03/05/2022
❤️
I'm so often asked about what to do about a child who comes to the bedroom door at night time, looking to be let into the bed with you. There are all sorts of bedtime stories come to my office. The child who won't sleep alone, the child who won't sleep through the night, the child who won't sleep unless they're stroking your hair/creased into your neck. The child who won't settle alone no matter how many times you put them back.
The first thing I say is, flip the word 'won't' to 'can't' . Children have poorly developed self regulation skills. From conception, they are utterly environment dependant. Independence is a term widely used in educational and behavioural sciences in association with encouraging parents to faciliate it as early as possible. But Individuation and Independence are not mutually exclusive. I'm not sure that I want to see an Independent 3 year old in my office. I might see Autonomy, Individuation. Sure. But when a child demonstrates Independence as wildly beyond their years, I will begin then to assess whether I am looking at early Independence as part of their organically growing personality, or at a child who has had to pack away his treasure box of needs in favour of meeting someone elses.
On the other hand, Individuation, is a term that is interested in how a child is establishing a sense of their self, as separate from the systems they are developing. The 'I' .
Individuation is created only within the co creation of that space inside that is 'I'. The irony is that I am only created, by co creating me, with the consistent presence of someone safe who soothes and sees me.
And that does not have a clock.
Everyone has their own boundaries with this one. My own hope is that if my child comes to me in the middle of the night with a scary dream, that same child, 10 years later, now a teenager, will stand at my door at 3am with his scary thoughts.
Because they know, I will open.
💛
