Here’s an obvious truth: mothers are extremely important to the development of children. One of my teachers gave extensive lectures on the subject. A baby’s heart and brain -- my teacher instructed -- craves the mother’s body, the resonance of her voice, and the rhythm of her heartbeat. Even the smell of the mother is like a therapeutic salve for the infant child to bathe in. The mother establishes the child’s inner world. From the mother, the child looks into itself and develops self-perception. Therefore, how my wife perceives my son will greatly affect his assumptions about his own emotional and psychic capacity. She says, “My, Max! You sure are a wonderful person.” And he believes he’s wonderful right down to his bones.
The development of an infant is affected by the father as well, although not nearly as much. Fathers are infant curiosities. Fathers play, change diapers, clean, enter and exit. But for the first eighteen months, it’s the mother and infant show. Father impact grows as infants begin to perceive a world outside of themselves. This father need peaks around the child’s seventh year. Then fathers become as important as mothers.
Just as a mother’s assumptions about her child impact emotional and psychic capacity, likewise the father impacts a child’s view of itself in relation to the world. From the father, the child constructs it’s relation to environment. I say, “Max, you sure are a wonderful person.” And he is likely to believe that the world thinks well of him like I do.
So be careful father minds what you think. Be careful father eyes how you look upon your child. Burl Ives is watching, and he wants to be sure all the little children of the world have resilient egos.
copiwrite B. A. F.
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