It was back to school last week, and I had the strangest impression of meeting people I already knew as if it were the first time. The security guard at the school gate and the barista at the local coffee shop who had come into my life during the pandemic surprised me with their wide grins and unmasked expressions.
While it is said that eyes are the ‘window to the soul’, I personally found it challenging to discern a person’s level of friendliness or hostility from their eyes alone. Masked faces denied us all the opportunity to decode the internal disposition of others, to see them in their full humanity and to recognise, in them, something of our own internal world. It’s this interplay between the ‘observed’ and ‘the observer’ that is at the heart of parent-child attachment. It is also the basis on which children learn to distinguish emotions in themselves and others, thereby developing a sense of empathy.
As the primary seat of emotional expression, the ‘look' on a person's face can convey a message of acceptance and welcoming, or it can deliver a blow of rejection. When a child is in need of closeness, they are watching intently to see what their caregiver’s face is communicating about their capacity to comfort them. Children rapidly learn to adapt, suppress or disguise their care-seeking behaviours accordingly, based on the cues they’re receiving - sometimes verbal but often non-verbal. As anyone who has stared into the large, enquiring eyes of a baby knows, infants are skilled at reading faces.
Children also read our faces to gain confidence. A 1990s study revealed just how dependent babies were on their mothers’ facial expression when crawling across a table to reach a desired toy. In the experiment, crawlers were placed on a table with a ‘visual cliff ‘(what appeared to the baby to be a considerable drop in height). On reaching the apparent edge, the babies would turn to test the ‘drop’ by shuffling back feet first. However, they would also ‘check in’ with their mothers - instructed to stand just beyond the table - by glancing at them. In the majority of cases, the child's choice to proceed across the table or to stop depended on whether the expression on mum’s face was one of encouragement or fear.
In the attachment-based ‘Circle of Security Parenting’ programme the importance of this kind of non-verbal communication is expressed and emphasised in a number of ways. One of the most glaring and striking, is the specific need to ‘Delight in Me’. This attachment need appears twice on the circle graphic, both at the top of the circle when a child is going out to ‘explore’ but also at the bottom when a child is coming in for connection and support.
This need to be ‘delighted in’ speaks to the unconditional love we all seek to know; the desire to be accepted just for who you are and as you are, and not – as we are prone to doing in Western culture – for what you have achieved, done or how many Instagram followers you have. The expression of this delight is primarily conveyed non-verbally as a ‘twinkle in the eye’, a relaxed smile and relaxed presence, a moment of shared laughter.
When you are struggling with a child, noticing what your face communicates and ‘delighting in them’ through all the non-verbals - from the look in your eyes to your physical proximity, and tone of voice - are good places to start.
I was reminded of the message in my own face during a season when I was struggling with my son. Perhaps I caught my own reflection in the mirror and somehow became conscious of the frown and scowl I wore whenever I looked at him. I had been communicating displeasure, and naturally his defences were up, causing us both aggravation. Changing the expression on my face and making loving eye-contact broke the impasse.
Lingering on a loved one's face or eyes can feel intimidating and scary sometimes, especially if your own childhood was full of glares, hard stares, and eyes that flitted from one thing to the next but hardly ever landed on you. We may associate the face with vacant expressions that didn't acknowledge or affirm our existence. To look at a face can be a painful reminder of that disconnection. Thankfully, young children are free from this baggage, and as the Circle of Security Parenting course reveals, they are constantly looking ‘to fall in love with your face’. Revealing our faces to them and letting our eyes dive a little longer into theirs, is a good place to begin.