Six Stages to a Strong Self-Image
In the early years, your child gets her first lessons in feeling secure, establishing loving relationships, and feeling good about herself. This early emotional development is basic to all learning.
As she learns new skills and concepts, your child also learns about herself and her feelings.
In the first days of life, your child starts to make patterns out of the flood of sounds, sights, smells, and tactile feelings he is born with. His earliest sense of security is built upon his loving relationship with you. As a toddler, the relationship becomes delightfully give-and-take, and he experiences the bliss of feeling close. As time goes on, his sense of self becomes molded by his interactions with loving adults, and he increases his capacity to feel many different kinds of emotions. Emotional development, which is basic to all learning, takes place in six developmental stages.
Infancy: Regulating the Mind
Infancy: Establishing Relationships
6-12 Months Old: Buds of Intentionality
Toddlerhood: Purpose and Action
2-3 Years Old: Images, Ideas, and Symbols
3-4 Years Old: Emotional Thinking
1. Regulating the Mind
From the hodgepodge of sensory data that a baby experiences, patterns begin to emerge. Sounds become rhythms; sights become recognizable images; and the ability to control movements makes it possible to cuddle, follow an object, or stand up in Mom's lap.
Every individual has a personal version of the world, and that version is the one that counts. Most people assume — and for many years clinicians and scientists believed — that the experiences of hearing, seeing, touching, and moving are pretty much the same for everyone. But now we know that each child's sensory universe and ability to plan actions in response to that universe are uniquely her own.
If loud noises or bright lights or soft touches irritate a child, it makes no difference if others find them pleasurable. If an infant cannot organize what she sees well enough to make out her mother's smile, it makes no difference that another child can. When children develop the ability to organize and regulate their sensations, they then use that ability to gain experiences on which they will build individual identities.
Basic security is grounded in a child's ability to decipher sensations and to plan actions. As sensations are exchanged between you and your child, you both experience pleasure and joy. Loving adults offer not only pleasure and excitement but also relief from distress and a safe haven from which infants can make bold declarations of anger and rage.
2. Establishing Relationships
From the rapturous attention you give him, which baby lovingly returns, emerge radiant grins; a chorus of purrs, coos, and giggles; smiles and whoops of delight. Out of this first immersion in delirious relating sprouts a sense of shared humanity that can later blossom into the capacity to feel empathy and love. As your baby begins showing his preference for the people who regularly care for him, his sense of self seems more focused on the human world.
An infant is now becoming more distinct and discriminating — taking delight in Mommy's attention and knowing when the source of that delight is missing. If Mommy becomes preoccupied or distracted, sadness or dismay may settle on his little face. Even fear can now show up in a baby who has been traumatized or seriously frightened.
Without some degree of ecstatic wooing by at least one adult, a child may never know the powerful intoxication of human closeness, never abandon himself to the magnetic pull of human relationships, never see other people as full human beings. Such a child is at risk of becoming a self-centered, aggressive individual who can inflict injury without qualm or remorse.
3. Buds of Intentionality
In the second half of their first year, babies begin using gestures and expressions to participate in a preverbal dialogue. Relationships become truly interactive: Baby looks at a toy, Dad reaches for it, and baby gurgles with delight.
A child is beginning to define the boundary that separates "me" and "you." Children are now able to show emotion, perceive and respond to it, and turn experiences into exchanges. Even seemingly trivial gestures serve to anchor human relationships and delineate the borders of who we are for the rest of our lives.
Your child has become a willful self with a budding sense of intentionality. But these first tiny shoots will begin to grow if — and only if — children live in an environment that responds to their overtures and encourages them to make use of their new power.
4. Purpose and Action
Surveying unknown emotional terrains is the pressing task of the early toddler stage.
A child's picture of himself becomes more defined. Long before an infant can speak, his personality is already being molded by countless interactions between himself and adults. Let's say your toddler glances questioningly at you. You ask, "What?" Babbling with excitement, he takes your hand and pulls you toward the refrigerator. As he points and you question, he gurgles in delight, finally helping you open a cup of the very flavor of yogurt he wanted all along. Through interactions like these, his self-image is coalescing.
Life's most essential emotional themes are identified and patterns of dealing with them are formed. The toddler now becomes able to distinguish facial expressions and body postures and discriminate among basic emotions. She begins to use this new ability in increasingly complicated situations. Rather than simply registering the actions of those around her, she begins to size up situations on the basis of subtle behavioral cues. Were the two people who fell silent when she entered the room hugging or arguing? Does her mother fear the man who has just come up to her? This very young child now can begin to judge.
