Once there was a little boy who grew up with two Australian parents who loved him very much. They gave him his own bedroom and filled it with toys. At first it was rubber dinosaurs and action figures, and then it was a train set, and as the boy got older, the gifts got more expensive: he even got a flat-screen TV so he could play his new Playstation in his room.
He had everything he could possibly want in other words, and for a while there, it worked brilliantly. His parents would pick him up from child care, and he would come barrelling down the hallway, saying: ‘Mummy’s here!’ and ‘Pick me up, Daddy!’
Life was bliss.
But then the boy got older and he grew more sullen. He took to throwing tantrums, and slamming his bedroom door, and his parents began to say things like: ‘Go to your room!’ and ‘You’re grounded!’ Before anyone knew it, the teenage years were looming, with a defiant child on one side, and dismayed parents on the other. What on earth had gone wrong?
“It’s a very common scenario,” says Dr Karyn Purvis, a world-renowned expert on child development who visited Australia last month as a guest of the actor, Deborah Lee Furness.
“All around the world, we are struggling to meet the needs of our children. Not their physical needs – there is no question that most of us in the West can meet the physical needs of our children – but what about their emotional needs? Are we really all that well connected to our children? I don’t think we are.”
Dr Purvis, who is director of the Institute for Child Development at the Texas Christian University, is herself a mother of three sons, plus she’s a grandmother, and a foster parent (she can’t say for certain how many disadvantaged children she’s taken into her home over the years because, she says, “they were never numbers to me. They were little people.”)
For more than a decade, since returning to college to get her Phd at the age of 53, Dr Purvis has also worked with what she calls “children from hard places” – meaning, kids who have been abused, neglected, or adopted out of orphanages, or whose mothers abandoned them, or were imprisoned.
She is recognised around the world for research into how to reach these troubled kids, but much of what she’s learned along the way, particularly about how the brain develops, can be applied to ordinary kids in affluent homes.
“When you think about it, an infant is designed in the most perfect way imaginable: they are just the right size to fit into the crook of your arm,” Dr Purvis says.
“They smell sweet and they look vulnerable – you want to take care of them.
“They cry out, and somebody comes and soothes them. But a child from a hard place doesn’t get held. Their cries go unanswered. And what we have learnt over the years is that this causes actual changes in the brain.
“Children from hard places are wired differently: withholding love, or failing to nurture has an actual, neurological impact, and it can take years to repair the damage.
“But it is the same with any child. I always say: any misbehaviour is a sign of an unmet need. So if your child is misbehaving, maybe it’s because we’re not connecting with them, and truly understanding their needs.”
Dr Purvis says that the lessons she’s learned, trying to heal damaged children, can be applied to ordinary children in affluent homes. For example, Dr Purvis says: instead of ordering a time-out, how about some time-in?
“We say to our children, ‘go to your room’ which is the same as saying, ‘go away from me, and come back when you can behave in a way that doesn’t offend me,” she says.
“What if we said, let’s have some time-in? Cuddle up to me, and tell me what’s wrong? Why are you yelling? What can I do to make you feel better? Let’s use our words to find out what is wrong.”
Countless scientific studies have shown how infant massage stimulates not just the body, but the brain: 30 minutes of baby massage has been shown to improve sleep patterns and ease crying. It’s the same with older children. Don’t be afraid to give them a hug.
It’s tougher, and it takes longer, but Dr Purvis says a child who is banished, or sent to their room instead of being bought close may well end up feeling more isolated.
Good, healthy food is also crucial: a child that has been eating junk food, high in sugar, salt and fat, will be bouncing off the walls as their blood sugar rises, and they’ll be ratty as it collapses.
“Small meals, six or eight times a day, of good, nourishing food is key to ironing out the peaks and troughs in a child’s moods,” Dr Purvis says.
“That’s true for young children, and it’s true for teenagers.”
Controversially – and working parents won’t like it – but Dr Purvis gently suggests putting ambition – and the desire for more material goods (bigger house, newer car) – on the back burner while the kids go through their various stages.
“If you’re looking at putting very young children in child care, could you delay going back to work?” she says.
“Ask yourself, can I work part-time? Because even a very good nanny is not a solution, not if you change nannies every three or six months.
“The human brain is still forming when a child is little, and nobody is going to meet your child’s cries as you would.
“But it’s true when children are older, too. I see parents coming to pick up their children from school. The first thing they do is take out their phone and walk off, with the children following behind, like ducklings.
“What about taking their hand, and saying how was your day? And really listening to the answer? And when your children are older, how about working part-time, or not talking calls after 5pm, and what about getting up half-an-hour earlier, and making a cup of tea, and sitting in the kitchen, just being there while the teenagers have their breakfast, allowing them to feel your presence?”
The Connected Child by Dr Karyn Purvis was written with the parents of adopted children in mind, but it’s relevant to everyone, and you can buy it here.
This article originally appeared in The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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