A Mother's Simple Advice - Aim To Keep Children Feeling Safe and Secure

March 3, 2014

My mother often talked about making babies and children feel secure - physically and emotionally.

She often talked about how to hold babies in a way that made them feel safe and secure. For example, she'd talk about "not slinging them over your arm" and, instead, holding them in a way that wouldn't make them sense they could be dropped.

She would often talk about about always remembering that babies and children are "separate little human beings with thoughts and feelings". It bothered her when she'd see parents seemed to forget that, in even in a small way. For example, if she saw a parent insisting a baby drink all the milk in his bottle, clean a plate, or eat some food he didn't like (when the baby/child clearly didn't want the milk or food), my mother would say, "The way I think of it, 'How would they (the parents) like it if someone made them eat when they didn't want to eat?'".

She would talk about how parents often want children to do things they, themselves, wouldn't want to do. She found it objectionable when she'd see parents do something like force a child to swim when the child was terrified of water. Again, she'd ask, "How would they like it if they were terrified, and someone came along and made them do something anyway?"

The ideas she emphasized were always about the fact that a child trusts his parents to make him feel safe, secure, and respected. She would often say, children have only their parents to count on. If parents don't make them feel secure they have nobody." She would talk about parents worry too much about "spoiling children" and would say, "If you make them feel safe and secure they aren't needy, demanding, and spoiled."

My siblings and I grew up with the luxury of being very secure individuals. As children, we were pretty well behaved. That's not saying we didn't do things we shouldn't do, but, on the whole. we were well mannered, respectful, and well behaved.

Because I had seen how my mother's emphasis on making babies and children feel very secure had apparently been very effective, I adopted a similar philosophy with my own children (now grown) - and, sure enough, it does seem to be pretty effective.

Image: ME Whelan (Since my children are now grown I wouldn't feel right posting their pictures online, and if they weren't grown I'd have other reasons for not posting their pictures online. I didn't think they'd mind, though, if I posted my rendition of them when they weren't grown up.