08/06/2025
Danke @ Thomas Harms für deine klaren und gleichzeitig einfühlsamen Worte, für dein Einstehen für Demokratie, die wir eben bereits bei den Babys unterstützen oder auch abstöpseln können - was für eine Verantwortung und was für ein Auftrag - schaffen wir Räume, wo das möglich ist.
EARLY ROOTS OF DEMOCRACY
Crying is a newborn child's first expression of opinion. It protests against living conditions that do not suit it. It raises its voice to point out deficits, pain or loss of relationships.
It also cries to point out a lack of human support. Baby crying is an imperative. It calls on us - adults, parents and educators - to act. Be with me! Calm me down! Hold me! Warm me! Talk to me! Nurture me! Baby cries contain messages that need to be received and responded to. In order to pacify a baby's crying, a prompt response is needed in the social sphere. Only when the responsible people adequately receive the child's expressions of displeasure and respond appropriately will the child feel heard and noticed in its distress.
If this cognitive and emotional coordination is successful, the child experiences successful intersubjectivity. His voice is heard and taken seriously by his social environment. In all of this, the baby learns that it can make a difference with its efforts. In our Emotional First Aid - work we help young parents to hear, tolerate and respond sensitively to these “baby songs”. In this way, we create a basis for our children to be able to accept and respond to other people's voices later on.
Only those who have been reliably heard by their fellow human beings, who have had the experience of being able to deal with their feelings and feelings of others from the very beginning, will be able to respond.
Only those who have been reliably heard by their fellow human beings, who experience from the outset that their feelings and needs are taken seriously, develop trust in a supportive and protective world. If we take away babies' right to cry, it means that we take away their right to freedom of expression. Instead of experiencing a supportive closeness, the child has to drink, suck or swallow its feelings. Instead of entering into a lively dialog with its environment, it is forced to change itself and make itself fit in. The baby's protest gets stuck in its throat. The result is that we fall silent and become still.
In Emotional First Aid, babies and toddlers experience that their voice is given a weight that has meaning even when we disagree.
Thomas Harms
www.zeppbremen.de
Photo: jessica-hearn-gD-wfCMzTK4-unsplash.jpg
