What is the best gift I can give to my child?

It is well established that newborns and infants need a great deal of loving-kindness and affection to grow in an optimal way. Bulgarian and Chinese orphanages, where infants are rarely touched by their caretakers, let alone given affection and love, offer well-known and tragic evidence that the brains of neglected infants do not develop normally. I have witnessed extraordinary changes in infants from Nepalese orphanages, who at first seemed like inert, “absent” little beings and blossomed into wonderfully lively children within months of having been adopted by loving parents who constantly related to them with affection, touched them, and spoke to them.

Whether or not we benefit from affection and love at an early age thus greatly influences our ability to give and receive love later in life, and simultaneously our degree of inner peace. If we consider the categories first described by Mary Ainsworth and applied by Phil Shaver and his colleagues to adolescents and adults,- a “secure” person will not only enjoy a high degree of well-being but will be naturally open to and trusting of others. She is open to emotions and memories, exhibits high “coherence of mind,” and is nonhostile during disagreements with others and able to compromise. She generally copes well with stress. An “anxious and insecure” person will lack self-confidence and doubt the possibility of encountering genuine benevolence and affection, while yearning deeply for it. Such a person will be less trusting, more possessive and jealous, and will fall prey to nagging suspicions, often on a purely imaginary basis. She is excessively ruminative and vulnerable to depression, and tends to become overly emotional when stressed. An “insecurely avoidant” person will rather keep others at bay than risk further suffering. Such a person will avoid becoming too intimate with others, either in a fearful way or by silencing all emotions in his mind and retreating within the cocoon of self-absorption. He has high self-esteem, but his self-esteem is defensive and brittle; he isn’t very open to emotions and memories, and is often bored, distracted, “compulsively self-reliant,” and not very caring.

According to Shaver and his colleagues, the emotional style of parents, principally the mother, influences considerably that of the child. If the mother has an “avoidant” style, there is a 70 percent chance that the child will “learn” the same style while interacting with his mother. The same is true for the secure and anxious styles. The best gift one can thus give to a child is to manifest loving, open, and peaceful qualities oneself and to let the emotional alchemy work its way.

Are such emotional styles acquired during the first years of life engraved in the stone of unchanging traits? Fortunately, not. Phil Shaver and his colleagues have also shown that insecure anxious and avoidant persons can change considerably toward a more secure emotional style precisely by being exposed to affection and other positive emotions.

How can we help deeply wounded persons? By giving them enough love so that some peace and trust can grow in their hearts. How can they help themselves? By engaging in a meaningful dialogue with a human and warmhearted psychologist using methods that have proven to be efficient, such as cognitive therapy, and by cultivating loving-kindness, compassion, and mindfulness.

Read more here