9.2 Priming the first communicative skills.
In this phase of life it is crucial that the environment (usually the mother) is sensitive to the signals given by the child from the very moment of birth (see the observation by H. Nakajima, 1994, as described in 8.2, and F.Leboyer 1973 ). If the infant receives adequate responses to its non-verbal messages, he learns that he is not helpless, but has a certain amount of control over the world around him. This is reassuring and contributes to feeling competent. If, on the contrary, his appeals fall on insensitive ears, and are not met by touch and attention, the baby remains restless or may finally give up in apathy. In such cases priming of the communicative instinct will fail. Depending on the degree of emotional neglect, the foundations of the personality suffers, resulting in a weak identity and lack of social competence.
A child with a congenital defect of the oesophagus illustrates this developmental risk. He has been dangerously close to an autistic syndrome. Surgical treatment made it necessary for the child to stay several months in a clinical ward. The mother lived at a great distance and did not stay in the ward. When the child, it was her first, finally came home there was hardly any bond between him and his mother. She was a good although somewhat mechanical nurse, the child was quiet and undemanding. The infant care centre had no comment: the child regularly increased in weight. It a was a logopedist friend of the mother who sensed that in the quiet mother-child relation something essential was lacking. She did not leave the matter after mentioning it in a conversation; the mother was not easy to convince. She brought publications about autistic children and made the parents read them. This opened their eyes and they realised how much their child had missed in affection, and that it had stored away its needs in a freezer. The mother also realised that for this reason the child had never appealed to her loving instinct, and that she had failed to develop her motherly tending instincts. An intimate bond between the two rapidly developed after the mother used the feeding episodes to hold the child close to her.
The logopedist friend noticed that the empty smiles of the child gradually became more directed towards the mother, and that before long a lively exchange of little sounds developed.