Why your child wants your attention, needs your attention, and was programmed to fall in love with you.
Kids are as social as sea lions on a rock on a beautiful sunny day in Monterey, California. If you pay attention to them—clapping for them, appreciating their antics—they’ll perform all kinds of tricks and slap their fins happily.
But wait. Turn your back, ignore them, or get busy with something else, and you’re the one in trouble. First they’ll call more loudly for attention. Then they’ll splash you in a mini power play. If those milder ways don’t work, they might try a bit of sea lion revenge. I’ve seen a sea lion snitch a sun hat from a woman who was sitting on a nearby rock. Another sneaked up on a man who was sleeping and nudged him so hard he slid off the ledge into the ocean.
Kids, like sea lions, perform to get attention. And the attention they want most of all? Yours. Even if it seems like their body language is saying, “Get out of my space,” they want you in it. Even when they rail against any “rules” you set, those boundaries create a safety net for them.
Outwardly they might be rolling their eyes or saying, “C’mon, really?” But inwardly they’re sighing with relief. Yeah, things are tough right now. But I’m okay. Mom and Dad care about me, so everything’s going to turn out all right.
That’s why how you respond to any of your child’s misbehaviors is key.
Imprinting on You
Did you know that your child, from the very beginning, was programmed to fall in love with you?
When an infant first opens her eyes, what she sees leaves a lasting impression. This process is known as imprinting. The idea of imprinting goes all the way back to 1873 and an English biologist, Douglas Spalding, who noted that baby chicks followed the first moving object they saw. He called this the stamping in of an impression.
This stamping-in process was later called imprinting by a German biologist, Oskar Heinroth, but it was his student, the Austrian ornithologist Konrad Lorenz, who popularized the idea by studying mother-baby bonding with geese. Lorenz removed the mother, artificially incubated the eggs, and ensured that he was the first moving object the babies saw when they hatched. The result? Those babies followed him around as if he was their mother. It didn’t matter that he didn’t even vaguely resemble a goose.
Lorenz’s groundbreaking experiment revealed how critical the presence of a mother figure is for baby geese. Simply stated, recognizing “Mama” gives youngsters “a survival advantage in understanding who they can trust and where food can be obtained from.”2
Without Mama, baby geese couldn’t survive in the wild.
If It Quacks Like a Duck, It Might Not Be One
Way back when I was first studying psychology at the University of Arizona, one of my professors shared another interesting study Lorenz and his team had done with a group of ducks. Their pressing question: What if, right after baby ducks are born on the pond, the mommy duck not only is removed from the babies but is replaced by a basketball, complete with mother duck sounds and movement remotely controlled by the experimenters?
So, right after a group of baby ducks was born on the pond, the experimenters whisked Mama Duck away and replaced her with a remote-controlled basketball. What happened to those baby ducks? They bonded to the basketball. Anywhere that basketball floated, the baby ducks followed in a line.
What happened when the original Mama Duck was reinserted in that pond? The babies not only didn’t follow her; they ignored her. They were too focused on that basketball because it had become “Mama.”
In the critical period, the first 17 to 24 hours after a baby duck is born, that baby will bond with, and then follow, whatever moves. Hopefully, for the baby ducks, there will be a mother they can follow.
Why am I telling you about scientific experiments with birds? Because I’m convinced human beings, too, have that critical period. Just like recognizing “Mama” gives the geese youngsters a survival advantage, recognizing Mama teaches a baby about trust and love, gives security in a food source, and offers a warm introduction to the world.
Watch a mom with a young baby sometime. That infant actually does a dance in perfect sync with Mommy, listening to her voice, watching her movement, and responding accordingly. Everything Mama does—the softness with which she speaks, the way she laughs, the songs she sings at nighttime, even the sway of her body as she does that gentle movement only moms can do to lull the baby to sleep—creates an atmosphere of love and stability.
That child absorbs her mother’s undivided attention like a sponge does water. And because she is so focused and bonded to Mommy, she will learn very quickly. She’ll copy what Mom says and how she says it. She’ll cock her head like Mom does and even put her hand on her hip. She’ll mimic baking a pie with her playdough, using the same steps Mom takes to bake one. That’s why, for example, if you want your child to flawlessly learn a second language, the optimal time to introduce it is from eighteen months to three years old. Even better if you speak it yourself and your child can watch and listen to you.
Simply stated, your children are your greatest fans. What you role-model imprints permanently on them.
As Anne Ortlund once said, “Children are wet cement,”3 moldable and impressionable. But as they grow older, that cement hardens, and it’s more difficult to make impressions. That’s why the best time to catch them is . . . as soon as you can.
But they can’t watch you if you’re not there, can they?
The Number One Thing You Can Do for Your Kids
Think back a few years, or many, depending on the ages of your kids. Do you remember the first time you looked into the eyes of your child? At that moment of imprinting?
I certainly do for each of my five children. With Holly, my 19.5-inch firstborn, I thought, Wow, she’s about the same size as the walleye pike I caught awhile back.
