THE MOTHERS’ CENTER OF SUFFOLK
Our Childcare Staff greets
mother and child each day they attend the Center. Children become familiar with the childcare
workers and come to like them. We specifically
encourage use of the childcare room. Dr.
Mahler's work strongly suggests that children need a GENTLE PUSH at times to
help them develop courage to leave their mothers and try new things.
There is much to be gained
all around if the children are in Childcare, e.g., children gain new social and
cognitive skills in childcare; they gain an increasing personal strength in
their feelings of separateness and autonomy from their mothers; they make new
friends and develop trust in others...mothers get a break from the drain of
24-hour duty; mothers learn a lot about their children from the workers;
mothers gain confidence in their children's developing autonomy and strength;
they get pride and satisfaction in seeing their children gain new skills; they
learn about the specific phases of the separation-individuation process as
their children express their strong preferences for either closeness or
distance from them...and the women's adult groups benefit from the quieter time
if children are in childcare.
Children's behavior can
confound the most experienced mother or father.
Certain phases seem to look like setbacks. Dr. Mahler's work explains the meaning of
these normal events. All children
experience a rapprochement crisis. It
is the personal discovery of one's smallness and helplessness, and one's
discovery that one needs one's mother for survival. The discovery of the solitary self, says Dr.
Mahler, is both exhilarating and yet terrifying. Up to this period, children are, at times,
more or less unaware of this feeling.
The rapprochement crisis makes children want their mothers, but then
when they get them, they don't want them anymore, and they can't find a
comfortable fit between closeness and distance, and they get angry. Then they are upset because they need the
person they are now angry with. This has
been called AMBITENDENCY by Dr. Mahler, also called the "Porcupine
Syndrome."
Porcupines move close to
each other for warmth, but then get stuck by each other’s quills, then they
move apart, but they get cold and so move close and back and so on and on. We humans have it better: we develop inner solutions to this
dilemma. We learn to retain a sense of
closeness to our loved ones that gives us warmth and even though we don't see
them or have a physical closeness to them, we humans can develop
"emotional object constancy."
By the way, some human beings have been deprived of the opportunity to
develop emotional object constancy.
It is after the rapprochement crisis has begun, says Dr. Mahler, and
after the feelings of smallness and vulnerability are present, that the child
particularly needs a response from the mother, and this response shores up the
child’s feeling that he or she has a partner, and this response helps the child
complete the feeling of inner strength, which finally crystallizes the capacity
to feel warmth, independent of the mother.
During this phase, our childcare workers can sometimes provide the
needed nutrient, other times they cannot.
It is particularly during this phase that certain children will be seen
coming and going between the childcare room and the group room, and they tend
to be noisy and tantrumous. Somewhere about 24 to 25 months, a child can
feel afraid or temporarily upset in the childcare room, and will think,
"I'll see my mother soon, she loves me, then I'll feel more warmth,"
and then this child can bear the frustration of being geographically separate
from the mother.
We are asked to develop
concern and empathy for each other as women, who are confronted with our
children's development. If a mother
needs physical help with a child, a group member can offer it. There is nothing that says we must stay glued
to our chairs. Mothers with a child in
the room sometimes find it helpful to walk around the room with their child or
to allow the child to crawl or toddle around freely. If toddlers are in the group room, they will
have a need to keep busy: drawing,
coloring, looking at a book, or playing with quiet toys can be helpful. Mothers are advised to provide the children
with some way of satisfying their needs.
In order to meet the
children's and adult group's needs, it should be pointed out that sometimes a
child is unable to be comforted in the group room, and the disruptive noise
that is created is such that the adult conversation cannot be continued. In these cases, the mother is asked to
recognize the disruption, try a new approach with the child, and if worse comes
to worse, temporarily leave the room with the child. They can come and go into and out of the room
together. They are to be welcomed back
as soon as the child is quiet.
In order for trust to
develop in a group, we must all feel confident that others are not upset if
children are in the room provided the noise level is not overwhelming. We must all remember that what is a
disruptive noise level to one will not necessarily be that to everyone in the
group. We must also be aware that a
mother's particular emotional state may be such that her need may be greater
than the child's or the group's needs.
The facilitators at the
Mothers' Center study development theory and should be helpful in suggesting
practical ideas and helping the group through these stresses. Good learning can occur in an adult group
that may have to sidetrack from the order of business to talk about the
developing stages and needs of the child or mother. The optimal group experience requires
everyone's help: the group members, the
child, the facilitators and the childcare workers. We all have to negotiate a good enough
experience for each other.
WE ARE ASKED TO DEVELOP A NON-JUDGMENTAL ATTITUDE, REMEMBERING THE
COMMONALITY OF OUR EXPERIENCES AND OUR GOAL TO PROVIDE A PLACE THAT IS HEALTHY
FOR MOTHERS AND CHILDREN.