You have been working for a few days and your son has been staying at your mother's house for those same days. You almost pray that everything goes well when you leave him, because at home you know, he barely eats, he mounts you scenes that it seems that with 1 year he is already a small teenager and now, since you leave him, it seems that the thing is getting worse.
So when you go looking for him, you expect your mother to tell you that "he has behaved fatally" and yet he explains that everything has gone phenomenally, that you have a beautiful son and that he has eaten perfectly. How? What have you done to deserve that? Why? Because children behave worse with mothers than with other adults, and a recent study confirms it.
And it happens with dad too
That dad stays with the child one afternoon and when you arrive he tells you that he does not understand why you complain so much about the child ... yes, that he has his moments, but that it is not so much. So you explain what he has done to you in the morning and he has a hard time believing it. He looks at you raising an eyebrow and asks you: sure? Do we talk about the same child?
What if! Insurance! That with you it seems that everything is impossible, that you say yes and say no. That you say no and he says yes. And so with everything ... And is that the study in question says that a child can behave up to 800% worse if the mother is present.
Let's see, what does the study say?
The study has been carried out in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington and 500 families have been studied measuring children at the time they asked for help, shouted or screamed, cried, tried to hit, refused to walk or Talk and act crazy.
Dr. KP Leibowitz, author of the study, explains in this way what they saw:
What we found was that eight-month-old children could be playing happily and suddenly, as their mothers entered the room, they began to cry, release their anger and need their immediate attention. This happened in 99.9% of the children, since 0.1% was a child with vision difficulties, who upon hearing his mother's voice began throwing things and asking for food despite having eaten. Truly fascinating.
They also saw that adults who are not mothers do not need much to get the attention and obedience of children. If they spoke to them in a normal tone, the children attended to them. However, if it was the mother who addressed them, a normal tone of voice did not work. They needed raise your voice much more to get the same result.
According to the researchers, it's because of the smell ... but I don't agree
According to Leibowitz, the reason that happens is the smell of mothers. Apparently, children smell like mothers, its pheromones, and modify their behavior. That's why he is working on a spray that masks the mother's natural hormones, which should make children behave better.
But I do not agree, and that I am nothing more than a father and I have not even seen how they did the study ... yes, it is true, children behave differently according to the adult with whom I am. In fact, I know some mothers who leave their children in the dining room, or who take it every day to eat with a family member, because they know that everything is going better. But I don't think it's a matter of smell.
This smell has been due to invent to sell the miraculous spray: I explain a problem that is confirmed in most families, I invent the cause and give you the solution, and I make gold.
No, this is not about smells ... or not just about smells (and the case of the child with vision problems confirms it, doesn't it ?, that until he heard his mother's voice did not change the behavior). This it's a matter of trust, of relationship, of affection, of affection. They are not willing to bother a mother, but to request their care, attention, at a time when they need it, or to tell them that I needed her and she wasn't there. Perhaps it is the way to tell her that something is wrong between the two, that she is angry, that she has left him alone when he wanted to be with her at all hours.
Do you behave the same with your mother as with other adults? And you behave the same at home as it was? Do you eat the same in your home than in a restaurant? Oh, what a discovery, adults also behave better with other adults than when they are with trusted people. Will they be pheromones or trust?
Well, that, trust, as trust was what my son Aran had when he started school. I told you at the time, but it was an odyssey. We left him at school, he was nervous, uneasy, but then there was an exemplary child. Then, in the afternoon, he came home and became an impossible child. It had never been like that, but by then it was. Every afternoon he sent her to us. Terrible. Y worse every day.
We immediately realized that it was a consequence of the school, that we were leaving him there when he told us that he did not want to go. That for the first time we didn't listen to his wishes. Than So far we had been very respectful of their choices, but not this time. And that time it was several times, because it happened every day. I didn't want to, and we "yes, honey, you have to go." Well, in the afternoon he returned it to us.
Then we talked to his teacher to explain it to him, to tell him to help us, that he was carrying it very badly, that in the afternoon it was terrible and, to our surprise, instead of trying to help us and associate the school with his behavior at home, we He said "oh, well, it won't be something else, because here he is very quiet all morning."
Trust. It is a matter of trust. Who they have more confidence with is with whom they show their true "me". And it is not that they are bad, or worse, it is their way of expressing that something is not right. It is their way of telling their mothers, that they are the people they love the most and the ones they most expect, because they have a better relationship, that they still need them, that they still want them to be for them at all times, or that they have felt rejected or abandoned. Because they can't tell you "mom, where have you been? I was looking for you," so instead, they show you how much you need them calling attention to them in every possible way.
That's why Rosa Jové, the well-known child psychologist, always remembers this phrase from the book 'The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde': "Love me when you least deserve it, because it will be when you need it most".
UPGRADE (01/09/2015): We have learned that the study we mentioned is false. All the information here.
