I love articles that tell it like it is: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.09/ChildrenNeedTou.html
I feel so sad that we’ve come so far from nature that mothers don’t question the fact that they can’t bear listening to their baby cry and not comforting them. So many women have told me about how their husbands had to pin them to the sofa to stop them going to their babies. In the first, and only, minute of me trying out controlled crying with Flopsy, my heart broke…I felt physically sick listening to her. Luckily I trusted my instincts enough to believe that my body was telling me what I was doing was WRONG, I listened to what my hormones and my emotions were telling me and I went to get my baby. A friend of mine managed to overcome her distress as her baby cried for one hour, then went to sleep. He woke up one hour later and vomitted, then proceeded to vomit all night long. She vowed never, ever to leave him to cry again, and to tell everyone she met how wrong it is. Thank goodness she didn’t listen to the childcare authors and health visitors that tell parents it’s ok for babies to vomit! I feel so passionately about this subject (in case you didn’t guess!) so every time I read an article by or about respected people that tells us how dangerous and damaging it is, particularly in the long term (despite those who tell us that it’s worth it in the end!!!), my heart lifts. I just wish that everyone read these articles and books, rather than those by flipping Gina Ford, Gary Ezzo and Richard Ferber etc.! Books that recommend CC should be banned - no, burned - as they effectively recommend child abuse. The NSPCC define child abuse as ‘when a child suffers harm…because of…emotional cruelty’. Many websites talk about abuse including not meeting a child’s emotional needs. How can people say that leaving a baby to cry is a good thing? And what’s worse, is that all the books that advocate it say ‘as long as the baby doesn’t need anything, then they’ll be fine’. What????????? It needs comfort!!! Aaaaarrrggghhh!!!!!!! Why do we separate comfort from all the other things we see as so important to parenting? We see breastfeeding as just one way of getting milk into a baby, when it’s not just that, in fact to a baby, the milk is probably only a tiny part of breastfeeding, which is why I like the term ‘nursing’ much better - or even ‘nurturing at the breast’. Why are we so unconcerned with baby’s emotional needs? We wouldn’t refuse our partners if they asked for a cuddle (well, I guess we might, but at least we could explain it to them!), yet we think that if we dare to give in to our manipulative little babies and cuddle them when they ask for it, we’ll be left with demanding little devil!
Ok, rant over for now! And, as a disclaimer, I’d like to clarify that I’m not talking about the times when we are at our wits end rocking a colicky baby on our own for hours and hours and we decide that if we don’t put them down and walk into a different room some harm might come to something or someone. I am talking about the systematic attempts to drum it into a baby that there is no point in crying…no one will come.
HT: Andrea
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
-
Regular reads
Websites of interest
- 1 currently online
- 4 maximum concurrent
- 78111 total visitors
3:28 pm
Thanks for this post. I had taken some of the Ezzo’s classes before my first was born. I was a wreck when she was born because I was fighting all of my God-given maternal instincts. I had to undo all of the hyper-scheduling and guilt before I could even enjoy my baby. Since then I’ve had two more and I’m enjoying life as a relaxed, centered mom.
When my babies cry I hold them, when they are hungry I feed them. I meet THEIR needs, not mine. I can sleep later, but my baby needs me now. I think much of the scheduling is for the parents, not the baby.
How you can just let them cry astounds me. What if something really was wrong? I see it as my place to be a picture of God to them–be there when they call, to comfort and support and love like crazy.
8:01 pm
I find the books that promote ‘controlled crying’ really upset me. The idea that a baby will ‘manipulate’ the parent preposterous.
8:14 pm
With you all the way. I have tried it, too - it felt (and was) wrong, wrong wrong. Hearing my baby cry is hard enough even when I am there with her offering comfort, let alone when I know that she thinks I have abandoned her. Could never do it again.
Actually, this reminds me of a recent discussion about tantrums, the general consensus seeming to be that you should IGNORE them. We were talking about babies of around 15 months here….
