02/05/2023
Everyday my 4 year old picks up a tiny handful of these colorful stones off the ground at her pre school during yard time. She then puts them in her jacket pocket. She brings them home to me and every single day says
"I brought you coloredy stones mammy"
I add them to my collection in my office and kitchen and we cuddle and I thank her. And afterwards, the first word that comes to my mind is
'Object Permanence'
My fellow therapists and Psychologists will recognise this term but usually parents have never heard of it. It is a fancy word to describe a very important process that happens in the first year of your child's life. Possibly the most important.
When a baby's parent leaves the room there is some time in those early days that the baby believes the parent has literally left - he has no state of mind to configure that the parent is in another room, no sense of the world as trustworthy just yet, no feeling that the parent will ever be back. The parent has disappeared, gone forever and the devastation is utterly debilitating (this is why using cry it out as a sleep intervention at this crucial time of attachment development can have negative consequences).
Over time, the parent has this consistency of going away and coming back, going away and coming back, going away and coming back. Whether its to the shop, to the next room, to work etc. But you always come back. And so the baby learns 'object' (mammy/daddy) 'permenance' (exists even not with me). The coming back part is loaded with relief and love for both parent and baby which further compounds the babys sense of himself as held in his parents mind even in absence.
It is a task for both mum, dad and baby to negotiate in those crucial first 3 years.
Side note - this highlights why hide and seek is such an important game for emotional social and psychological development. If you do it with a baby, watch closely. You'll see anxiety in the moment your hand covers your face and relief on babys face on the exposed face. Then with repetition, the anxiety is replaced with excitement and trepidation.
An example of unnegotiated childhood object permenance is an adult who obsesses with their partner, friends, therapist etc, frantically sending texts or calling them in absence.
Are all children who find separation challenging and anxiety inducing, having problems with object permenance? No, not at all! Often times, there are a litany of reasons for that.
Instead, find the evidence that you as a parent successfully negotiated this incredibly important sense in your child. My evidence is colored stones. Whats yours?
Its
The picture I drew you mammy
The seashell i found for you daddy
The poem from your pre teen.
Its even the after school collapse (I held it in until i had you mammy)
It is the seemingly passing moment that is actually shining with meaning. And the meaning is you. You mean the world to your child and they sense you every where they go.
Because you always came back.
And when you left,
You left them something they could feel until,
You came back.
She will collect these stones every day until she finishes pre school this June. And someday she will teach me my own object permenance about her. Because she will leave school, she will leave home, she may leave the country.
I may feel all this sadness she will leave when that happens,
But she will have left me stones.
And so she will never have left me.
Just as I, in all the times I went away,
Never left her.
