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Trust and Connection

Children need more than instructions. Trust and connection come before understanding. Before children seek explanations, they seek human attention and interpersonal connection. Before they understand words, they rely on their adult caregiver’s affection, gestures, sounds, and movements.

Before they understand reasons they understand relationships, kindness and support. Human development does not begin with information or instruction, but with connection.

A newborn enters the world unable to survive alone. The infant does not understand language, logic or social rules. Long before children understand the world, they begin experiencing whether the world is safe. The earliest prerequisite of development is not instruction, not compliance, not achievement. It is attachment.

The British psychiatrist John Bowlby described how attachment figures provide a secure base from which children can explore the world. They need at least one person they can depend on when frightened, uncertain, or overwhelmed. When the child is encouraged to venture outward to explore, and they encounter something new, they return to the adult for reassurance, guidance, and emotional regulation.

Safe, committed interpersonal relationships are the first developmental foundations on which curiosity, learning, communication, emotional regulation, and social understanding are built.

Human Beings need Meaning

Human beings do not merely need food, shelter, protection and instruction. We need meaning. We need to know what is happening around us, why it is happening, and how it relates to our lives. Understanding helps us predict what may happen next. It helps us adapt, solve problems, learn from experience, and make responsible decisions. It gives coherence to our experience and gradually allows us to develop purpose and self-direction.

A child who feels emotionally secure is more likely to attend, explore, try, persist and learn. The adult’s willingness to share the child’s interest communicates that “What interests you matters.” Children explore most confidently when they know that support is available if and when they need it. Interpersonal connection, opportunity, and interest create attention and energy and transform effort into enjoyment.

Belief, Trust and Respect

For many children, particularly children with developmental disabilities, communication differences, anxiety, sensory challenges, or histories of repeated failure, interest emerges after safety has been established and as empathic mediated experiences generate curiosity and sharing. 

Children need understanding, instruction, and information from adults who care for them and understand them. And children need direction and support to better understand themselves and other people’s feelings, intentions, and behaviors. Through shared experiences and focused activities the child and the adult explore each other’s emotions, associations and relationships, responsibilities, disappointments, achievements, and the ordinary involvements and problem-solving that make up everyday life.

Beyond Understanding: Why Explanations Matter

Parents, teachers and therapists emphasize teaching children what to do, when to do it, where to do it and how to do it. But far less time is spent learning to understand the child, and learning how to motivate, interest, and explain things to the child.

Under the pressure of daily routines, explanations are often replaced by instructions and commands. “Hurry up.” “Just do it.” “It’s complicated.” “Not now.” “Because I said so.” There are schedules to keep, meals to prepare, lessons to teach, goals to achieve.

Commands and instructions might temporarily regulate behavior, but kindness, warmth, understanding, and explanation are what develop interest, motivation, adaptive minds, and interpersonal relationships. Commands may achieve immediate compliance. But explanations cultivate connection and understanding. Commands tell children what to do. Explanations help them understand why they are doing it.

A child who learns only to follow directions remains dependent upon external guidance. A child who learns to understand reasons gradually develops judgment, self-respect, and self-reliance.

Explanations do not need to be lengthy or complex. Often, sitting close to the child and giving a few thoughtful phrases or sentences is enough. Sometimes, especially in the early stages, an explanation may be only partially understood, and that is often okay. Development frequently occurs when children are exposed to ideas that stretch their imagination and thinking just beyond what they presently comprehend.

What matters is not whether every word is understood. What matters is the larger message conveyed by the act of explaining. When adults explain in the right way they communicate respect, trust and belief in the child and in the relationship. They communicate their commitment and their conviction that the child is worthy of engagement and capable of learning. It says to the child, “Your feelings, interests and understanding matter. I believe you can understand more than you are able to do today. I believe we can learn together and succeed together.”

Many children with developmental disabilities spend much of their day receiving prompts, directives, reminders, corrections and behavioral instructions. They are told what to do, where to go, how to sit, how to respond, and what is expected of them.

They are told “no” hundreds of times a day. If you don’t believe me, have someone video your child’s interactions with adults from the time they wake up until the time they fall asleep, and the times they wake up at night. Many children hear the word “no” more than any other term the entire day. After so many repetitions, the word “no” is no longer heard. Some children come to challenge, or even hate, the term “no,” no matter the context.

Yet surprisingly, children often receive few explanations. Adults say, “We don’t have time.” “There is no need for explanations. They are the kid and I am the adult.” “The child will not understand anyway.” “The child knows why and has been told why in the past, but it does not help.”

