TWO DEVELOPING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR NEW DAUGHTER

      As soon as a child has been born, parents have a special task to perform: you must say goodbye to your ‘dream child’ and greet, accept and take on your real one – with her qualities, her appearance, her gender and her behaviours.

      The first step

      Step one is to forget your pre-birth expectations. This is particularly hard if the child you are holding in your arms is quite different from the one you expected. Charming babies who seem calm and satisfied from the beginning and look lovable have an easy time of it, even if they don’t match their parents’ dream.

      A screamer, however, who comes into the world bald and bright red, and who gives the impression of not wanting to become friends with this world at all, presents all kinds of problems. All the fantasies and illusions you created after seeing wonderful baby photos in magazines come crashing down. Perhaps your child became a girl when she ‘should’ have been a boy, and perhaps she was born too early and is still in danger of being disabled – or is already. People can achieve and change a lot, but we certainly don’t control everything.

      Having said all that, it is also the case that many parents experience the opposite: they are overwhelmed by their own capacity to love. They had never expected that a little creature, their daughter, could inspire so much love. They are surprised by the primal, deep force that rolls over them like a huge wave whenever they look at their baby.

      True bonding – the prerequisite for healthy development

      This farewell to the dream child is the first task for brand-new parents. You can then discover what a treasure you have in your real child.

      Your little girl is the way she is. She will grow all the better the more you love her. In concrete terms, that means, for the first few months, being there for her all the time – she needs you to give her skin contact, to caress her lovingly and massage her, to nurse her, talk to her, carry her around and sleep near her. Love is an action word, and in the first months with a baby, love is in fact a very strenuous activity. However, it is exactly this loving – and tiring! – behaviour that is the basis for a secure bond between you and your baby. And having a secure bond with her parents in the first few years of her life is a requirement for every mental and emotional stage of development she will move through.

       The impact of the ‘attachment theory’

      John Bowlby investigated and observed war children and orphans in the 1950s and developed the so-called ‘attachment theory’ on the basis of this research. This theory states that children can only develop their skills optimally if they have a trusting, secure bond with at least one adult role model. Bowlby caused a worldwide sensation with his film about a 12-year-old girl who lived all alone in a hospital. We have him to thank for several things:

      Even premature babies grow with fewer problems if they feel skin contact and human touch. It is interesting – and wonderful – that newborns are equipped with numerous powers that enable them to make contact with others and then to form a bond. Most parents react intuitively to these signals, and in this way the bond of love is strengthened even more.

      If you accept your child as she is, and if you look after her responsibly and give her total security by nestling her little body next to yours, you will be giving your child the stable base she needs for her development.

      You cannot spoil a baby – it is innocent and defenceless and dependent on your care. If you give her everything she needs and wishes for, you are doing the absolute best thing for her. Our knowledge of the powers that babies have, right from birth, has grown dramatically over the last few years, but parents don’t need to study any of this; all you need to do is observe your baby and give her what she wants. Just as the little girl in front of you feels an inner urge to grow and to acquire skills and knowledge, you as parents also have inborn skills to look after your child. Follow your instinct and intuition, and you will do the job properly.

      The ‘positive mother/father complex’

      Psychologist Verena Kast calls this first, pleasant, close bond with the mother the ‘positive mother complex’. There is also a corresponding ‘positive father complex’. According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a ‘complex’ arises from a meaningful interaction between two people. You probably know about the ‘inferiority complex’ that can develop when a person is systematically devalued by their environment. No person is worth ‘less’ than another, but when someone is told that they are a failure again and again, they eventually start to believe it. The opposite is also true.

      Making her feel ‘uplifted’

      Girls who are shaped by a positive mother complex take their right to exist for granted, are creative and can ‘live and let live’. They know about everyone’s right to respect, to express physical and spiritual needs, to self-fulfilment, and to a fair share of worldly goods. They feel uplifted by life, and enjoy their bodies, food, sexuality and being alive.

      These girls, like everyone, eventually need to loosen their close bond to their mother so that they can develop their own identity and unfold their own personality. This task faces them in puberty – unless their mother dies earlier or leaves the family.

      The importance of the father

      Because of this inevitable separation from the mother (which boys do earlier than girls), it’s important for girls to also have their father present in their lives from the very beginning – so that they can develop a ‘positive father complex’. If girls’ early experience includes their father – or, if that’s not possible, someone who is not their mother but who also cares for them – they will find it easier to detach themselves from the mother-child symbiosis, and they will learn that relationships have various shadings: that Mum and Dad treat them differently, and that each parent has their own characteristics.

       What special things do fathers do?

      Fathers react to their children’s speech with speech, just like mothers do. But fathers differ in that they often prefer physically stimulating forms of play, clearly defined movements, and abrupt changes between active and passive phases of interaction. The play style of fathers is often more exciting than that of mothers, and is highly prized by children. There is a lot more detail on the importance of fathers in later chapters.

      Little girls who have both parents in their lives from the start soon learn different relationship patterns, and to attach different expectations to different relationships. This makes it easier for them to get involved in new situations: they already have a broader range of reactions than if they are dependent on only one parent. While a little girl experiences her mother as the same as herself, her father radiates the fascination of the stranger (which is significant from the start!). Most very successful women have had fathers who brought them up to be independent and self-sufficient. These women remember their dads as intelligent, ambitious, energetic and tolerant.

      Don’t give her everything she wants

      Many grown-up women have told me that it’s difficult for them to say no. It’s important to be able to say both yes and no in