Like many children his age, Sam knew the alphabet and all the phonetic sounds before he entered school as a 6 year old. His Foster Carers were delighted with Sam's skills. When Same came to their home 12 months earlier, he could not count, he could not write his name and he did not know the alphabet by sound or sight recognition. When Sam started school they were confident, after working with him inidividually,that he could manage school at grade level. The first few weeks of school Sam's teacher witnessed his ability to read and count. As the weeks and months at school progressed, Sam, who had been shy of his teacher at first, developed a strong teacher student bond. he began to seek her approval and praise. The second month of school, Sam read a beginning reader out oud to his reading group and then to the whole class. His Carers were very proud and excited when the teacher told them about his success. Two months later Sam's teacher asked him to read the same book for a class demonstration for the Headmaster.
Sam stood in front of the class: He fidgeted and shuffled his feet. He pulled at his trousers. He did not read. Sam's teacher prompted him with the first word. Same did not read. He said he did not know the words. Sam's teacher reminder him that he had read that same book many times. "Sam, you do know the wor." She whispered. The Headmaster suggested that Sam was nervous to read in front o fhim. Sam shook his head and insisted he did not know the words. Sam stood there with a blank look on his face.
Everyone decided that Sam had stage fright. The next week Sam go almost all the words wrong on his spelling test. Following that, he missed simple words in reading class. Sam was frequently failing or not responding on questions and words that his Carers and hi techer 'knew he knew.' Everyone decided that Sam was being oppositional.
The more his Teacher and Foster Carers prodded him the more he 'refused to answer' academic questionsSam was not being oppositional: He was not refusing to answer. Sam was experiencing a temporary inability to recall what he knew when questioned by people he cared about. Children and adults who have not developed parent constancy (know as object constancy in the literature) and self constancy often experience extreme anxiety around answering questions; almost any kind of questions, academic questions, how questions, where questions, when questions, and especially what happened and who did it questions. The anxiety children with weak "object constancy" experience does not present to us as anxiety: it looks like deliberate checking out, oppositional and controlling behavior.
In reality, the child really does experience an inability to recall or access the information that they do know. Without self constancy, the child feels as if he becomes his experience in the moment. Sam felt as if his 100% of Sam was his ability to read or his inability to read for the Headmasterfor his teacher; the teacher he really like and depended upon. Without self constancy, Sam expereinced the assignment as if his reading out loud part was his only part, was "all of him."
Without ojbect constancy, the child insitnctually fears he will loose his connection to the 'good object' and have only the 'bad object' left. Sam instinctually felt as if he risked loosing the 'breast teacher' and being left with the 'witch teacher.' Absence of constancy in the relationship with the person asking the questioning leads to the child's limbic brain sending out warning signals. It goes something like this:
"Danger, danger, danger... if you get this wrong you may or will loose the connection to this person... DO NOT ANSWER."
None of this is conscious. The child's limbic brain shuts down the passageways to the stored concrete knowledge. In that moment, in that situation, with that important person the child cannot access the stored memory where the knowledge is held. Most of us can recall situations where we were caleld upon to perform or to answer a question and we could barely speak for fear of making a fool of ourselves. this is called a slippage in object or self constancy or both, usually both.
A slippage in object, important person, constancy feels as if "the ability or inability to answer the question is all of me, if I get this wrong the person I care about will not like or love me any more. I will loose their friendship, or caring, or good regard."
A slippage in self constancy is very similar and sometimes occurs simultaneously with a slippage in object constancy. A slippage in self constacy feels as if the ability or inability to get this question right is all of me, I have in that moment become that one part of me. If geels as if I will cease to exist if I get this wrong. I will disappear or I will be shamed forever.
Unfortunately, slippages in constancy do no improve memory or performance. The access to knowledge and skills seems to be blocked and the individual experiencing the slippage struggles to go on, to answer the question or to pull him/herself together and move on. The individual who has not yet built constancy or whose constancy is still weak can seldom pull him/herself togther, they loose, temporarily the ability to access theknowledge or to perform the skill requested. Try to remember a time when you felt you wanted the floor to open up - a time when you wished you could disappear because you could not perform or had goofed up. A slippage in constancy is an awful feeling. Most of us with constacy can, sooner or later, pull ourselves together, and move on. The child wihtout constacny cannot. They freeze or leave littlerally, some become rigid and oppositional if we push them, not just to control us as is often suggested, but a s a defensive action against the pressure to do something they really cannot in that moment do! The child feels shamed and abandoned. And we, not understanding the child's dilemma push harder, demand he answers or performs, go further in our 'witch parent' persona.
Parent constancy does not being to form until, at the earliest, late in the second year of life. Parent and self constancy waiver frequetnly into the fifth year of life. As demonstrated in the example above of an adult "who could barely speak", an adult who was experiencing s lippage of constancy, constancy can and does slip or collapse in adulthood, even when it was failry strong. With constancy just emerging in the toddler-preschool years and slipping and collaspingin adulthood how do young children learn things and develop the confidence that they know what they know?
