not know that mother will ease it for him. He only knows that if he can suck he will survive. This terrifying hunger thing must be stopped! It is crucial that mother be there before baby becomes anxious and frantic (and this is possible only if they are not in separate rooms). Then baby learns not to associate the feeling of hunger with the feeling of distress. This realization is one of the earliest “house rules” that baby can learn: crying frantically when hungry is neither necessary nor the norm in this strange new life.
why babies in other cultures cry less
Infant-care specialists who study parenting styles around the world have noticed that infants in more “primitive” cultures usually cry less. One of the reasons for this diminished crying is that infants in these cultures spend most of their day in someone’s arms. Unlike babies in Western cultures, who spend much of their time in cots or infant seats, babies in many other cultures are carried in the caregiver’s arms or in a sling. In fact, some cultures have a “ground-touching ceremony”. Around six months of age babies are ceremoniously put down to crawl on the ground, and they do so quite happily. Mothers continue to hold and carry children as often as the children want, up to three years of age. Western cultures are finally catching on to what other cultures have long known – carried babies cry less.
Dr Melvin Konner, a physician and anthropologist who studies infant-care practices around the world, once translated a fear-of-spoiling passage from a best-selling American infant-care book to a group of African parents in a primitive tribe who practise a high-touch, attachment style of parenting, and whose infants are noted for their calmness. After hearing the warning about spoiling babies from picking them up too often, these mothers responded, “Doesn’t he [the author] understand it’s only a baby, that’s why it cries? You pick it up. Later when it’s older, it will have sense. It won’t cry anymore.” In essence, these intuitive parents rejected the spoiling theory as utter nonsense.
Mellow out yourself. One of the most difficult things about parenting for a novice mother is keeping her cool when baby loses his. It’s a perfectly normal reaction for a new mother, on the first note of her baby’s cry, to jump up immediately, rush to the baby, pick her up with tense arms, stare at baby intently as if to say “What’s wrong?!”, and begin frantically bouncing baby up and down as if trying to jiggle the cry out of him. It’s as though the mother is reacting out of guilt and fear that something she did – putting the baby down alone perhaps – caused the crying. Even though she means this tense reaction as a loving gesture of comfort, the baby may catch her worry, and the cry will escalate. A more effective reaction would start with putting on her best worry-free face, calmly and smoothly picking baby up to comfort him, and rocking in an easy, slow motion, giving baby the message “I’m right here. I won’t put you down again.”
Though some new mothers are more anxious than others, they can all learn the easy art of baby calming. Having confidence in your mothering skills is the first step. You will notice that an experienced mother can often comfort your baby more easily than you can, at least temporarily. Watch her perform. The baby’s cry doesn’t rattle her; but slowly, calmly, in a relaxed, yet caring way, she uses her whole body to give the baby the message that there is no need to cry harder, She transmits her quiet confidence to the baby, and the baby incorporates her relaxed attitude into his own state of being. Even if you’re new to mothering, you can still feel confident. From the moment your baby is born, you are the person who knows him best. Trust yourself.
crying and child abuse
One day I was counselling a teenage mother who had confessed to beating her one-year-old child with a wooden spoon. During our session, this usually capable and caring girl broke down crying. “His cries were so grating on my nerves, and he wouldn’t stop. Those shrieks just got to me, and I got so angry. I had flashbacks of my father hitting me with a wooden spoon during one of my tantrums. Before I knew it, I grabbed the wooden spoon and let this poor little baby have it.”
Child abuse studies have shown the following findings:
• Battered babies generally have more disturbing cries.
• Battering parents are more likely to label their babies “difficult”.
• Battering parents are more likely to practise a less responsive style of parenting.
It is important to teach babies to cry, “better”, so they don’t develop an ear-grating cry that triggers anger rather than empathy. Much child abuse could be avoided by teaching parents who are at risk for child abuse (families in high-stress situations and parents who were themselves abused as children) to give a nurturant response to their baby’s cries. The prevention of child abuse is another example of the good that can happen when parents learn to listen to their babies.
Anticipate. The best way to ward off an all-out wail is to try, as much as possible, to set conditions so that baby does not have to cry to get her needs met. Try to read your baby’s pre-cry signals and intervene at that point; don’t let her learn that she has to cry loudly to get a response. The skill of anticipating cries can come only after days and weeks of baby watching, learning to pick up on little cues that say that your baby needs something, that a cry is soon to follow. If your baby sucks on her fingers, seems disappointed, and then starts to cry, next time feed her when the finger sucking begins, a cue that she is hungry. You’ll avoid the crying stage. Developing your skills as a baby-comforter means walking that fine line between responding too quickly and waiting too long. This will be different for different babies and in different situations. Don’t worry, your baby will grade you mainly on your effort, not on whether you always read the cues right.
danger zone
The feeling that you want to shake your baby is a red flag, signalling a need for immediate help. Sometimes the ear-shattering shrieks of a hurting, colicky baby can stretch a parent to the point of irrational anger when the parent just wants to “shake it out of him”. Angrily shaking baby’s fragile brain and spinal structures can cause permanent, sometimes fatal, damage. Cry-sis (now called Serene) operates a hotline for parents to call if they feel themselves reaching this point. 020 7474 5011.
Show baby a sweeter sound. Give baby a sound he likes to hear better than his own cry. Crying quickly becomes self-perpetuating – the more loudly baby cries, the more he is driven to cry. By interrupting a cry long enough to get eye contact you can help him stop. To calm a high-need baby you need to come up with a wide repertoire of sounds. As soon as your infant starts crying, begin humming, singing, whistling, talking nonsense, whatever loud or soft voice or facial contortion catches your baby’s attention mid-cry and prompts him to listen to you. Gesturing and whispering “Shhhh” is unlikely to mute a melodramatic crier. Yet this “shush” sound repeated rhythmically over and over resembles the sound of uterine blood flow and, once you get baby’s attention, may be a familiar sound that soothes.
Don’t expect competing sounds to mellow your baby’s cry every time, but it is good practice to get an early start teaching baby which sounds trigger pleasant responses. Crying babies often turn into whiny toddlers, and you can call on the ear-pleasing sounds learned in babyhood to improve the audio quality of the toddler’s communication. Give your toddler the message “I don’t respond to whining” by telling him, “Let mummy hear your big boy voice, and then we’ll go out and play.” The earlier you begin practising these voice lessons, the more likely they are to work.