How does the love between you and your baby?
The preschoolers and school age: a more complex love
The attachment between parent and child is certainly one of the strongest feelings that can be felt. Other links, love or friendship can end up breaking, but that between you and your child is for life.
The love you feel for your child is not an intellectual or cultural - is a fundamental part of your being. Whether you are a mother or father, adoptive parent or stepparent, you are somehow "programmed" to create bonds of attachment with your child, who is willing to attach themselves to you in return.
Over the years, scientists and child development experts have discovered some fascinating details about the connection between parents and their children. Their findings help explain why babies are so captivating and deeply why we love our children, they just arrived in the world or they leave home. It is true that the link changes over time but its importance remains intact.
Pregnancy: the great love before the meeting
Do not be surprised if you are completely crazy about your baby even if you have not yet met. Expectant parents are often faced with a mix of emotions and anticipation before the birth - and these feelings may set the stage to the relationship you develop with your child.
If you are pregnant, maternal hormones, very powerful, also set for you this very special connection to your child. It intensifies throughout pregnancy.
When you approach your due date, your brain releases of oxytocin. This hormone helps your maternal maternal instinct to flourish. Also known as the "love hormone", oxytocin has become a subject of scientific interest in recent years. Studies on animals show that oxytocin plays a role in the interactions between individuals: it is in the education of young people to long-term relationships. For example, we know that animals do not produce oxytocin are unaware of their scope and change partners in all seasons. Species that produce this hormone tend to create lasting bonds with their young. When your body begins to produce oxytocin, it's almost as if the love was circulating in your veins.
Your baby is also developing a special bond with you, even before his birth. Studies show that its heart beats a little faster at the sound of your voice. In fact, your voice is something fundamental for him over the years to come, it will have the power to excite or to soothe him.
If you are a father, the second parent in a gay couple or an adoptive parent, you will not live this sudden dose of hormones or physical proximity to your child in the making. But do not worry: the bond with your child will not suffer.
Babies and older children have the ability to create bonds of attachment with all the people who are caring and responsive to its physical and emotional needs. The attachment theory is defined as the relationship between a person giving a sense of security and support to another person, regardless of their ages. This is a psychological principle that governs all human relationships. People never lose that skill or ability to make connections, it is never too late to bind to a child.
You and Your Baby: a thunderbolt
Gradually, as in labor progresses, the flow of oxytocin in your brain turns into a torrent. This hormone is responsible, among other things, contraction and the rise of breast milk that helps. In fact, oxytocin is so efficient that it uses a hormone similar (but synthetic) when you have to induce labor.
As a new mom, you will literally inundated with oxytocin when you hold your child at last. This hormone can even make you forget your state of extreme fatigue and pain of contractions at home, rather it generates a feeling of euphoria and intense love.
Mother Nature also affects new fathers: they are receiving high doses of oxytocin when they see their child for the first time. They are often invaded by unexpected emotions in the delivery room - which gives rise to scenes very touching, let's face it.
New fathers experience other significant biological changes. A Canadian study in 2001 showed that the testosterone levels of men tends to plummet in the months following the birth of their offspring. Even more intriguing, some fathers produce a little more estrogen, a hormone feminine: some experts believe that this hormone causes the brain to be more sensitive to oxytocin, making new dads more affectionate and attentive.
Oxytocin is not the only chemical change to occur.
Dopamine, the main component of the pleasure chemical in the brain, also plays an important role in the creation of attachment. While you're rocking, cuddling or feeding your child, you receive an overdose of this substance exhilarating - and not only you but also your baby.
While you are "love junkie" by dopamine, your baby begins to emotionally attach to you. In 2004, Italian researchers have made this observation by studying baby mice. The baby mice that could not feel the effects of dopamine were little or not affected by the absence of their mother. This is one of the most fundamental discoveries in regard to the role of dopamine on the mother-child bonds.
Adoptive parents are also invaded by beneficent oxytocin and dopamine when they are with their children. And they, like all children who have healthy relationships with those who care for them, receive massive doses of dopamine when they spend time with their parents.
Did you know that dopamine is also the source of the feeling of well-being caused by some exciting hard drugs like heroin or cocaine? Indeed, it is exactly this feeling that the drug research: that which in reality arises naturally between parent and child ...
And if I do not fall in love with my baby on the field?
