We have spoken of how children even in infancy sense their parents' feelings, especially their mother's. But we have not spoken of how strange fantasies begin to intrude. Although these have no shape in the beginning, nevertheless as the child grows his feelings rise from the vaporous past and take form in mind pictures as potent and hovering as the genie who emerged from the smoke of Aladdin's lamp.
When a baby nurses or is fed with his mother holding him warmly close, he gains through his mouth nourishing emotional contact as well as physically nourishing food. If either physical or emotional food, however, is insufficient to meet his own particular appetite, he frequently uses his mouth in biting attempts to get more.
Small two-year-old Nicky is panicked at sight of his mother nursing his new baby sister. "Mommie, Mommie," he cries, "don't let her do it."
"Don't let her do what, honey?"
"Don't let her eat you, Mommie. Don't let her eat you up." Curiously, his mother reports that when Nicky, himself, was a baby, whenever she was hurried in nursing him, he seemed to feel it. "He'd grab till it hurt. Then I'd pull away and he'd grab all the harder. He'd bite and pull so hard, I felt he was literally trying to eat me." And now, here was Nicky accusing the baby of doing what his own little body had once seemed to do.
Whether the fantasy of eating Mother sprang up at sight of his sister or whether it was an echo from his own past, we do not know. But what we do know is that many boys and girls reach adolescence still full of love hunger. Even though their mothers may have given them what they considered to be a lot of loving, still they may not have received enough according to their own individually felt needs.
"I keep wanting and wanting," says Jim who is moving into his twenties. "I want more than any girl ever gives me. They call me 'greedy' and I guess I am. Sometimes I feel . . . well, how shall I express it? . . . like a baby, sort of, so starved he's voracious, and at other times, well . . . like a wolf. I frighten myself. Will I end up like Little Red Ridinghood's greattoothed grandmother? All set to devour the girl I'm after? I'd certainly be in a fine predicament. I wouldn't have her anymore."
What Jim says echoes what many small children feel and express. They want Mother so badly they are hungry for her. They'd like to possess her completely--absorb all her attention and time--absorb her entirely--devour her, as it were. But the pressure of their demands scares them. They are so voracious that they fantasy, as did Jim, that they may destroy the very thing they most want.
Normally in adolescence and in the prepubertal period, a child's physical appetite increases. He generally needs additional food to take care of the additional growing. Many children are also more hungry because old fantasies are reawakened. "He's eating us out of house and home," Fred's mother sighed. "No matter how much he eats, he wants more and more." Through the food he takes in he is trying to satisfy emotional appetites and imagined cravings carried over from when he was a fast-growing infant.
During the adolescent spurt in growth, mouth cravings are apt to become important again. In addition to eating, it is common for the teen-ager to reemphasize other mouth habits. He chews gum incessantly. He smokes.
Sometimes as we meet these cravings with tolerance instead of condemnation, we lessen their importance.
This does not mean, however, that we have to pretend to like or approve, for instance, of a youngster's smoking if it goes against us. Our own convictions cannot be denied. If we believe it is harmful we shall have to say "No" and stick by it. On the other hand, we may have personal objections but we may go along with the opinion that in moderation smoking is probably harmless. This was how Sam's father felt. And so he said thoughtfully but without scolding, "I don't smoke, as you know, Sam, and I don't like it. But you and I are two different people. But a little of it, I'm convinced, won't hurt you. And I've a hunch if I forbid it, you'll do it anyway. Only be careful where and when you do it so it doesn't get you in wrong where you want to be in right . . ."
Sanctioning an act when it is not harmful helps decrease a youngster's need to do it as an act of revolt. This we know. Needless forbiddings are useless. They increase his sense of separation from us. They make him feel more deserted and lonely, more hungry than ever and more in need of finding some means with which to fill his lacks. Usually he disregards our forbiddings and gets around them somehow.
If we can talk with ourselves and come to the point where we feel real sympathy for his feelings, this may prove more useful.
