Imagine you get the following email from a friend or relative, who knows you are

Question

Imagine you get the following email from a friend or relative, who knows you are taking this course, and who wants your opinion based on your new knowledge of developmental processes: I am sorry to bother you with an email, but I have recently been faced with a personal dilemma. I was discharged from the Army shortly after my child was born. I received a phone call this Monday telling me that I have been reinstated and I will be asked to do a two year deployment overseas. I wanted to ask you about your opinion on how this is going to affect our relationship and if our attachment will suffer because of this. I will be deployed in a month or two, and he is only 4 months old now. Will he remember who / am? / am having a great deal of difficulty dealing with this since this is my first child. I am going to miss a lot of the "firsts" and, from our class, I know that babies have short memories. I want an unbiased opinion. My mother is trying to tell me that he will remember me, but I need someone to be honest and upfront with me in this situation. Honesty, right now, will help me deal with this better; at least I will know what I will be dealing with when I get back. I thank you for any advice you can give me on how to keep our attachment from being broken completely. Use your knowledge of what we have learned so far in class to give advice to this parent. Include information not only from attachment theory (this chapter) but also from research in memory, the child's sensory abilities, etc. You may assume that the parent, while overseas, can communicate regularly with family in the United States via a variety of modalities

Explanation / Answer

My response would be something like this in this case:

While your child is too small to remember a face, even that of yours – his father, if hidden for some time, it never implies that the child will forget you as he grows up while you are away. As per the research on the child’s sensory abilities, the baby who is hardly 4 months old may easily forget any face and/ or personality they don’t see for long. It’s not just the case with you; in fact, infants between 0.6 months of age tend to forget the things that they don’t see for longer periods of time. However, thanks to a wide variety of modalities available today, you can reduce and almost eliminate the physical distance by keeping in constant touch with your baby through voice and video calls where he gets to hear and see you regularly. Furthermore, as we’ve been taught in our classes, attachment is an enduring, deep emotional bond connecting one person to another (you and your son in this case) across space and time. Initially, you may feel as if the attachment you have with your child isn’t really affecting your baby or that this attachment isn’t reciprocal. However, your loving, caring and sensitive behavior and attitude towards you infant now and when you are away (but in touch through various modalities of communication) will lay a strong foundation of a beautiful and strong bond between you and your child. In short, your mum is right when she says that your child will remember you even if you aren’t around for some time. However, it is up to you how you maintain the beautiful father-son bond that begins for form right from the very first day when you held your newborn in the arms. So the mantra is: take up the job call and make sure you are always in touch with your baby. Rest assured, your baby will never forget you as long as you make him feel the love, care, and affection you feel for him.

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