Erica Komisar Quotes

Every relationship and every job has boring moments. However, when a woman’s overwhelming feeling when she is with her child is disinterest or boredom, it is a sign of difficulty in the mother–child relationship. If

I have always believed that part of our strength as women is in being more nurturing, empathic, more sensitive emotionally, and more attuned to the nuances of relationships than most men. There has been a new call for women to be leaders in the corporate world, in business, and in politics, but our strength as leaders begins at home with our ability to feel for and nurture our own children.

Our society values financial security and material success over the more important values of emotional security and connection to those closest to us.

I do not believe you can have it all, or at least not at the same time in life. First of all, having is a possessive word. When we focus on having a baby, having a marriage, having a great and successful job, and having lots of material stuff we have lost touch with the most important part of life: being. Having a successful career and making lots of money that allows you to buy more stuff doesn’t help you to be more present for the ones we love: children, spouses, family, and friends. Intimacy requires time; giving up your role as a primary caregiver comes with sacrificing physical and emotional intimacy with your child.

There’s simply no real substitute for physical presence. . . . We delude ourselves when we say otherwise, when we invoke and venerate ‘quality time,’ a shopworn phrase with a debatable promise: that we can . . . engineer intimacy at an appointed hour. . . . But people tend not to operate on cue. The surest way to see the brightest colors or the darkest ones is to be watching and waiting and ready for them.

I may be child-centric, but that doesn't make me anti-feminist. In an interview with Garage Magazine, Beyoncé (Queen Bae), who I can safely say is at the top of her profession as a singer and entertainer, said "Of everything that I've accomplished, my proudest moment hands down is when I gave birth to my daughter Blue." Cue the firestorm of criticism! On Mic.com, Jenny Kutner reacted, "Wouldn't it be refreshing for one of the most professionally accomplished women in the world to value her career accomplishments equally?" To which Elizabeth Kiefer on Refinery29 responded, "It would be, if that were the truth for whoever spoke that perfect sound bite of progressivism. Yet, it would be even more refreshing if we allowed women to choose their greatest moment without fear that they were being judged against some ever-moving metric of what it means to be a good feminist." To which I say "Amen".

if you don’t take some time for yourself during the course of a day and if your child struggles to fall asleep, you may be anxious and resentful. As the flight attendant tells us: Put on your own oxygen mask before you help your child put on hers.

If we have all the career success in the world but our children resent us or, worse, are disabled by our insensitivity or lack of empathy toward their needs when they are young and become depressed, anxious, or cannot form and sustain deep emotional connections with others, are we truly satisfied as mothers?

We do not value mothering and nurturing as meaningful work when compared with paid work outside the home. Many of the studies that say women should go back to work are authored by economists rather than therapists, who do not see the impact of a mother’s absence on her very young children and encourage (whether they mean to or not) a detached approach to raising children.

The time has come for the pendulum to find a healthy resting point between the extremes. All child-raising choices should be acceptable, but it’s up to the individuals making these choices to understand the responsibilities and ramifications of their decisions.

For a woman, having a baby can open the floodgates of repressed or hidden emotions. That is often when mothers have a breakdown, as in postpartum depression, or come to me with feelings of depression or anxiety that may be delayed postpartum depression responses. Repression is a great thing if it holds, but like the proverbial can of worms, when the defenses that a person has used her whole life break down, all of the sadness and loss that is connected to feeling your mother was not there enough when you were little starts leaking out of the lockbox of the unconscious

To be a present mother, a woman must be able set aside her own needs and then gradually reclaim what is important to her as her child matures and needs her less.

It is not healthy for your vulnerable infant to cry for long periods of time without being comforted. This is why sleep training in the first six months, before healthy developmental separation has begun, is, in my opinion, too traumatic for babies (and mothers!) and should be postponed until after this most vulnerable period of development.

Attachment occurs after bonding takes place; the two processes are inseparable. Attachment begins in the first few months of life, but it is the continuous presence of the mother in the first eighteen months that is the first step in building a deep and lasting sense of emotional security in a child. This security forms the basis of a child’s sense of self for the rest of her life. Bonding is putting the pieces together and attachment is gluing them in place.

For the first few weeks it may seem like a baby does nothing but eat, poop, and sleep. But the truth is very different; an infant is creating 40,000 synapses (connections between neurons in the brain) per second.

Dependency and secure attachment are the foundation on which true independence is formed; to become truly independent, your child must spend a long time being dependent. A baby who has learned that she will not have her needs, physical or emotional, met is more likely to become disconnected and have problems creating and maintaining healthy relationships.

The first three years of your child’s life are a critical window in which to develop your baby’s right brain and nurture her emotional health and social development through attachment, play, and nonverbal communication. The development of right-brain attributes, like the ability to read social cues, relate to others, and develop lasting emotional connections, lays the foundation for later cognitive development; without that foundation a child may not be able to tolerate the frustration and mistakes necessary for effective learning or the resilience to recover from making a mistake.

One of the most important things you can do as a mother is to recognize and acknowledge your baby’s feelings of distress or pain and be with him when he is distressed rather than distracting or cheering him up or, even worse, dismissing his feelings because he makes you uncomfortable.

Tell your baby that you will return and when you will return. Remember that no matter how young your baby is, she understands your intent if not the meaning of your words, and at some point (much sooner than you think) she will understand your words. Whenever possible, once out and once in is easier on babies then in and out, in and out. If you have to leave shortly after you return from an absence, it’s better to stay away for the longer period of time.

A pediatrician once suggested to me that if you’re unsure what your preverbal baby wants, first assume hunger, then a wet or full diaper, other physical discomfort (too hot, too cold, uncomfortable clothing), and finally emotional distress (which includes overstimulation).

Rather than simply saying, “You can’t have a toy,” try saying, “I hear that you are upset and angry because you want a toy and Mommy is saying no. I know it’s hard to hear the word no and not get everything you want when you want it.” Or when your child has a tantrum because she wants to go to the park after school and you have to take her to a doctor’s appointment, rather than saying, “No, we can’t go to the park today,” say something like, “I can see you want to go to the park because being at school all day was hard and you want to play. I know you feel sad and angry because you want to play and we have to go to the doctor instead.” It also helps to touch or offer physical affection to a child who is feeling out of control, if she will accept

One surprisingly simple way to connect to your baby and make him feel more secure is to cradle him on your left side, rather than your right.

The most painful times for young children are the comings and goings of their mothers. Babies need security, consistency, and predictability from their mothers, especially during times of transition, such as waking up, going down for and waking up from a nap; moving to and from daycare or preschool; and switching from playtime to bath time, from bath time to dinnertime, and from dinnertime to bedtime. When you leave the house, whether it is to go to work or to go to the supermarket or gym, it is a separation, which deserves the same respect as any other transition.