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A task of the young infant is to be able to tolerate the intensity of arousal they
feel while interacting with their mom or dad. An infant who is flooded with too
much arousal during interactions will avoid them and shut down.
For a child to experience pleasure from playing or interacting with his
parent(s), he needs to find ways to avoid becoming over-stimulated.
The child has to find an optimal level of internal arousal to remain engaged in
the interaction.
Consequently, the parent acts to help regulate the child’s arousal by timing her
responses, laughing at the right moment, touching her child periodically,
encouraging him, and other behaviors that engage the child.
If you’re too active, though, and doing more than what your child can process,
the child will respond by backing away or becoming distressed.
Research has shown that when the parent and child are out-of-sync, the child
learns to withdraw from the overly arousing interaction.
This can lead to disengagement, with resulting insecurity in attachments.
So how do you find the most optimal level of stimulation when you interact
with your child?
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that the optimal level varies greatly
from one child to the next and depends upon the child’s threshold for arousal,
tolerance for stimulation, and ability to self-control arousal.
© 2016 Mary-Ann Schuler – WWW.BABYSLEEPMIRACLE.COM
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