Approximately 30% of mothers do not feel an absolute love for their newborn immediately after birth. This may be due to a difficult birth or, in a newborn who does not meet the expectations that we had done. Disappointment, stress and burnout are sufficient to block the effects of the hormone of love ... temporarily. The vast majority of parents will work to their children in the first months of existence.
If you can not take your baby in your arms immediately after birth, do not worry. There is not a "window of opportunity" for that attachment takes place. Adoptive parents, parents of premature babies, mothers who have experienced complications and those who can spend time with their newborns immediately after birth will have enough time in the future, falling in love.
However, premature infants who must spend days or weeks in an incubator have every incentive to see their parents regularly. Insist on taking your baby and paste, as soon as possible after birth, and as often as possible thereafter. This contact is good for you - and your premature baby. Recent studies have shown that skin to skin contact, also called the kangaroo, is the best cure for premature babies.
Contact with the father is just as important (and equally comforting) than with the mother. The attention paid by the father to his child has important and lasting effects on the child. If you had a cesarean section and you can take your baby after acouchement, leave as much room as possible to your partner. A study conducted in 2007 showed that skin to skin contact between father and baby reduces crying and encourages the child to sleep well for his first nap.
Love grows with time - that's right for you and your baby. If you spend time together during his first hour of awakening, it is quite possible that your baby looks at you straight in the eye: he will try to watch you to save your face or at least, to get an idea of your features . Later, his first smiles were the order (unconscious) to seduce you and strengthen the attachment relationship. A 2008 study showed that when a mother looks at a picture of her smiling child, some areas of his brain associated with happiness and pleasure, are activated.
Only about seven or eight months that your child will develop strong emotional ties to you and to other significant people in his life.
Your child will have an affection for all those who take it when he cries or that feed when hungry. He will miss you when you leave the field of view. And it will be very happy when you come into the room. This love he feels at that moment is the strongest feeling that he is able to experiment.
Remember that it is impossible to spoil a child by giving him too much love, attention or affection. When you comfort your baby, you build a relationship of trust and love - this relationship will grow and harden over time and will last a lifetime.
Toddlers: seizures, signs of affection?
Your baby has grown and it is not quite a baby. The attachment bond between you is even stronger. He loves you even if he attacks, he's crying and rolling on the ground. In fact, these behaviors are a proof of love (yes!).
The crises of your child, also called "tantrums" are like the quarrels between two lovers: they are only possible because you love. In other words, your child could be as much disappointed or angry if he did not love you deeply.
Your young child may experience a rich range of emotions (besides, if you spend 15 minutes with him at the supermarket, you will surely entitled to some of them ...). But he can vriament understand the concept of love. Toddlers often leave words as they see fit. They tell you they love you, yes, but they also love their books, their toys, their third favorite kind of cereal ...
Still, do not worry about your place in the universe of your child. He is quite aware of your importance. When he needs it or the console that looks after him, not to a book or toy that will turn. It asks for help only to persons to whom they trust.
The preschoolers and school age: a more complex love
Your child gets older, to begin a little to hide some of his emotions. First, because of pressure from his countrymen, and then, because he realizes how much it can be exhausting.
That said, some children are still very affectionate and demonstrative. If instead, your child does not make you Snuggle soon as he is lucky, the signs of his love will still be very present. Some children say absolutely anything to their parents while others are more discreet. But as long as you are listening to, love will flow freely between you two.
Love demanding and fusion of the first year develops, grows rich and becomes more complex. Now your child can feel empathy for you and others, to begin to love yourself for who you are, not just because you take care of him.
The preschool children will love to go to sleep at their grandparents for a night, but soon they will want to come home. It was also during this period of development that your child looking more and more independence. That means it needs more than ever, your support and your love. The more your child feels safe, he will be more independent.
Your child is making efforts to break away, somehow, to you: he will gain independence, but he never breaks the bond of attachment between you. You have a unique connection that goes back to pregnancy, and this relationship has been nurtured by love, the memories ... and yes, hormones.
When you tighten your five year old child in your arms or you watch the play in the schoolyard, you still have a small surge of oxytocin, a sort of legacy of these early hours spent together. And when a father, a stepparent or adoptive parent embraces a little scraped knee or learning support lessons, they crystallize the attachment relationship for all years to come.