Clear a table; push aside any distractions. I want you to make a Sopwith Camel. No hints. No lifelines. Just do it.
Some of you will sit down and just start going to town, because you know what a Sopwith Camel is. You have a picture in your mind of what it looks like, so you know how to do it. You have a mental model of this World War I biplane flown by the British in the dogfights over France. Or you are a fan of "Peanuts" and the dashing pilot of fortune, Snoopy, and build a dog house.
For the rest of us, if we had no image of what the assignment was, the task would be either impossible or the product would end up pretty ridiculous. Most certainly it would have a hump. It would be the mental model of the few who knew that would make them the heroes and ace students. Without the mental model, we are shot down or grounded.
Now take a different assignment. Clear the same table, spread out a blanket, and lay down a baby. For this next task, I want you to make a fine human being who is happy and productive. I want you to make a future grown-up who is secure, responsible, kind and a good spouse and parent. Being cute, playing the French horn and being a star student and ace athlete are optional.
I say this is the equivalent task of the construction of the Sopwith Camel, but you protest it is not the same as building a toy airplane. It can't be done. You don't know how. But the answer is the one and the same; it has to do with your mental model.
Mental models of being a parent and the construction of a plane are both products of our brain learning, seeing and doing. If you have seen something or, even better, have experienced it with all the senses including touch and smell and taste, the brain creates a substitution for the real thing. It has an idea of what it is. It is not perfect with the details of a blueprint or other internal schematics, but it permits the body to function in this chaotic and complex world. The brain has finite space and memory, and to simplify the world to make it comprehensible and tolerable, there are some compromises. The biological solution is the mental model.
It is the same with the mental model of parenting. We learn how to parent from our parents or those who cared for us. I know a woman whose own biological mother became addicted to drugs when the woman was 3, so her parenting model was a combination of the time before age 3 with her mother and the time after with her caring grandmother. It was a model of both what to do and what not to do.
These models are molded and shaped by the millions of encounters and exchanges that the child has with the principal attachment figure. The mental foundation is laid down by the style of response the mother displays during times of distress. Parents portray characteristic stress-management and problem-solving types. That creates the mental model for the next generation. It becomes the intuition or instinctive responses when people get bummed out or overwhelmed with tension. The model, therefore, is often unspoken but can be retrieved from this nonverbal space by reflection and stories from the past. That is why, for me, it is so important to recall our memories, so that we know what mental model we are working from as we parent our own children.
If we fail to examine the style of our teachers, meaning our own parents or guardians and the model they taught us, when we are asked to build a 1917 fighter-plane child, we may end up with an odd-looking dromedary for a kid. Maybe that is what happened to Charlie Brown.
Joseph Cramer, M.D., is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. He can be reached at jgcramermd@yahoo.com.