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Surrogate mother experiment December 13, 2008

Posted by Megan in Attachment parenting and other styles, Bond: Behaviour/Discipline, History: Cultural Beliefs and Society Pressures, Human Development/Mental Health.
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This post is directly from Wiki on Harry Frederick Harlow an American psychologist …and is leading up to another post which I am still writing.

“In a well-known series of experiments conducted between 1957 and 1963, Harlow removed baby rhesus monkeys from their mothers, and offered them a choice between two surrogate mothers, one made of terrycloth, the other of wire.
The studies were motivated by John Bowlby’s World Health Organization-sponsored study and report, “Maternal Care and Mental Health” in 1950, in which Bowlby reviewed previous studies on the effects of institutionalization on child development such as René Spitz’s[2] and his own surveys on children raised in a variety of settings. In 1953, his colleague, James Robertson, produced a short and controversial documentary film titled A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital demonstrating the almost immediate effects of maternal separation. Bowlby’s report, coupled with Robertson’s film, demonstrated the importance of the primary caregiver in human and non-human primate development. Bowlby emphasized the mother’s role in feeding as a basis for the development of a strong mother-child relationship. However, his conclusions, based on psychoanalytic theory, generated much debate. It was this debate about the reasons behind the demonstrated and acknowledged need for maternal care, that was addressed by Harlow in his studies with the cloth and wire surrogates.
In Harlow’s classic experiment, two groups of baby rhesus monkeys were removed from their mothers. In the first group, a terrycloth mother provided no food, while a wire mother did, in the form of an attached baby bottle containing milk. In the second group, a terrycloth mother provided food; the wire mother did not. It was found that the young monkeys clung to the terrycloth mother whether or not it provided them with food, and that the young monkeys chose the wire surrogate only when it provided food.
Whenever a frightening stimulus was brought into the cage, the monkeys ran to the cloth mother for protection and comfort, no matter which mother provided them with food. This response decreased as the monkeys grew older.
When the monkeys were placed in an unfamiliar room with their cloth surrogate, they clung to it until they felt secure enough to explore. Once they began to explore, they occasionally returned to the cloth mother for comfort. Monkeys placed in an unfamiliar room without their cloth mothers acted very differently. They froze in fear and cried, crouched down, or sucked their thumbs. Some even ran from object to object, apparently searching for the cloth mother, as they cried and screamed. Monkeys placed in this situation with their wire mothers exhibited the same behavior as the monkeys with no mother.
Once the monkeys reached an age where they could eat solid foods, they were separated from their cloth mothers for three days. When they were reunited with their mothers, they clung to them and did not venture off to explore as they had in previous situations. Harlow concluded from this that the need for contact comfort was stronger than the need to explore.
The study found that monkeys who were raised with either a wire mother or a cloth mother gained weight at the same rate. However, the monkeys that had only a wire mother had trouble digesting the milk and suffered from diarrhea more frequently. Harlow’s interpretation of this behavior, which is still widely accepted, was that lack of contact comfort was psychologically stressful to the monkeys.
The importance of these findings is that they contradicted both the then common pedagogic advice of limiting or avoiding bodily contact in an attempt to avoid spoiling children and the insistence of the then dominant behaviorist school of psychology that emotions were negligible. Feeding was thought to be the most important factor in the formation of a mother-child bond. Harlow concluded, however, that nursing strengthened the mother-child bond because of the intimate body contact that it provided. He described his experiments as a study of love. He also believed that contact comfort could be provided by either mother or father. Though widely accepted now, this idea was revolutionary at the time.
Critics of Harlow’s research have observed that clinging is a matter of survival in young rhesus monkeys, but not in humans, and have suggested that his conclusions, when applied to humans, overestimate the importance of contact comfort and underestimate the importance of nursing. [3]…”

 

For another intresting look at Harry see this blog as well New found land news it also shows the wire monkey ‘mothers’

My baby is a Monster and the Terrible Two’s August 19, 2008

Posted by Megan in Attachment parenting and other styles, Bond: Behaviour/Discipline.
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From a personal view:
I’ve been sitting back a few weeks now looking at myself (well my whole blog is really me looking at myself) but I’ve been doing even more as of late.
I keep waiting for the terrible two’s and the horrible toddler tantrums.
I think the only thing which has stepped up a lot is the whole “Ara do” or “self” as she is saying a lot.
I’m not saying that I don’t get frustrated sometimes with Ara’s little hands trying to help out while I’m cooking but its really my problem.
I’ve started to ask Ara to chop up the garlic for me as this is one thing she can get from the pantry by herself, peal by her self and using the herb knife chop by her self.
I think for me its all about finding things that my two year old can do which is a step up from what she was doing before and she feels like she is contributing.
 
From a society view:
There are so many people who are at logger heads with their two year olds. Many feel that they have to resort to hitting their children to get them to behave, listen or stop what they are doing.
 
