Fruits of maturation have their season too.

Small children have huge hearts. When they feel — they feel deeply. They jump from happiness like puppies when we return home, and they lie down on the floor and yell loudly when they don’t get a cookie. When they care — they care wholeheartedly. They are non-stop feeding, healing and throwing tea parties for their dolls and us. They feel it deep in their hearts when something bad happens to someone in reality or in a story. When they want to help — they help altruistically. Except for the times when they really want to play and not help, or when they forget they were helping when an opportunity to experiment and discover comes up suddenly.

Wonderful, cute, silly, adorable little beings that, with the strength of their emotions and uncontrollability of their deeds, are able to test their parents’ maturity, resilience, creativity, playfulness and other attributes needed not to fall into desperation while trying to raise these little storms.

Gordon Neufeld tells us this is all not a mistake. There is a plan made by Nature. These children need now to feel and express one emotion at a time. That’s how they learn to process their emotions. They need to forget about consideration for others when they play. This will enable them to discover their own wants and needs.

If we stop them to teach them a lesson, it is not helpful. We cannot teach someone to feel care when they don’t. We cannot teach someone to be considerate when they are not. We can’t teach a person to feel sorry for their deeds or to control themselves when they can’t.

All the traits we value are not a result of teaching. They are the results of maturation processes. An adult person whose maturation processes do their work is considerate, empathetic, responsible, temperate, caring, capable of independent thinking and acting etc.

But what about the kids that are definitely immature but they act maturely?

Small children can’t hold on to two things at the same time. They cannot hold on to themselves and to their surroundings. When they are moved to care about someone and it doesn’t clash with their own needs, then there is no problem. But when they need to choose between themselves and the other, that’s when they will need to pick one. They will either behave mature and share their toy or won’t make noise when a parent has a headache or a small sister sleeps. Or they will behave egocentrically and won’t be considerate.

That’s when we should start paying attention to what is happening. Since small children are self-centered by nature, but also they are creatures of attachment, they have two forces inside that can take control. Every time they choose themselves they learn something about their wants and needs and they grow. When they choose others it can be out of care or out of fear to lose the love, the appreciation, the sense of belonging and significance from that person.

When a child, out of fear to lose his attachments, consistently or often chooses others over himself, it looks like mature behavior and that’s what we often assume. But the maturity of the brain that is needed for this does not start to develop until 5, in sensitive children 7 years of age. And the development of the brain takes about 20 years on average to reach the ability to hold to oneself and to the other at the same time. So in small children we simply can’t assume that the mature behavior is a result of maturity. What happens instead is that the brain is suppressing the child’s instincts and emotions, including counterwill and frustration. The brain prioritizes survival over other developmental goals. Emotional development is not unavoidable, says Gordon Neufeld, it’s a luxury. Holding on to their attachment means survival for small children. So if the attachment is not perceived as secure, the brain sacrifices development.

The caring behavior in small children is absolutely fine when it does not clash with their own needs and when the context of care is correct. That is when the one they care for is smaller and weaker than them. It’s the manifestation of their soft heart and their natural caring instincts. But when children are caring for, or taking control over, people who are obviously older and stronger, and are doing so often or consistently, that can be a sign that the child can’t lean into their attachments, their brain doesn’t let them depend on other people and they are taking over the responsibility for other people and their relationships with those people. We are talking about this position in our course “Alpha children”. This position also doesn’t let the child develop as they are not able to find the rest they need in their relationship.

Both dynamics — prioritising others over ourselves out of fear of losing them and being in alpha position out of context or constantly — can stay with us for a long time. All the way into adulthood. And these are difficult dynamics that continue to interfere with our development and relationships.

So, same as each fruit and vegetable has its season, the fruits of maturation have a season too. Nature has certain ways and going with these ways is more effective than going against the flow.

More about preschooler personality you can learn in our course “Making sense of preschoolers”.

Autorka: Lina Vizelman 

Fotka: Anton Darius, Unsplash