“Good job,” incessantly repeated over and over again has the same ineffective outcomes as continually repeated “no’s.” Repeating the mantra, “Good job,” is not meaningful or useful feedback. “It lacks specificity, promotes external validation, and focuses on outcomes rather than effort.”

Reliance on stickers or food rewards is “training,” not learning how to learn, and does not build authentic connections with other human beings. Overreliance on external control and stimulus-response manipulation prevents the child from learning how to make responsible decisions built upon purpose, improved judgment, and personal and social values.

Dependence on others making too many decisions and choices for the child may seem to be based on love and protection, but the child’s blind compliance blocks real understanding and responsible self-reliance. Intrinsic motivation is far more effective for deeper and more long-term learning and for supporting human relationships. Compliance is not cooperation or engagement.

The Explanation Phenomenon

Again and again I have observed an explanation phenomenon. A sort of comprehension-and-collaboration leapfrog effect. Children whose current language and intellectual ability appeared limited were often able to overcome a situation that was difficult or fearful for them when just the right explanation was offered and received in just the right way. I suspected some of these children might understand only fragments of the explanation I was about to offer, but I attempted to explain anyway. I tried to adapt the explanation to the individual child and to the particular context. I was careful to adjust if I noted confusion or frustration.

I gently explained what was happening. I explained why it was happening. I explained what we would do next. In my experience something surprising and remarkable often occurred. In most cases, the child would look at me and listen. I could not tell how much of the content they actually understood, but the child would usually become calmer, look more thoughtful, and become more flexible and cooperative. More willing to try or to try again.

What was happening? Maybe because understanding is communicated through more than words? Perhaps the child understands more than we adults assume? Maybe the child was listening not only to language but to my undivided attention, my tone, rhythm, facial expression, emotional intention, and optimistic belief in them?

Maybe the child was sensing, “If he is explaining this to me, it must matter. If he is taking the time to explain it to me maybe he believes that I can understand? That I can do it?”

The explanation itself becomes an attachment behavior. It communicates, “I am paying attention to your personal and subjective experience.” Children often remember the attention and the positive feelings of being understood longer than the explanation itself.

Explanations are not merely vehicles for transferring information. They help organize the experience, the emotion, the meaning and the intention. They are vehicles for transferring confidence, meaning, perspective, and hope.

In the future, I hope to discuss the amazing influence Fred Rogers’ personality and explanations had on young children even through the medium of television.

Parallel Assessment and Parallel Development

In Parallel Assessment and Parallel Development models, every moment becomes an opportunity for understanding.  Every moment of shared interest becomes an opening for learning. Every explanation becomes an occasion for belief, connection and development.

When a child shows fascination with an object or activity, or avoids a task, or becomes frustrated, or persists through difficulty, the adult learns something important about this child. The child’s health and wellness, their motivation, language, attention, memory, sensory processing, feelings and emotional regulation, their problem-solving approach and social understanding all reveal themselves within everyday activities and interactions.

Assessment does not take place primarily through tests or measurements, or comparisons with others.  But through participation with you in learning and in life. We look to see if this child is connecting, if they are learning and progressing. We want to know what is helpful in their development and what is not.

The adult joins and supports the child, becomes aware of their own attitudes, expectations, and behaviors, prioritizing the interpersonal relationship and the mediated learning experience. Joint interest, sharing, enjoyment, assessment and learning unfold naturally within meaningful activities and relationships.

Assessment involves the interactions of integrated developmental domains during different activities and contexts.  With human beings, nothing develops in isolation. Each system affects every other system. The child develops as an integrated whole.

Synontogeny, Learning and Growing Together

Throughout Parallel Assessment and Parallel Development the child changes and so do their adult mediators. Parents become more patient. Teachers become more observant and interactive. Therapists become more imaginative and more interesting.

The child teaches us how to teach them. They reveal which activities, explanations, examples, and modeling are most significant. Mediators learn when to support the child and when to help motivate and extend the child’s reach. When to slow down and when to backtrack and re-establish necessary prerequisites.

The learning and the interpersonal relationship changes and evolves. The ongoing mutual development reflects the principle of Synontogeny. The adult influences the child. The child influences the adult. Each becomes a participant in the development of the other.

The secure base is not static. It deepens through many enjoyable, shared experiences. Trust, understanding, and communication grow. Both participants, the interpersonal relationship, and the quality of interest and learning are transformed.

Attachment, interest and explanation are not separate processes. The key is integrated connection. Attachment and connection without mediation and progress may become dependency. Interest without explanation, understanding and improvement may become aimless repetitive activity. Explanation without personal meaning and relevance is of no consequence.

