In
their attempts to gain greater and greater control over the way in which
children grow and develop, people are developing strategies for influencing
children at earlier and earlier ages.
For quite some time, there has been the notion that practically every
moment of a child’s free time should be slotted with organized classes and
activities to enrich his life. But now
inventors have come up with what would appear to be the ultimate enrichment –
slotted organized defined discrete activity for the fetus in the womb. No longer content with music appearing as
muffled sounds being transmitted to the fetus through headphones around the belly,
pregnant mothers now have the possibility of transmitting music to the fetus
more directly through a kind of vaginal tampon with speakers. This vaginal tampon is connected to a
smartphone and works sort of like an iPod.
Without the abdominal wall acting as a partial sound barrier, music can
be sent more directly and more clearly.
Supposedly this early stimulation by music acts to accelerate neural
development and make a child verbal at an earlier age. And this accelerated development will
supposedly lead to more and greater achievements as a child grows into
adulthood.
It
sounds great, but one wonders if there may be a downside to all of this early
stimulation and activity. Maybe there is
a reason for fetuses to be so protected that they can normally only hear
muffled sounds through the abdominal walls of the mother. Maybe this is nature’s way of protecting fetuses
and allowing them to engage in other kinds of growth and development. Growth and development that can only occur
when there is a relative experiential separation from the external world.
There
have been discussions in this column of two different aspects of the sense of
self that have to develop properly in order for a person to have a healthy
sense of self. One aspect is
self-definition. This is the aspect that
is usually referred to when there are discussions of strengthening a person’s
sense of self. This aspect involves
developing the boundaries of a sense of self such that a person feels unique
and different from and separate from other people. This frequently involves having unique
experiences, developing distinct personality traits and developing unique
skills or a special excellence in certain skills. It involves the defined discrete stimuli that
a person emits, that he gives off to others.
The
other important aspect of self to consider is self-coherence. This involves the quality of internal bonding
within a person, the quality of smooth continual flow of self within a
person. This quality usually develops
much more fully in preliterate societies where a person is deeply bonded
externally with nuclear family, extended family, clan, tribe and village. The strong extern
But
before a person is born, the strong bonding of a fetus with his mother in the
womb is the first major life situation to encourage strong self-coherence. The fetus is partly merged with his mother,
and this merging with someone outside of himself stimulates internal merging
within himself. Ideally, the fetus is
already developing this aspect of his sense of self, before he has the
opportunity to emerge into the external world.
The need to develop strong self-coherence continues after a child is
born and well into childhood.
It is
essential that a fetus develops a strong self-coherence, before it is
stimulated too much to develop strong self-definition. If the fetus (or child) starts developing
strong self-definition before it has developed strong self-coherence, the sense
of self can start to fragment. Putting
aside the Babypod, the trend towards all these enrichment programs and slotted
activities to stimulate brain development in very young children is already
contributing to this kind of problem.
Young children are no longer allowed as much time to simply engage in
reverie or their own imaginative play.
And, of course, when they do have time, they become engaged in video
games or else watching television on their smart phones. No time, no opportunity, no inclination to
just do nothing or create their own world of activity. Smartphones, with all their defined discrete
stimuli, are introduced to children at a very early age, and children get
hooked on them.
Now
some people want to start with defined discrete stimuli (in the Babypod music,
the notes of a song or the lyrics, the fact that a song has a beginning and an
end) at an even earlier age than childhood.
The melodies coming through the vagina give a fetus supposedly a more
accelerated neural development. Then,
after the fetus is born and becomes a baby and then a child, he will develop
several capacities at an earlier age to perform in different activities, but he
will always be lacking much of the stimulation of quiet reverie, of the flowing
blendable continual stimuli of daydreaming.
For
such a child, achieving, excelling becomes the only foundation of his sense of
self. It is very difficult for such a
child to be doing nothing and to engage in reverie or else to engage in
imaginative play, because he has little self-coherence. And, as he grows older, he loses his capacity
to develop self-coherence. He becomes
hooked on the activities that provide self-definition, the situations that
provide defined discrete stimuli, in order to feel alive. Not only does such a person not develop the
capacity for deep internal bonding, but he also doesn’t develop the capacity
for strong bonding with other people.
Without strong self-coherence, the person moves in the direction of
becoming a robot.
Just
to fine-tune what is being said here, there is no attempt being made to
diminish the importance of developing early hobbies, early activities, early
skills in a young child. What is of
concern is when a child can never be allowed to just do nothing, to engage in
reverie or involve himself in nondirected play that doesn’t have an ulterior
purpose. Just as we now know that sleep
is very important for the health of an individual - an activity that seems like
a non-activity that wastes time, so reverie and dreamy imaginative play – a
non-activity and an unfocused activity that seem to waste time – can be very
important for a person as well, in terms of psychological health.
And a
fetus needs to float in the placenta and not focus and to develop a strong coherent
sense of self. It is an essential part of
his becoming human. He doesn’t need the
intrusion of a musical vaginal tampon with speakers in order to speed up neural
development. Maybe that tampon will make
a great achiever of him, but only at the cost of having a coherent sense of
self. We should just stop tinkering with
nature so much.
(c) 2016 Laurence Mesirow
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