Before we can even speak, we can still communicate with our caregivers, and our caregivers communicate with us.
The earliest ‘language’ is emotion. (This is the foundation of the attachment bond.)
Imagine if this language is disgust, anger, sadness, abandonment, instead of love, joy, and connection?
And how does a caregiver express this? Does a caregiver cooperate with an infant, or dictate? Is a caregiver engaging in reciprocal communication or uni-directional communication?
One reason I believe the toddler stage is considered to be so challenging, is that it is the transition between non-verbal and verbal communication.
Toddlers are learning how to articulate their needs, their wants, their emotions; they are learning the idea that everything has a name, and that name is important to connect to others, to communicate from inside themselves so that another understands.
What happens when this language, these attempts to communicate, is not nurtured, appreciated, and shut down?
Parents who physically abuse their young children are more likely to engage in non-cooperative communication. They issue commands and expect obedience, then act physically when they don’t get it. They often lack a fundamental understanding of child development, such as thinking the purpose of ‘testing’ is defiance when in fact, at the very early stages, it is actual methodical testing to determine the ‘rules’ of their environment under different permutations.
Many of these parents are ‘position oriented’.
“Because I’m your mother/father.”
But what does that mean? Our ability to conceptualize the world, to conceptualize and understand ourselves, to process our emotions is rooted in language. What is a mother? Why is ‘mother’ so important? Can you even ask these questions if you don’t have the language to do so?
How much abuse is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a child understands or is capable of?
Or a fundamental inability to communicate your expectations to them?
So much of therapy is “I feel ____ and would like ____.”
How can you set boundaries, boundaries which provide protection and self-care, if you can’t articulate your needs, if you don’t feel you have the right to speak up?
We think of love as the foundation between a parent and a child when, in fact, it is respect
…nurtured through a framework of cooperative communication, that is the foundation for the house that love builds.