A sense of responsibility, protectiveness, and, I admit, a bit of terror settled in. I didn’t want my baby girl to be cold, so I cranked the heat up. By the time I brought Sande and baby Holly home from the hospital, the house was like an incubator at 104 degrees. My profusely sweating wife patiently said, “Honey, I gave birth to a child . . . not an African daisy.”
I was a psychologist, but Sande and I still didn’t have a clue what we were doing as first-time parents. We simply learned as we went along. Only one thing was certain in our minds: We were happy when our baby took a nap so we could clean ground zero and get ready for the next four hours. We were extra lucky if we could take a nap too.
As we parented Holly and then added four more—Krissy, Kevin II, Hannah, and Lauren—we did some things well, and our average increased as we added kids. But we also made mistakes. By the time Holly was an adolescent, I’d evidently made enough mistakes that she once declared vehemently at the dinner table, “You know what, Dad? You ought to read one of your own books!”
Ouch. Yet today, both of us are doing well, and our relationship has only grown closer over the years as we’ve weathered the changes together.
After surviving and thriving through parenting five children who are as different as day and night, I’m convinced that one of the most important things we did well was to pay attention to our kids.
Our decision to be present with our kids, from their earliest age forward, has everything to do with our healthy, ongoing relationships now that they are adults. Yes, it took some sacrifices, like having only one car for a number of years and creatively penny-pinching on housing, clothing, and meals, but the dividends are well worth it. No matter where our kids roam, they want to return home. They actually like their siblings and show up at each other’s birthdays in other states. They text us and each other often. They make Leman family events a life priority even when they have extended families and expansive friend networks.
How do you get such kids who care about each other? It starts with your presence from the beginning, when that first munchkin shows up in your home. For some of you, that’s the day you gave birth to your 20-incher. For others of you, it’s the day you gained a stepdaughter or stepson. For still others, it’s the day you adopted your six-month-old, five-year-old, or nine-year-old.
When our daughter Hannah adopted twin girls as babies, we learned even more about the importance of presence. Hannah was gifted with being present when those babies were born. Not all adoptive parents are that fortunate. But I know many other adoptive parents who, though they couldn’t be there in their child’s early days, have gone out of their way to imprint on that child their love and care, and most of all, their time.
The concept of imprinting and the importance of a parental presence are why I encourage couples, whenever possible, to have one parent stay home with the kids. Or they can switch off staying at home—whether that means rearranging or reinventing work, cutting out expenses that aren’t necessary for a higher priority, or asking other loved ones for additional assistance at home.
Just as it took two to tango to create that child or adopt that child, both partners need to be all in on the parenting journey. Those three weeks to four months of maternity leave automatically granted by a company you work for isn’t enough time if you want to develop a close relationship with your child that will span your lifetime. Nobody can raise that kid like you, nor will anyone else be as invested in your child’s long-term welfare.
If you’re a single parent, staying home with your child may seem like a daunting, impossible task. But let me ask you: Aren’t the possibilities worth investigating when your child’s welfare is at stake? Could you work part-time? Do online work from home? Reinvent the type of work you do? Streamline expenses? Ask for help from trusted others? Swap a day of at-home care with another single mom? If two of you go to the same music class, could you switch off taking the children while one of you works?
If you don’t try something, how do you know it wouldn’t work? The options are as endless as your brainstorms. If you want some additional ideas, check out my book Single Parenting That Works.
How you accomplish that goal of spending as much time as possible in the home while your kids are growing up can be as unique as your situation. Flexibility is important. Some families streamline or downsize so Mom or Dad can step out of the workforce for a few years. Other moms move to part-time, with Grandma, a sister, or hubby being on point with baby the days or hours she’s away from the home or needs to sleep. Some dads and moms start home businesses and work all kinds of crazy hours while their kids are sleeping. Their partners who may never have cooked or cleaned a day in their lives now come home from work and serve as cooks and housecleaners. I know one guy who, a few years ago, couldn’t even find the milk in the grocery store. Today he’s a master online coupon shopper.
Never underestimate the value of your presence in the home. It imprints your love, care, and values onto your child. Even when he’s a teenager whose behavior seems to say, “I don’t want you in my life,” trust me, he does. In fact, you’re the person who keeps his tilted teen world from spinning off its axis into Neverland.
You only have a small window to make your mark, for the positive or the negative, on your child. Believe me, those 18 years when your child is in your home (or partly in your home, if you share custody with an ex) will fly by fast. When you’re old like me, you won’t say, “Oh, I wish I would have spent more time at work or on vacation.” You’ll say, “I wish I’d spent more time with my kids as they were growing up.”
Every child comes out of the womb craving attention. The question is, is he or she going to get it—from you? Even more, if you don’t give your child attention, then who will? Nobody will care about your child the way you do. And no one can imprint on him or her the way you can. It takes time and your presence.
Don’t abdicate your parental role to anyone—whether a counselor, a coach, a babysitter, a school principal, or a dance teacher. They might be the best in their field, but they’re not you.
Only you will do.