To me, even the word “tantrum” seemed wrong. A tantrum is a manipulative rage produced almost deliberately, for a particular purpose; whereas what babies do is merely to express their feelings of anger and frustration. What they need is to be acknowledged and comforted, not ignored!
Personally, I just couldn’t ignore an enraged, frustrated screaming baby any more than I could ignore a tired, distressed screaming baby.
If it were *me* in a state like that, I don’t think being ignored would make *me* feel good, or loved, or protected, or secure. It wouldn’t be good for *me*, and I don’t see how ignoring a baby in the same state can be good for it either.
9:14 pm
The one piece of advice, actually correct advice my mom gave me on child-rearing was that you cannot spoil a baby. If they cry, it means that they either need to be changed, fed, or held. OK, they might be hot or cold but her point was that the baby has a need and we are responsible in meeting that need.
I don’t get it either when folks think it is ok to let a baby cry-it-out. No way. And I had one of those colicky baby’s; 24×7 non-stop crying. Finally discovered he could not yet process dairy protein so once I eliminated dairy from my diet he was a happy baby. I’m so glad I was there to help ease his pain while I figured out what it was in my diet causing his pain.
9:19 pm
Get this - is Denmark it is normal (and by that I mean that 99% of em do it) to put your baby out in a pram (they all use big silver cross types) every afternoon from being three weeks old, with masses of clothes and duvets on top, they put them outside and let them cry themselves to sleep. I could not believe it the first time I saw it..but they all do it, and they all use dummies (not that I’ve got anything against dummies..but think about the fact that 99% of people use dummies..they put a dummy in the kids mouth as soon as they are born- I jest not.) My next door neighbour leaves her baby to cry and cry and cry till you can hear it clawing at it’s face. I have phoned over to her because I was actually worried that something may have happened to her and that was why she couldn’t go to her babe..she thought I was nuts. The childminders line four prams up with screaming babies in (they are allowed five) and let em all scream to sleep. Of sourse most of the kids stop the screaming after a year..but they keep this habit up well after the kid is two years old and I’ve heard big kids screaming too. Everyone thinks Scandinavia is so free and liberal..but each culture has it’s quirks. They don’t hit kids here and the kids are more ‘malleable’ but maybe that is because they have lost their spirit. It’s like a parrallel universe! The health visitor actually tried to give me a hard time for not putting my babe outside to sleep like this..she said it wasn’t healthy to let them sleep inside. *????*
11:36 pm
2 of ours were colic.
One winter the only time I got more than 2 hours sleep at a time was during the day when Andrea was up. At night, I alternated between rocking chair and walking. Then sleep for 1-2 hours. My ribs were bruised most of the time because of the reflex she was having from the pain she was in.
With the second one, it 2-3 hours in the evening to get her through it and then she was usually okay until the next afternoon.
I would do it again in a heartbeat. They were worth it. The obvious thing is that crying is the only way that a small child has of communicating any and all forms of distress.
1:10 am
Jeepers, crying is the only way they can communicate. Mothers are built to have an emotional response to our baby’s cry, why deny it?
And why are people so quick to dissasocciate from their babies?
I did the math. Assume your child will be in your care fo 20 years. If you spend every minute of the first TWO years just holding them, that’s only a mere 10% of the time they are in your care. And we can’t hold them for ten percent of their time with us??
I can assure you it flies by far too fast.
12:41 pm
It is interesting that research is validating what our instincts tell us, that babies need cuddling and nurturing when they cry out for it. That is how they learn that that are safe and loved, and that the world is a trustworthy place.
Steph ~ http://momof3feistykids.blogspot.com
11:03 am
It’s such a shame that in this culture where everything has to be validated by scientific research, we have largely been encouraged to disregard instinct in favour of whichever research is flavour of the month. Thank goodness for people like you and your friends, who remind us all that there is no better guide to parenting than instinct and love.