EFA with children

The dynamics of emotional expression in children and in adults are the same. In fact, by observing the emotions of children, we can learn a lot about the truth underlying many adult emotional expressions that are covered over by a superstructure of many layers of defense. Much Emotional First Aid with adults consists of trying to reach through the superstructure to basic emotions that come out simply, by comparison, in children or even in animals. Emotions in children are usually instantly recognizable. Emotional distress, in the sense of the conflicts, tensions, muscular rigidities and restraints that keep a particular emotion particularly blocked in an adult, is not even observable in very young infants. For them, distress is not blocked emotion, it is itself an emotion—an amalgam of grief, fear., and rage at being deprived of contact. In young infants, emotions can be more accurately described as needs. Once the need is identified, and it is usually a simple one, the only possible measure is to satisfy it. This may be true of adults also, but the superstructure hides the underlying need, which EFA must work to find and satisfy.

Older children (after the age of, say, four) who have experienced separation from the mother, loss, and autonomy, are more like adults. They show the same emotions, only more intensely. Few adults retain the mobility and sensitivity of children. EFA with children is essentially similar to that with adults, and the same measures to aid discharge of accumulated tension can be used. But the guidelines for use are different, because of the greater fragility and sensitivity of children. It is rather like adjusting a dose of a drug: a 'dose' of active EFA intervention, which would not harm an adult, might emotionally overpower a child. Every intervention, whether verbal or through movement and touch, has to be lighter.

It is up to parents' own judgment how to integrate the EFA methods described earlier with the reality of who their child is, and with their expectations for the child. The aim of this chapter is to offer some guidelines for EFA with children based on an understanding of their emotional development. It would be impossible to sum up this development in a single chapter, but the following sections will at least give an overview. (See Suggested Further Reading). The final sections of the chapter will note some specific problems that occur between couples, and draw attention to the possibility of EFA during childbirth.

The emotions of the newborn

A one-day-old baby awakes from a period of sleep in its cradle or in bed beside the mother. Its legs and arms begin to undulate as it utters soft cries. Its eyes move back and forth searchingly. The undulating movements of the limbs, and the cries, become more vigorous. Several things can happen now, depending on the mother's response:

—The mother goes to her child, picks it up, makes loving sounds, and puts the baby to the breast. The baby roots for the nipple, sucks firmly for a while. The limbs undulate slowly. The baby makes soft sounds. Its body seems to glow, the skin pink. Its eyes may look up at the mother. After a while its face, head, and body tremble with satisfaction, and it drifts off to sleep again, snuggled in toward the mother's skin. By a few weeks later, after the same experience, its face will show a serenely joyful smile.

—The mother ignores the baby. Nobody comes. The cries become louder, the movements of the limbs become harsher. The skin becomes red, the baby seems puffed up. Its eyes may look around wildly but more likely are squeezed shut with the crying that takes on a grating sound. The limbs push out, and the back arches. After a while it stops from sheer exhaustion and drifts off into a kind of sleep. The face seems wizened and contracted, the skin bluish.

—The mother picks up the baby and forces a bottle of cold formula into the baby's mouth. The baby's back arches and it regurgitates the fluid instantly, the lips pushing outward. It utters a strangled cry.

—The mother picks up the baby roughly. The arms and legs shoot out abruptly, the eyes stare open blankly. The quick but gentle breathing is disturbed for an instant. The body area seems to shrink, all the breath briefly gathered into the chest. The skin is pale.

This is approximately the emotional range of a day-old newborn. In the first example, the baby's emotion can be described as joy, in the special sense that it begins with a softly expressed need for contact and ends up with a full, soft expansion of the organism and a trembling discharge in satisfaction. In the second example, the baby's emotions can be broadly called anger, although it is more of a generalized distress that contains elements of anger, fear, and what will later (when the baby realizes what loss is) become grief. In the third example, the emotion can also be called anger, in the special sense of disgust and rejection. In the fourth example, the baby's reaction is fear, including the startle reflex and the instinctive fear of falling that babies show when handled roughly. Even if they are too young to know what falling actually is, their reaction resembles that of young primates whose bodies contract into a ball as they fall from trees.

These emotions have been described, in more developed form, throughout this book. But it should be clear that here there is no question of EFA. All that is required is that the mother satisfy the infant's need, by gathering the infant to her body and allowing the natural reflex of rooting for the breast to take its course. Later, other needs, such as to be changed or rocked, may be expressed. But always each need contains the message of how it can be satisfied. Nothing is complicated.

But even this simple expression of needs is sometimes not recognized as emotional. Instead, when the baby cries, it is assumed that 'it needs to be fed.' Some babies are conditioned early to learn that they will only find response when they are hungry, and that the response will last no longer than it takes for them to be fed. They may eventually quiet down after a period of protest and distress: they are depressed babies. Or the distress continues: they are angry babies. They are handled roughly when they protest: they become frightened babies.

Even the most progressively caring treatment of babies often turns out to be conditional because of emotional expectations or blocks in the parents. An example is a well known 'hippie' community known as 'The Farm.' All the births are 'natural,' (unmedicated), and the mothers breastfeed their babies on demand until the baby weans itself in its own time. This sounds excellent. But evidently, the mothers' response to the babies' demand is systematically conditional. Since the philosophy of the Farm is 'nonviolent' (meaning anger is not permitted), the babies are never put to the breast until after they have stopped crying. To satisfy their cry would be to encourage angry demanding. The babies soon learn to cry less, since they are only satisfied when they are quiet. The mothers probably do not know that there is a risk of this being counterproductive. One study of a tribe of Alaskan Eskimos, who used to follow exactly the same 'taming' principle with their children, links this practice of conditional breastfeeding with a constant tendency in adult Eskimos of this tribe toward violence, the suggested explanation being that the adults retain the suppressed rage they have felt as children.

In other words, people's acceptance or rejection of the basic emotions not only affects the quality of their contact with each other, it affects the kind of character structure their children develop.