The Deeper Purpose

The deeper purpose of parenting, teaching and therapy is not merely to teach skills, or to manage behavior, or to impose compliance. It is to create quality relationships that nurture curiosity and sharing that help the child make better sense of their world and to discover their personal goodness, meaning, and purpose in the world.

Children need adults who notice what captures their attention. They need adults who join them in their interests. They need adults who help them understand what they are experiencing. Most of all, they need adults who believe that the child they are helping is worthy of explanation and capable of growth.

The Foundations of Organizing Minds

The organization of minds deepens through shared interests. It expands through explanation when one human being helps another discover not only how the world works but how communication, interpersonal relationships and collaboration work.

Jacob

Jacob was four years old and had significant delays in language, social communication, emotional regulation, and problem-solving. Although he used a few single words, much of his communication consisted of gestures, pulling adults by the hand, crying, or avoiding situations he found difficult. He was especially sensitive to sounds that he perceived as unbearably loud, harsh, or even painful.  

When Jacob’s mother turned on the vacuum cleaner, Jacob covered his ears, screamed, and ran to another room. His behavior was explained to his parents and teachers as “part of his syndrome,” “unregulated impulsivity and oppositional behavior,” “probably made worse by overly permissive caregiving and lack of limit setting.”

Jacob did not understand what the vacuum cleaner was, what it was for, or how it worked. He did not understand why it made such a frightening noise. He did not know how long the sound would continue. He did not know whether he was safe. His neurologically based sensory issues, his distress from surprising or loud noises temporarily overwhelmed his ability to reason or to communicate.

Jacob was too upset by the noise of the vacuum cleaner to listen to explanations.

Later in the afternoon, his mother calmly sat down next to Jacob and said, “The vacuum is loud; you are right. I know it sounds really scary to you, but it can’t hurt you. I’ll show you how it works. We can turn it on and turn it off. I will show you. Let’s put on your [noise canceling] earphones and we can try turning on the vacuum cleaner for just a second and then we can turn it off, you can turn it off.”

Jacob probably only understood portions of her explanation, but his mother was so attentive, sensitive, patient, and caring that he listened even though it was a long explanation and above his current receptive language level. But his mother also did a lot of gesturing, appropriately changed her facial expressions, and seemed so optimistic, understanding, encouraging, and willing to explain.

He looked at the noisy machine and watched and listened as his mother pointed to different parts of the vacuum cleaner and gave short explanations.  “This button turns it on. Press it again, and it turns it off and stops making noise.” “Come on,” she said with a slight smile, you can help me clean the carpet.” Slowly, his mother had him touch the handle. When he was used to touching the handle they began pushing the vacuum cleaner together for a few minutes, without turning on the motor. First they went slowly. Then zoom, they sped up and went around and around in circles. Jacob had a little smile on his face. That was enough for the first day.

The next day they pushed the silent vacuum cleaner together for a little longer than the day before.

On the third day while they were pushing the silent machine his mother said, “I will stay here with you. Be sure you have your earphones on. I will hold onto the handle, and you can turn it on and turn it off with the button. Let’s try together. It will be fun. I need your help. You can turn it on and turn it off as many times as you want. Come on, I will help you.”

They practiced turning it on and off for a few minutes during the next few days. Eventually, Jacob was better able to tolerate the muffled sound and vibration for a short time while wearing his noise-canceling earphones and knowing he could turn it off whenever he wanted.

After a few days, he seemed not to be afraid and even enjoyed pushing the vacuum cleaner with his mother, and both were laughing out loud. Jacob eventually was able to turn it on and off by himself while his mother stood next to him with her hand on his shoulder. In the coming weeks, he frequently practiced vacuuming the carpets with his mother’s close mediation. His mother said, “What a brave person you are. And you help me so much. Thank you.”

Their positive attachment relationship had been developing over years. His mother’s explanations, their gentle, playful, shared, and supported practice, plus his noise-canceling earphones gradually transformed his fear into understanding and more independent action. What initially was assumed to be the result of a “genetic and learned behavioral problem” and “permissive parenting” became an opportunity for connection, agency, emotional regulation, communication, learning, and problem-solving.

Jacob’s mother entered the child’s experience rather than simply reacting to the child’s behavior. She provided emotional safety through her personal relationship with Jacob. She joined the child’s focus of attention and feelings. She offered belief, support, explanations, and encouraged mediated practice that helped organize Jacob’s chaotic experience into better understanding, better control of the situation, and playful collaboration.

Copyright © 2025 Shlomo Chaim

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