This quote says a lot for our society and the way that we are treating our children
“…Children are like mirrors to us, reflecting back the very things we hate about ourselves. Imagine if you felt proud, strong and in control. So would your children.
They will do what you do, not necessarily what you say. They learn through imitation, so if you don’t like the way your children are behaving, look at yourself, for that is where the answers often lie….” to see the rest of this article
 
Parents hearing the above will often feel angry as they feel that they have done everything “right” teaching a child to self soothe to sleep, telling them “No!” when it is dangerous, making them self amuse, giving them good toys.
So what are they missing?
If we have a look at aTCL we can see that many children of today do not have the benefit of:
* Being wanted (pregnancy might have been an accident)
* May have had some birth trauma (circumcisions, elective c-section or any of the new fan-dangled gizmo’s used during birth.)
* May not of been breastfeed for any more than six months let alone the 2 years suggested by World Health Organization as we can also see from the Sears information on Breastfeeding is also the beginning of good behavior.
* May be suffering from violence (smacking, family violence or verbal abuse)
* May not have a secure loving bond with at least one caregiver (many children are put into daycare and may not “see” their parents for any more than half an hour before bed…and that could be filled with T.V or being alone)
 
There are many other things which impact on a child’s behavior and it is up to parents to understand and really look at the issues they are dealing with.
There may be a need for some family counseling or seeing a psychologist. There may be a need to look at how the family is run the need to spend more time together and creating that bond which is so important.

Waiting for your children August 14, 2008

Posted by Megan in Attachment parenting and other styles, Bond: Behaviour/Discipline.
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Babies, Children and the elderly should be respected just like “other” adults.

I have expectations of my daughter and she of me.

This is something that I’m discovering at the moment. Many times I have asked my daughter to wait….just wait while I wipe the bench or wait until I go to the loo. For some reason she does wait…I know many other children I’ve meet would just roll their eyes and go about whatever they wanted to do or just keep on asking and asking.

But I now have to realize that because I’ve asked her to wait that I should respect her request that I wait for her….and she does ask.

In my upbringing being told to hurry up was one of my main…umm stresses? Yes I’d have to say stresses. I still panic even today and find myself trying to rush when really there is no point in rushing let alone getting angry at another about them running late.

So now I force myself to take a deep breath and wait….”Waiting… meditation” (Thanks to Bilingual Baby for this tip which I’ve taken to anything which is causing me a bit of stress as Waiting, Bathing, Meal times oh and don’t forget DRIVING just add meditation after it).

It’s just like asking something of someone…they do have a right to say no…just like you do.

I often look at my conversations and look at how many times I’ve not done what my daughter has asked…why? Well I was busy.

So when I ask for my daughter to do something for me and she says no I feel now – what right have I got to “make” her do it…she has no idea between different situations…hey they are all new to her….yes she tipped the building blocks out on the floor but Dadda left his cup on the coffee table along with his plate and leftovers…it’s all in perspective and it is hard to juggle but it is something which I feel I’m starting to understand. My daughter has no idea that it is her mess she’s too little to understand. I ask her to help me clean up the mess…any mess and she does…even in books if she sees a mess she wants to help clean it up.

I’ve been learning give and take.

I want to go shopping she sits in the car for an hour then I drag her round the shops…I may not like doing the shopping but all she can see is it was something that I wanted to do…so now it’s her turn and she gets some time out to do what she wants which is normally swings.

Do I seem like a push over?

Well hey I don’t often have a screaming child which does not listen to me (we are not perfect and sometimes we do just have to do adult stuff but I try to make it up).

What I am trying to say is that children have a different view on things and we cannot force them to see our view as we will only be forcing them into something they may not want to do. In time they will learn through following our example (yes it’s hard for a while but it does get better ;-)

Does smacking really have to be a part of life? May 7, 2008

Posted by Megan in Bond: Behaviour/Discipline.
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I’ve been reading through Elizabeth Pantley’s articles again….there is so much good stuff there.

The Anti Smacking bill in NZ is still bouncing round in the government arena and really I feel that we should just get on with it. Stop smacking our kids and find a new way to communicate with them.
I’m not perfect I’m the first to say this…there are some days which I get really wound up (I will say though they are becoming less and less as I read and educate myself more) but I don’t use violence to make Ara do what I want…I do have to grit my teeth and breath calmly sometimes.

This is one of the points that Elizabeth makes on smacking/spanking which I feel many parents do out of frustration and just want a quick fix.

3. Spanking makes the parent feel better. When we get angry, we move into the “fight or flight” mode. Our adrenaline increases, and we have a primitive need to strike out. Hitting releases this negative energy, and helps us feel better. But even a minor spanking can escalate into major abuse. Parents have reported that during the heat of the moment it’s hard to stop hitting, and some say that they don’t even realize how hard they’ve hit until they see the bruise.

Even if we cannot see anything on the child’s body it is still there in the mind.
We have to remember that we are the adult in the situation and we are the guide to appropriate behavior.
By guide I mean mentor/trainer/supporter/adviser/teacher and mirror.