Validation & vindication
There have been plenty among my friends & family who have thought me mad because I won't let my baby cry.
He barely gets out a few squeaks before I'm racing to attend, no matter what hour of the day or night. I have no idea how other mothers can cope with the physical pain of hearing their child crying; you'd think the belly cramps etc would have eased off once we stopped breastfeeding, but they haven't. In fact I sometimes think they've become worse.
However as it turns out, the latest school of thought supports my behaviour 100%.
What was once called "bonding" is now termed "attachment" and is deemed to have bigger implications than just the hookup between mother and child. (Or victim and tyrant, depending on your level of sleep deprivation, ha ha)
Apparently someone somewhere has measured "good" and "bad" experiences young children have, dating right back to when they popped out all gooey and brand new. The current wisdom is that if a child has more negative experiences in a day than positive ones, and this continues, then there is damage to a part of the frontal lobe that helps determine self esteem, confidence & personal growth. If the damage continues for long, (ie into toddlerhood) then the brain is not only smaller in this area, but will self prune. Yep - they're so hooked into feeling bad that they will keep the hurt going because they have become programmed to do so.
If the situation isn't rectified VERY soon afterwards, the child ends up one of those they consider "hard wired", and for examples of this go on a tour of any prison or mental health facility, apparently.
And guess what one of the most traumatic 'bad experiences' your average baby experiences most commonly? Yep. Being left to cry.
So despite being told that running to comfort my child every time he cries will surely make him into a moody, emotionally unstable, demanding child, the hot word is that the opposite is true.
All I know is that my son laughs more than he cries, and is very full of confidence & trust for one so young. While the study is interesting, my validation comes from Braeden himself.
That's all any mother can do.
posted by Karl at
9:53 am
3 Comments:
How interesting is that! I never let my kids cry either, and was often lectured on it, but really they were very easy babies (gave me no grief until it came to toilet training - and then that was a shock!) so it wasn't a big issue to cater to their every need. Both are very self confident individuals now - I thought they got that determined bloody mindedness and absolute belief that they know everything from their father (or it was a teenage thing) but there ya go - it was something I did.
Braeden looks so grown up!
Oh dear... prepare for pedantry! [grin!]
John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth (http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/online/inge_origins.pdf)
and Margaret Mahler (http://www.apsa.org/japa/522/Coates-571-601-post.pdf) did the pioneering work on attachment theory and they are a standard part of what I have been taught in my Marriage and Family Therapy curriculum. Not so very new though, these studies actually started in the late 1940s and what you are reading now is theory built over more than 50 years!
I have seen the films of babies left by mothers and the various stages they go through, on into withdrawal where their vital signs drop, blood is pulled in from all their extremeties and they basically prepare to stave off death as long as possible.
I have been taught that an infant has NO understanding of being left alone. In an evolutionary sense babies cannot be left to cry because they attract predators to the group and when left, stop crying because they expect to be eaten. So they shut down all their 'extraneous' systems for long term survival.
For interesting furthers on the neurological underpinnings for attachment theory, look up "Parenting From the Inside Out" by David Siegel and Mary Hartzell.
It makes sense to me... My parents don't care much for this theory since, if we were warm, dry and fed, they left my sisters and me in our cribs, stuffed towels under the door and cranked up the music to drown us out.
Braedon just keeps gettin g more handsome!
Quick replies while His Lordship is softly snoring in time to his baby CD..
Wino - The info came from a Plunket nurse who now specialises in mental health of mother and baby, and she shared an anecdote that ties in with your experiences. When her first child was born it was accepted practice that you followed the set schedule which included leaving children to cry themselves to sleep, if they weren't immediately accepting of being put to bed according to the clock on the wall rather than their internal one. For her successive children, this nurse decided to follow her own good judgment, and nurtured rather than clockwatched.
Her first child (she says) has grown to be somewhat prone to moodswings as a grown man, and finds it hard to cope with his own child's demands, almost to the point of resenting the new baby and its need for attention.
The other two kids are independent and confident, and very stable in their moods and attitudes.
Just one case study.. but it's food for thought :-)
...
Mb - love the new blog, btw! Good going, girlfriend :-)
LOL I should have known by the time it got to me it would hardly be "new" after all. Amazingly this is the first time I've heard of the term & study, and I think more parents (impending & established) should be told about it because it's very hard to fly in the face of the old school who insist that it's healthy for a baby to cry. Develops lungs, don't you know ;-) Maybe I'm not "making a rod for my own back" as I've been so often frowningly told, but accidentally investing in a more well-rounded teen?
I guess at the end of the day all any parent can do is what they feel to be best, and to take each knackering day one hour at a time.
And hope like hell the CD player in the bedroom doesn't burn out ;-)
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