The child who is hungry is hungry for what? Essentially for more love. Therefore, as we met his struggle with a new kind of sensitive appreciation and understanding, we feed him what he is seeking. We give him some of the sustenance he craves. Perhaps enough so that he can let down a little and not struggle so hard in unfortunate ways.
However, voracious mouth cravings usually hold in them hostile and destructive fantasies. It's as if the person were saying, "I'm angry at you for not having fed me sufficient!" (Remember, even though you did, he may feel you didn't!) In consequence his anger may stand in the way of his accepting whatever you offer, or he may grab greedily at anything and everything and yet feel forever that he hasn't enough.
Sometimes, as you reminisce on the old hurts you gave him because of your mistaken ideas when he was younger, you may help him come out with feelings that are more wholesomely direct.
Think back! Do you remember any mistakes you made and wish you hadn't--especially in connection with feeding or cuddling?
"I was terrible," says Cora's mother, "the way I used to let you lie in your crib and cry and wait for your bottle till the clock said it was the right time to feed you."
Fat Cora looked wise. "A baby would hate that. I must have hated it too. I know I hated it when you took desserts away from me later . . ." and she was off.
Many times when a child is obese, it is also wise to get help from a doctor who takes emotional as well as physical elements into account.
As the child goes through babyhood and early childhood, he moves his major focus to parts of his body other than his mouth.
Since we put enormous emphasis on bowel training in our culture, his evacuations become mysteriously interesting. Around their production he weaves many fantasies.
He discovers, for one thing, as did small Dick, that his mother is concerned if he soils or messes himself. With this discovery to the fore, Dick invariably messed himself at the very moment when his mother would start to feed the baby. It was as if he were saying, "I can get my mother away from all contenders by being a dirty little boy." In this he had an effective weapon with new ammunition always in storage.
As he grew, Dick became ashamed of his babyish maneuvers. In order to hide them even from himself, he went to the opposite extreme and became constipated. But in adolescence he still got his mother to focus on him by being, as she put it, "the filthiest boy you ever saw. He disgusts me," she said. "I get so fussed! He throws me into absolute fits."
Almost all adolescents are dirty. Sometimes this is a way, carried over from babyhood, of revolting or asserting independence. Within bounds it is part of the child's normal escape from being an echo of his parents into becoming HIMSELF.
But if, through the excitement of fighting, it gains for him an exaggerated sense of power, it takes on fresh values which keep it going longer than it otherwise would.
Secretly Dick enjoyed his mother's fits. Because of her response, his messiness gave him power. At one and the same moment he could imagine himself triumphantly capturing his mother's attention and hurting her in retaliation for many imagined wrongs.
Dick's mother would have done better if she could have accepted his adolescent dirtiness for just what it was--a re-play of a baby's way of revolting from training pressures, as well as a living out of his earlier relish in messing.
She might have said with casual acceptance, but only if she could actually feel it, "You're as bad as a dirty infant," and let it go at that. Or she might have admitted her anger: "'I'm mad at this mess, Dick!" And then have gone on to limiting the action outlets, still however, accepting Dick's baby feelings. "I know you like to be messy. In your own room, okay. But not in the living room. That's forbidden. I need to have that part of the house kept clean."
In addition she could have seen to it that Dick had recourse to more legitimate action pathways. Oil or poster paints, for instance, to mess with. Or a place in the attic or garage in which to collect junk or tinker messily with hobbies of his own.
The lure of many a hot rod is not only its roar, but the axle grease and the griminess under the car.
As it was, Dick's mother met his messiness with excited opposition to his actions and without constructive attention to his feelings. This only made Dick more excitedly opposed to her.
As he grew older he carried the same pattern into his relationship with girls. At eighteen he would throw them into fits with his dirty stories. At one and the same moment he would capture a girl's attention and fuss her; sometimes also disgust her. As with his mother earlier, he could fantasy himself a vanquishing hero with new ammunition always at hand.
