Being there Why prioritizing motherhood in the first three years matters

Review by Booklist Review

Komisar, a social worker and psychoanalyst, provides a different focus from Lisen Stromberg's Work Pause Thrive: How to Pause for Parenthood without Killing Your Career (2017), and her book will be equally valued by moms seeking answers. In her own career, Komisar took time off to focus on her children and resumed working once they were older and had a life beyond the home. This work isn't written to comfort parents instead, she pushes parents to prioritize the needs of their young children. After busting popular myths about motherhood, Komisar provides information about presence and attachment and practical advice for single mothers, stay-at-home mothers, and those who work outside of the home, including tips for interviewing caregivers. She uses examples throughout from her years as a therapist and addresses issues facing children when their mothers can't be physically or emotionally present. Being There is a good addition for public-library parenting collections and academic libraries at schools that offer an early-childhood education program.--McIntosh, Joyce Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Amid a landslide of literature examining the culture of the needlessly overworked, overstressed, and overwhelmingly busy mom, Komisar makes a different claim here: mothers aren't doing enough for their children. Drawing from her practice as a psychoanalyst in New York City, Komisar makes the case that the mother is primarily and uniquely responsible for a baby's development, and a lack of the mother's responsive, nurturing presence in the early years can contribute strongly to all manner of behavioral and developmental problems. Komisar offers sound, warm guidance for baby interaction in an attempt to draw ambivalent mothers back into the home and gives several examples from her practice in which increased maternal involvement solved behavioral problems. Though she acknowledges the role of fathers and the burden on single mothers, Komisar regretfully concludes that children raised without the frequent presence of a mother are likely to grow up with serious problems. Despite Komisar's well-intentioned tone, her perspective is ultimately dispiriting, since there is little indication that the near future will bring about the legislation for paid leave that would help all families to afford her ideal. Agent: Jane von Mehren, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Why it is so critical to be present in your child's early life.Using current research, statistical evidence, and material from her work as a therapist and social worker, Komisar pulls together a cohesive argument about the importance of being physically and emotionally present during your child's first three years. During this time, a child is developing in numerous ways: physically achieving the goals of crawling, walking, talking, etc. and the emotional skills needed to cope with frustration, anxiety, separation, and other feelings. "Spending more time with your child during this critical period of development means she will have a greater chance of being emotionally secure and resilient to stress," writes the author, "as well as being better able to regulate her emotions throughout life, read others' social cues, achieve a higher emotional intelligence, and connect with others intimately." Komisar offers practical advice for mothers who must work, whether full- or part-time, offers suggestions for those who complain of being "bored" when they stay at home with a young child, and encourages mothers, fathers, and other caregivers to take the time to be fully present with the child. This means putting away the cellphone or computer and focusing on the child, getting down to her level to play, read, sing, and interact. The author also provides lists of important questions to ask before placing a child in day care, thoroughly explains the damage done to a child when a mother is absent, and considers why society doesn't place a higher value on the act of parenting. Komisar's information is common-sensical, but because American society has moved so far away from accepting mothering as a crucial job, it's quite welcome. As she notes, the health and well-being of our children should be first and foremost in every parent's life. Solid research and easy-to-follow advice about how to recognize "the essential role of mothers in the lives of their children and mak[e] it easier for women to be there when it matters most." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 3 What Does It Mean to Be a Present Mother? How Do We Define Presence? You are sitting on the floor with your one-year-old, close to him but giving him room to play. You make eye contact frequently and lovingly touch him often. You watch him play, cooing and observing and describing his emotions and actions to him. You smile when he smiles at you and wait patiently when he needs to look away or at an object, ready to reengage when he gives you the cues he is ready. When he is frustrated or angry, you mirror his feelings using your voice and facial expressions. It is helpful to try to imagine your own experience of discovery and wonder as a baby looking at and touching an object for the first time, experiencing it with your own mother. You are enjoying sitting on the floor, playing with your baby and being engaged in the experience, not thinking about the dishes in the sink or your email. You and your baby are involved in a dance of connection and space, attachment and separation, engagement and disengagement, rupture and repair. Sometimes your baby leads and you follow, and sometimes you lead and your baby follows. This playfulness and intimacy helps shape your baby's developing brain and personality. To do this you must be in the moment , let go of all the adult means of distraction and stimulation. You need to focus on eye contact, touch, your tone of voice, facial expression, body language and awareness of your own mood and emotions. Sometimes you may get bored or sleepy when playing with your baby, feeling understimulated yourself. This is as natural as when your baby looks away for a moment to collect himself and take a break from you. If you wait, then this moment passes and you reengage with your baby. The Oxford dictionary defines presence as "the state or fact of existing, occurring, or being present." Physical presence is the most obvious form of being there; certainly without a mother's physical presence there is no emotional presence for a child. However, it is important to note that a mother can be with her child physically and still be emotionally checked out. For a mother to be present, she must first be self-aware about and accept her own (sometimes conflicted) feelings about motherhood. In addition, she must be willing to make her child a priority in the time she spends with her. This means not only spending as much time as possible with a child during her first three years of life but also focusing on how that time is spent. We're addicted to multitasking--reading our email while watching TV, sneaking a peak at our text messages at the dinner table. Yet researchers like Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT, have shown that, in fact, that kind of divided attention is both destructive to relationships and stressful to individuals. Presence also means emotional engagement. Dr. Beatrice Beebe, of Columbia University, and Dr. Miriam Steele, of the New School for Social Research, have done a lot of research in attachment and infant-mother interaction. They described in great detail the importance of the attunement of a mother to a baby in the early years. Attunement is another way of describing the dance of emotional interaction between a baby and a mother. When we dance, we need a partner who is present, responsive, and interactive, or else we are essentially dancing alone. This dance is how a mother helps her child learn to negotiate relationships and to develop a secure sense of herself in the world. Presence means finding enjoyment in the experience of being with your baby and being able to tolerate the boring moments. Discovering the beauty and fascination in the little things throughout the day that your baby is learning. Presence means pleasure. Finally, presence means that when a mother cannot be there, she is sensitive to the cues of her child when she returns, she is aware when she has been away too long or is too disconnected. Children are wise beyond their years. They are born with an innate sense of their essential needs and a pace of development that is unique to each of them. The director of the New School's Attachment Research Center, Dr. Howard Steele, defined sensitive mothering as the capacity to respond promptly with appropriate care and concern to a child's distress. When a mother is present for her child, she learns to read and interpret her child's subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) nonverbal cues, which will tell her what that child needs and how he is coping with separation. A mother's sensitivity will alert her to whether those needs are being met, or not, and can instruct her in how to help her baby upon her return. For example, when a baby is extremely anxious and clingy or turns away from his mother after a separation, a sensitive mother recognizes this as her child's experience that she has been gone too long, and she needs to repair the rift. We do not live in a perfect world, and there are times when we cannot meet all of our children's needs, emotionally or physically. When this happens, we need to know how to repair the misalignment of their needs and our ability to meet those needs. You have to accept that some of these failures can be healed and some cannot. Repairing the separation makes a baby emotionally stronger and more resilient; immediately addressing the damage created by absence and temporary disconnection is the most successful approach to repairing it, but it is never too late to do so, even with older children. I will address how mothers can learn to repair these misalignments in Chapter 8.   Excerpted from Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters by Erica Komisar All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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