Bonding, Separation and the Rehabilitation process.

The first step as you know is always what matters most when we are dealing with those who are young and tender.

That is the time when they are taking shape and when any impression we choose to make leaves a permanent mark

Plato 428-348 BC

Bonding

What do we mean by bonding?

The term has been used fairly loosely to describe the close relationship between mother and child but there are numerous aspects to the concept which should be separated out. The common practice is to speak of bonding as a reciprocal process but it is more correct technically to distinguish between bonding and attachment. Classically the term 'Bonding' applies to the feeling of the parent for the child - while the child demonstrates attachment to the parent.

Bonding is thus the sense of parenthood, or motherhood which is engendered in the parent and which invokes protection and caring. This is perhaps most easily demonstrated in the animal kingdom where the primary carer - usually mother, but in some species father, will go to any lengths to preserve the offspring - to the extent of facing starvation and mortal peril.

This process in animals is generally limited to a critical time period and is probably almost wholly hormone or pheromone mediated. A Siamese Fighting fish father will care for his hatchlings, driving off the predatory female until they reach a critical size and then he becomes a predator himself. A ewe will only suckle a lamb which 'smells right' and drive others away. For centuries shepherds have coated the fleece of an orphan lamb with the smell or pheromones of it's replacement to prevent rejection.

Human beings have a habit of considering themselves 'above' nature. Instincts are considered base and primitive. But in this early bonding of mother and infant perhaps we do not pay nature sufficient heed. It is accepted that premature babies and those in intensive care after birth bond less easily with their mothers and the incidence of rejection and abuse is greater in such cases. Surely it should come as no surprise that babies born into a sterile clinical environment with mothers who have to maintain a gloved or masked and certainly 'clean' distance cannot get close enough to their mothers, often don't smell right and do not engender the 'primitive' responses in their modern mothers which would be vital for their survival out in the 'real' world.

Nevertheless, despite the obvious importance of these first moments and early weeks of close mother / child bonding, some of these responses can be elicited at a later stage. .....

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"Boundaries and Space"

Transitional objects ... potential space ... play space

Teaching and learning (and therapy) take place in the overlap of our play areas.

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