But this failed to bring him deep satisfaction. It stood in the way of his achieving mutually given affection and love.
In the adolescent's attitude toward money, we may also find traces of a boy's or girl's earlier fantasies. When he pleads for more and more, never satisfied, the earlier love hunger may be coming out. In his unconscious imaginings he takes money as food to nourish him.
When he is stingy and hoarding, not only with money but with his possessions, he may belatedly be acting out his constipation. It's as if he were saying, "I have to hold on to this treasure in order to feel that I have in storage the ammunition I need to have to protect me and to enforce my demands."
Again it may help if we can provide opportunities for increased sharing and emotionally nourishing contacts as well as chances to let out the messiness through legitimate channels.
Sooner or later before a child is four or five, he discovers that the best feelings come from another part of his anatomy. His primary interest then moves, if all goes well, from the back to the front.
This is a tremendously important step. For unless the individual can know that this part of his body is good and clean and that enjoyment of it is good and clean, he may find it difficult ever to accept himself and his sex feelings as good and clean.
At this early stage in his development, a child also begins to notice his own anatomy and the anatomical differences between the sexes. He notices these even more if a baby of a different sex is born. Through observing things about the new baby, he also gets certain feelings about himself.
Have his parents wanted a girl or a boy? Their attitude toward the sex of the new sister or brother tells him about the acceptability of his own sex as well.
Linda's mother, for instance, touched Linda's baby brother gingerly. Inside herself she kept saying, "I'm not used to boys and their little gadgets. I hardly know how to handle Tim."
In nursery school, Linda, glancing over at one of the little boys at the toilet, turned to her girl friend standing beside her. "You and me and my mommie," she stated decisively, we don't think boys are pretty at all."
Ordinarily, however, the awareness of male and female anatomy merges differently with our cultural slants. Unless the little boy is made ashamed of enjoying himself, he is proud of his body. He uses his prized male possession triumphantly. He can shoot straight into the toilet. He can make designs in the water, sprinkle the plants in the garden, try to squirt farther than other boys.
The little girl in our society does not feel superior, though she may act superior as a cover-up. Underneath she feels that boys are more desirable. Boys have something a little girl doesn't have.
"They've got those boy things," says Jean, who is ten.
The psychologist to whom she is talking nods in understanding.
Jean pauses a moment and then adds with a note of regret in her voice, "Girls don't have them."
"No, they don't."
"But," from Jean more hopefully, "girls do have babies and girls get things, too, somewhere else."
Her hands move to her still-flat little chest.
Jean is looking forward to getting something to substitute for the "boy things." Perhaps they will give her the status she feels as a girl she has lacked.
If the little girl has touched herself, her hands have found confirmation of what her eyes have noticed and if she has furthermore gathered that touching is wicked, she may fear that the prized "boy thing" has been taken from her. She may figure then that she has been punished for the "wicked" sensations she has been "wrong" to enjoy.
"They took me to the hospital," says six-year-old Florence, "and they put me to sleep." She refers to the removal of her tonsils. "They took something out of my neck and my front. They did it because they didn't want me to touch any more. But," confiding anxiously, "I still got a little something left." When she touches this, however, she grows frightened. If she is discovered, it too may be taken out.
When the little boy touches himself and gets the impression that this is wicked, he becomes frightened also. Just as the girl may fantasy that something has happened to her, so the boy may imagine that the girl has had some dreadful mishap. If he follows his wicked inclinations, the same thing may happen to him.
"My big sister must have been very naughty," says small Rudy in grave consternation. "They cut her flat so she couldn't do it anymore. She bled . . ." He stops in fear.
Such fantasies are very common. They can hold far stronger sway in the child's mind than the facts we furnish about bodily differences. Buster looks very wise as he parrots, "Boys are born with it; girls are born without it." But when the school doctor comes around for vaccinations, he goes into tantrums. At the bottom of this lies a terrifying fantasy which he finally blurts out to the psychologist. "I don't want the doctor to make me into a girl."
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