We shouldn't fear a bit of messiness in our interactions with people we care about, says psychologist Dr Ed Tronick. He recently co-authored the book The Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs of Relationships Are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust with paediatrician Dr Claudia Gold.

We shouldn't fear a bit of messiness in our interactions with people we care about, says psychologist Dr Ed Tronick.

He recently co-authored the book The Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs of Relationships Are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust with pediatrician Dr Claudia Gold.

Listen to Dr Ed Tronick on Nine to Noon

Dr Tronick was well-known for the 1975 'Still Face Experiment' which explored how well infants can read emotions and react to them.

At the time, it was generally believed infants couldn't read faces, Tronick tells Kathryn Ryan, but we now know that a sense of emotional connection is absolutely critical for a baby's social development.

"The experiment demonstrated that when you changed the mother's behaviour ... that had a profound effect on the infant and how they wanted to engage with the mother."

When the mother and infant started interacting again - after she had presented a still face - they very quickly got back in synch with one another and very quickly re-attuned to each another.

"When they re-engage with other another they actually repaired the interaction."

Tronick defines 'self-regulation' as a person's ability to control their physiology and emotions in the face of some form of stress.

When the babies were dysregulated by their mother's still face, they usually tried to keep themselves under emotional control but over time their capacity to regulate themselves wore thin.

"They use up the resource for doing that. They use up their regulatory capacities, they become distressed and they become disorganised and they're not able to put themselves back together again."

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By supporting and calming a child, parents help them to gradually develop the inner resources to regulate themselves, Dr Tronick says.

"The infant is part of a system and the other part of the system is the parent or the carer. And the carer provides resources for the infant that the infant is not able to provide for themselves."

On the parents' side, a new baby provides a really wonderful opportunity to change how you are in the world, he says.

"Being with a new baby, really relating to a new baby, demands that you be open to the experience of what the baby is like and allow yourself to adjust and change to the baby…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details