The Affects of Attention

So many researches have discovered that children need attention from some caregiver to have a healthy, happy life. Children develop much better in environments that are full of attention to the child so that they know they are loved. To understand clearly how attention affects a child’s growth, there has to be a deeper look at a mother and father’s role in an infant and a child’s life and the affects on that child when a parent is supportive and loving opposed to when a parent is unaffectionate and depressed. Also there must be a look into how a child responds to the attention or indifference of the caregiver.

A mother and father both have huge roles in a child’s life, and can drastically affect the way a child develops. In the latest studies it is said that, “A contented and wakeful infant receiving the attentions of an affectionate parent finds displays of emotion that can only function in engaging the other’s interest and in stimulating future interpersonal communication (Nadel & Muir, 2005, p.62).” This shows how important it can be to a child to have parents or guardians who pay attention to them constantly and give them all the support they need in all situations. Children are not only affected by their parents’ affections, but also by their parents’ emotions in the womb. “A mother’s compassionate, unthinking engagement with her infant affects the physiology of the baby, and becomes a vital factor assisting the auto-regulation of the rapidly developing infant brain (Nadel & Muir, 2005, p.69).” This quote refers to how much a mother’s feelings about having her child affects the way an infant is developed in the womb and not just when they are born. There is also another way that infants and mothers are linked. “The dyadic processes that link an infant to their mother determine the mutuality, synchrony, ad harmony of social interactions and play a significant role in fostering infants’ felt security and their sense of togetherness with or separateness from their mother (Kaitz & Hilla, 2005, p.572).” Therefore an infant may not understand what security is, but an infant can truly feel it through their parents’ reactions to their existence. “The mother alleviates the child’s hunger, cold, and pain, and while she is performing these caretaking acts, the infant is studying her face and form, babbling and , occasionally smiling (Mussen, Conger, Kagan, 1974, p.204).” A mother no matter how it is looked at truly affects the way the baby develops even if the mother does not want to be that influential. The ability of an infant to understand how attentive their parents are being towards them is essential to their development into healthy adults. “The evidence is clear that mothers are more effective parents when fathers are both supportive partners and nurturing parents; children are major beneficiaries when they are raised by warm, loving mothers and fathers (Thompson, 2002, Increasing