babies
When I was young, I was told not to tickle the feet or stomach of my baby brother. "He doesn't understand what he is feeling," said my mom, "And he doesn't know to scratch it to make it stop."
After that I sometimes persisted in tickling my little brother, but I made sure to rub my fingers in a soft scratch afterward to stop his skin from feeling that weird after-tickle. What my mom said was true - he was confused and defenseless. He was a baby and could hardly focus on particular items, let along understand what it meant to be tickled. Even if he could have understood how to make the feeling stop, he did not have the means to bend and scratch his own foot. All he could understand was that he was uncomfortable, and all he could do about it was writhe.
I have been thinking lately, that one of the things about growing older and more experienced is to try to understand what exactly we are experiencing, where it is coming from, and how to respond.
A baby only knows what feels good and what doesn't. All it can do in response is enjoy something or begin crying. As the baby grows, it learns different kinds of feeling good and bad and why they feel that way. As it learns how different things affect it, it can begin to try responding and learn to take care of itself.
The example I have used is of physical discomfort, but I think this is true for other kinds of feelings as well. And just because I am no longer a small baby, doesn't mean that I don't discover feelings and effects that are as mysterious and confusing to me as a baby must feel when first being tickled. But I will learn, and become coordinated to understand what causes these things and how to respond.
1 comment:
Well said ...
When my daughter was 15 months old, we moved from Virginia to Michigan, sstopping in Ohio for w couple of weeks, staying with my family. My wife and I pretty well understood what was taking place, but for my daughter, it was turmoil in her young life. Our home had been all she had ever known, she had had to leave her friends Andy and Nicole behind. It disrupted her "potty" training. She did, however, seem to acclimate to the folks we were staying with in Ohio, but it all fell apart one day when mom and grandma left the house leaving she, dad and grandpa behind. I could just about count on one hand the number of times she could remember being anywhere without her mother. Now, one of us left behind was a "stranger". She burst out in uncontrolable crying ... I ran out of creative options ... or lost capacity to imagine anything else to do. This was when I stopped, stood back a pace, looked at her, and saw her problem. I stepped up, out a finger in the center of her chest and ask, "It hurts right here, doesn't it." She instantly stopped crying and hesitantly nodded her head in agreement. I hugged her and explained that I would be staying with her and that mom would be back that afternoon (all the things we had taken time to explaine before mom had left, but had neglected to sense her feelings in the thing). Her face changed, and we three went on playing in the floor.
I should step back and observe others more often and with greater sincerity...
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