact, they''ve become such adept explorers after mastering your teachings, they will be going on and discovering new lands themselves that you have never visited. If you''ve been a good guide and mentor, they will want to return periodically and tell you all about their travels because they know you love a good yarn and because after all you''ve been through together, there''s a bond there. You get paid your bonuses, but by then you realize that your time with them was in some ways even more rewarding than those new lands you still explore yourself. You feel good about training them up to be capable explorers, and you look forward to hearing about their latest adventures too.
They''ll want to come back to visit because you were so kind to them when they were ignorant, and you took such good care of them when they were difficult and discouraged. They won''t forget a mentor like that. Like that explorer-guide, you hope to somehow transform the raw, uncivilized essence of your child into a reasonable adult, an independent human with a moral sense, intellectual ability, and good judgment. How does this happen? It happens one tiny act at a time, and it happens only because you are brave enough to try to do what the moment requires, even when--especially when--you don''t feel up to the task. By doing this a million times--especially when you don''t want to--you build the kind of connection with your child that makes them feel loved, contained, safe, and understood. And children who experience those things have a head start in emotional maturity. When we contemplate becoming a parent, we want to do a good job, so we fall back on what we know about accomplishment. Maybe we''ve worked hard at a job or obtained a degree, and we know that being smart and capable earns recognition.
But now we''re parents, and the rules are different. We''re not going to get a good grade or a promotion, and all we have to offer is ourselves. In this most important job of all, there are few external metrics to tell you if you''re doing it right. So how do you know if you''re being a good enough parent? The Good Enough Parent No relationship is perfect. You can do all your parenting jobs just right and still have bad days. Even the most conscientious parent is going to misread cues or get irritated. And children . well, children just aren''t very fair or evenhanded about how they assign blame.
The opportunities for hurt feelings between parents and children are enormous. If you worry about how you''re going to do all the right things as a parent, the good news is that you don''t have to be perfect. Pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott observed that babies don''t need a perfect mother, they only need a "good enough" mother. Although the early weeks of the newborn''s life require a caregiver''s constant close attention, Winnicott observed that after that period the caregiver''s attentiveness just needed to be "good enough" for there to be a secure and happy attachment between parent and child. This meant that the caregiver of course was still responsive and available but could relax a little and attend to other things because the older baby could now amuse themselves a little, enjoy some time to themselves, and most importantly, know that they could summon their caregiver as needed. Later, infancy researcher Ed Tronick decided to define what constituted this "good enough" parenting by observing the interactions of healthy mothers and babies in moment-to-moment detail. By meticulously scoring countless interactions, Tronick and his colleagues discovered that the most important element of good enough parenting was not that that the caregiver was constantly highly attuned to the baby, but that the caregiver noticed and repaired their connection when the baby reacted negatively to the caregiver''s lapses in attunement. The results were clear: The parent-child relationship could still remain sturdy and secure even if connection was temporarily lost, as long as emotional repair was sought and given.
Tronick and his colleagues found that, in fact, healthy, well-attached mothers engaged in highly focused, mutually synchronized interactions with their babies only about one-third of their time spent together. The parent was of course available and aware of their child but wasn''t tuned in every second. Around two-thirds of the time, the interactions between mother and child were not synchronized, meaning that they were looking at different things or not actively engaged in mutually responsive back-and-forth communications. Sounds like comfortable coexistence in normal life, doesn''t it? Of course, we''re not talking about neglecting or ignoring your baby two-thirds of the time! Parents must remain vigilant and responsive overall, but this research suggests that after the intensive newborn stage, we have some leeway when we have a lot on our plate or just need a break for a few moments, as long as we reengage and repair our emotional connection whenever our child begins to show distress . Tronick also did experiments to see how healthily attached babies reacted when their mothers deliberately stopped responding to them in the middle of high-attunement moments, briefly interrupting their mutual connection. In these famous "still-face" experiments, the babies were playfully interacting face-to-face with their mothers when their mothers were cued to briefly stop showing any facial expression at all. At that point, when the babies couldn''t elicit a smile or any acknowledgment from their mothers, they became distressed and behaviorally unraveled--beseeching their mothers, looking away, crying, and even losing muscular coordination. Tronick''s fascinating experiments can be seen on YouTube by searching for "Tronick''s Still-Face Experiments.
" Other researchers have shown how babies'' stress hormones rise with an absence of maternal response, confirming that the lack of caregiver engagement is distressing at even a physical level. However, Tronick and his colleagues found that once the mother actively reengaged with the baby, they could reconnect. The babies had made things better through their own efforts: They complained, they entreated their mothers, and they were persistent until they got results.