By around 15 months, young children become aware that a relationship of trust and security can coexist with anger. A few months from now, the child who is angry at a loved one is able to merge two quite different "me"s — an angry one and a loving one — into a single self. At the same time, he is also forging emotional bonds across space and eventually across time. Earlier, he only felt Mom's warmth when lying in her arms or Dad's playfulness when sitting in his lap. Now, he can look up from his blocks, glance at Mom across the room, see her smile, and feel the security of having her near.
By the middle of the second year, your child may begin to resolve the dilemma of separation vs. individualization. The 2-year-old explores in the playroom while Mom works in the kitchen. Her occasional smile feels like a nice cuddle, and hearing her voice conveys a sense of security. Later, the child will be able to carry a mental image of Mom just as she was a few minutes ago. Being able to communicate with those he loves even when he can't touch them gives the toddler a powerful sense of emotional security.
Your child's sense of self also grows through imitation of the motions, gestures, expressions, and tones of voices of the people he loves.
5. Images, Ideas, and Symbols
At the age of 2 or 3, a child begins to deal not only with behavior but also with ideas. She begins to grasp that one thing can stand for another and that an image of something can represent the thing itself. This realization allows her to create an inner picture of her world.
The ability to abstract a feeling and name it — to know that a tightness in the chest is fear, a desire to throw a punch is anger, and a lift of the heart is joy — allows a child to bring emotions to a new level of awareness. She can now express emotions symbolically rather than simply act on them. She can tell Dad she feels scared rather than shrieking in fear. She can tell Mom she wants a cookie rather than dragging her to the kitchen.
Caring adults must promote interaction, support an ever greater use of signals, and join in pretend play. Love for the important adults in their life and the pleasure they bring him lead children to enjoy communication in its own right.
You can foster this new ability by helping children reflect. For instance, a child might say, "I want to go outside." Rather than respond "yes" or "no," you can inquire, "What do you want to do outside?" This helps the child reflect on his wish. With time and shared pleasure in communicating, contemplating intentions and emotions (and clothing them in symbols) becomes one of children's chief joys. Pretend play, acting out (as opposed to merely imitating), and acquiring new words all result from excitement in these new powers.
At this stage, children accumulate words and ideas with growing ease. However, new words take on meaning and become part of children's vocabulary only when attached to emotion or intent. Children now form memories that not only involve images but also emotions, intentions, and desires. We can glimpse the evolution of this rich inner life through a child's pretend play. Such play develops into dramas: for example, an argument is followed by making up and going to sleep; after that, a whole new adventure begins. With increasing complexity, play comes to embrace more and more of life's basic themes: nurturance and dependency, assertiveness and aggression, curiosity and intrigue, empathy and loving, limits and boundaries, fears and anxieties. Ideally, all become part of the rich fabric of the child's internal life.
6. Emotional Thinking
Your child can now link up ideas with emotions: "I am sad because I can't see Grandma." Time becomes separated into past, present, and future. Space becomes orderly: here, there, somewhere else. Categories of fantasy and reality arise. A child now has the ability to understand how present acts relate to the future. He controls his impulses because he understands the consequences. He has a greater ability to concentrate, plan, and work toward goals.
When your child is 3 or 4 years old, he also begins to form bridges between his thoughts and other people's thoughts. He can see connections between many different feelings and ideas. "The doll is happy" becomes "the doll is happy because I love her"; "The teddy bear is waving bye-bye" becomes "the teddy bear is waving bye-bye because I'm leaving." Both in pretend play and real life, ever more elaborate plots and motivations arise.
Action and satisfaction now take place internally: "Mommy will be here later." Your child understands that people exist both in real life and within his consciousness. His inner and outer worlds increasingly connect and his sense of reality becomes stronger. He is motivated to put limits on his behavior, and his moods become more stable. But for this to happen, children must be nurtured through countless conversations, debates, negotiations, responses, and games. Children who lack dynamic interaction at this stage tend to devise rich and creative symbolic images but may not learn to test them against a stable inner sense of reality.
If all goes well, growing boys and girls create strong self-images. "I'm nice, pretty, sweet, and bright"; "I'm skinny, stubborn, and like to get my way." It is now possible for your child to create a self-image because her mind can synthesize piecemeal images she has of herself in the immediate past, present, and future as well as in different settings (with Mom, with friends, with grandparents, and so on). It is important to remember, however, that this integrated image is merely the surface representation of deep behavioral, emotional, and symbolic patterns that have been forming for some time — and will continue to evolve throughout life.
Stanley I. Greenspan, MD, is co-author, with T. Berry Brazleton, MD, of The Irreducible Needs of Children (Perseus Press, 2000). Dr. Greenspan is a clinical professor of psychiatry, behavioral science, and pediatrics at the George Washington University Medical School.