Toddlers and preschoolers learn many of their early lessons through joined learning. Joined learning is the spontaneous, encouraging, playful and nurturing way we teach toddlers facts, skills and feeling states. Joined learning is doing the task for the child, encouraging the child to join in. Joined learning is giving the child the answer, with encouragement and joy. Think about how we teach the colors:
"This school bus is yellow. It is a yellow school bus." After many repitions we ask: "Waht color is the yellow school bus?" Or we might say "What color is the school bus?" Pause for a second, then, "The school bus is yellow!"
We repeat this over and over in many different ways, gradually getting to the point where we pause longer after asking the question than we did in the early stages of teaching, giving the child a chance to answer. If the child gets stuck or if the child answers incorreclty we gently give the correct answer, often having the child repeat it with us. At first children guess, or look at us for hints, which we give freely. Gradually, we observe the growth of the child's:
- knowledge
- confidence in his knowledge
- sense that eve if he does not answer or if he gets it wront, we, the important teaching adults, will still value the child.
young children learn words, colors, animal names, animal sounds, oletters, numbers, rules, etc. through joined learning. A child's motivation to elarn is highly dependent on the child's relationsip with the 'teacher'. Joined learning helps children not only learn the colors, etc., it help the child build confiidence in the specific knowledge gin gtaught inand in his ability to learn. Finally, joined learning as a natural and almost spontaneous way adults teach their young reinforces the child's feeling that even if he gets it wrong the adult still values him: the child know he will not loose his connection to that important adult: joined learning helps build constancy.
Children who have had difficult beginnings such as abuse, neglect and changes in caregivers have difficulty guilding sand sustaining constancy as the adults of ther past are gone, are not still available. Frequently, the adult caregivers of the child's past were not able to offer affection and connection with discipline, building constancy around behavior;p nor were they able to offer support encouragement and connection when the child struggled to learn and to recall knowledge. A child who missed joined learnin gin the past feels as if the adults currently in his/her life will dsiconnect, disappear or withhold the relationahip if he/she gets the problem wrong. The child does not answer even the simplest question. For a child wihtout constancy the perceived risk of answering incorrectly is extremely high. This ins not just performance anxiety or embarrassment. This child feels as if he/she iwll loose the relationship witht eh caring adult if he gets it wrong. Like Sam, in our example above, children without constancy need repetitive experiences of joined learning, experiences where trying to learn new information and skills and trying to recall previously learned information is an experience that connects them with the adult teacher!
As workers we need to assist parents and teachers to recognize when the child we are assisting does not have constancy. We then need to teach joined learning, the theory and the skill. We teach this concept and all the consepts we share about children with deficity in their capaicty to attach by sharing information and by dmonstration in a supportive environment. We teach the adulst we work with, our clients, with joined learning! As professionals we use joined learning to help the parents develop a new understanding of their childn't behaviors and the deficits in attachment and in ego structure those behaviors represent. We teach more through conversation than through lecture. We suggest and demonstrate new techniques. Our goal is to stay connected to parents when they struggle with the theory and the parenting techniques. We support and encourage and give them the answer when the forget. Joined learning is an incredibly powerful method for adult learners. Pointing thi sout to clients and to audiences has helped them grasp the importance and bonding power of joined learning.
It has been our experience that parents usually understand joined learning and take it on as a skill to develop and practice with their children much faster and with less resistance than teachers. Teachers of very young children are very familiar with joined learning, many use the technique without calling it joined learning, most recognize it as an essential teaching model for children 5 and under. Sometimes teachers of older children worry that we are coddling children and giving in to their opposiitonal behavior if we recommend joined learning for shcool work and/or homework. It is our task to assist the parents in explaining why this child needs joined learning. At times not an easy task as to be fair to teachers it can look as if we are insisting on coddling children. Teachers will need some infroamtion about the child's history to understand the child's dilemma. We usually offer a generic true story line.
For example, "Sam lost and/or change dcaregivers multiple times during the ciritcal years when children being to develop the skills of confidence and love of learning."
If the child experienced abuse and/or negelct we describe it in learning moment terms. For example, "When Same go the answers wrong he was often hit and/or left alone in his room for hours, until he got it right. He was 3 years old! Sam still has that fear of answering, he frequently feels as if answering a simple question is dangerous."
This simple example helps teachers and parents alike understand the child's dilemma in learning situations. Most of hte time, parents and teacher will get it, embrace the concept and attempt the techniques. Getting it and sustaining the effort under duress are two very different tasks. Just as we do paretns and teachers loose the plot. They regress to old interpretations of the child' behavior and to old responses, even to responses that did not work before. Often this results in judgements of the child't behavior as deliberate and manipulative and of the child as incapable of getting well. When faced with this disconnect form the goal and from the child, we too can feel judgemental of either the parent, the teacher, the child, or all of the above!
The parent or teacher has lost constancy with the child; is juding the child's behavior and the child. Our job is to catch this loss of constancy, our own and theirs and contain it. Our job is to continue to suppor and guide the parents, to assist them to see all the many parts of the child, not just the "acting out" parts. This discussion about holding constancy with the adult clients when the loose it with their children has appeared earlier in this work. Each conept, skill and technique we offer parents and children is a new task to learn: A new issue to trigger loss of constacy when the learning curve slows or slips away temporarily and a new task to teach and review and repeat with joined learning.
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