Comments on: Reading the Cues - How to Respond to Baby’s Cries.

By: Marion Badenoch Rose

Marion Badenoch Rose — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:00:09 +0000

I appreciate reading all the comments people have made. Crying babies is a very emotive issue and usually people respond in strong ways - either with, “No, babies don’t need to cry once all their needs are met,” or, “Wow, this makes so much sense to me, I wish I had known it before.” My aim is not to criticize or change the minds of those who think the former, but rather, to give more information to those who think the latter.
I also think that unless people have read The Aware Baby and also tried it out with their own children, when they see the difference - more eye contact, more relaxation, more presence, more concentration, easy sleep; that the concept of crying as emotional release, as well as communication - makes sense.
By the way, I wanted to add that the peak of crying at 6 weeks does not only occur in the West. In the !Kung infants of Africa, a hunter-gatherer society, there was the same peak, although the amount of crying was less. Other researchers found that babies in a small rural town in India cried as much as babies in London, with a similar peak at around six weeks of age. (see The Aware Baby for more details and references.)

By: Chrsty

Chrsty — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:18:49 +0000

I agree Henrietta

There are reasons why children cry. And our job as parents is to get to the bottom of that and help the child fix it (in the case of an older child who is crying because he’s afraid to go to school) or fix it for the child in the case where the babies needs aren’t being met.

Crying is communication - a child trying to tell us things aren’t fine as they are. A sign that we should get to the bottom of things.

As bad as it can be to not let your child cry to communicate what’s its feeling (stuffing him with a pacifier) it is equally wrong to let him get on with his tears and not get to the reason why the child needs to have this cry.

I don’t know, I just think that we’re missing the point here. Tears will come. Accept that make peace with it and be brave enough to get to the why of the cry.

By: Henriette

Henriette — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:04:18 +0000

Boy i have mixed feelings with this issue, I really think it depends on your childs age and personality.
Some of it might be true with bigger babies - but not with small babies
- I think every cry calls for an answer….

Did I do something wrong with my daughter ?

As a baby she was so content that she hardly ever cried … ….

Why?
I fed her BEFORE she started to cry for food…
she seemed to go from happy to absolutely crazy upset in a minute if food didnt come right now…
I put her to sleep before she cried- just looking at the small signals…= no crying
I looked and watched and learned how to read her signals and she was the safest and happiest child that I know.
Today sh is really nice teen- yes she is sensitive in some ways- she doesnt do well in the junglelaw in school - but she is learning that not all kids begave fair or is trustworthy- but she trust me - she knows that I Â´ll help her- to solve problems….

Sure we all need to be upset
- I donÂ´t mind sitting with a bigger child that I know is safe, warm- has a clean nappy -is well fed - and let that child cry in my arms … for surely even children can feel sadness and anger or just have a blue monday

But I really donÂ´t think that a small baby - will make the connection between breast= food= safety and as a grown up end being abusive with food.
It much more likely that a bigger child is given food to shut up ! and they might surely make that connection… but not that young a baby

By: Joanne Hay

Joanne Hay — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:08:23 +0000

The main point I take from Marion’s work is that my emotional baggage can sometimes get in the way of my being present with my children. I still find it hard to be present with them when they are upset because as a child I had no one to do it for me. I simply don’t have the training. I’m very grateful Marion’s work exists.
It has taught me that rather than try to fix my kids or demand they “stop their whinging”, it is much more effective and reconnecting to listen their tears out. I know I breastfed my daughter for the wrong reason occasionally as a baby. My intuition told me so - I fed her to shush her in public etc. chosing to ignore my intuition I continued, not understanding that the pain of listening to her “go off” was worth it in the long run. She now sucks her thumb and says she feels like being sick if she doesn’t do it. She’s eight. I have done Kinesiology sessions with her on the issue and it’s certainly a control pattern of hers. I feel sad that I was too ignorant to do as Marion suggests here and just be with her while she cried at those times that I KNEW she was releasing trauma.

By: Chrsty

Chrsty — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:20:11 +0000

I don’t believe in hushing babies up and neither do I think that a child should be left to cry it out. Come on lets let them release all that pent up frustrations. Goodness we’re talking about babies here. They’re crying for a reason and if we get to the bottom of it we automatically eliminate the ‘cry out’. Because it’s trying for all parties listening. A crying child can break a woman! I’d much rather believe that babies would rather be content and happy.

Now I’ve seen pacifiers stuck into childrens mouths the minute they start to fuss. And I’m certain that my nipples (why are we always talking about breasts lately) have also served that pupose of calming down a child. I believe there’s art to calming down children and one of those arts is breastfeeding. Now that i’ll defend. I would not agree that it is denying the child a chance to express himself when one uses breastfeeding to calm a child. There’s something magical about breastfeeding, the closeness of it. The naturalness of it which calms a tiny soul without the need for tears. If you’re a tired baby what would you prefer? A good cry out to even exhaust you further that you drop off, or, a soft warm breast attached to a loving person to balance off the ’streses’ of the day?

The only time breastfeeding a child has not worked ( and that has happened to me on two ocasions with my first baby) is when the baby is crying for food which he is not getting enough of from the breast. Certainly he’ll wake up later because he is hungry. Should one have let that poor tyke cry it out believing falsing ‘hey he needs his cry out.’ Wrong what a baby needs is a parent who understands what triggers her tears and is willing enough to get to the bottom of it. I don’t believe babies need to cry. My first son was a crying a wailer. A dance me to sleep little boy. Well it wasn’t because I didn’t let him cry it out. He did enough of that. It was because my breast milk was killing him. Too much glutin, too much lactose. Once I fiugered that out well ….what happeneed to this big need to cry he had? It didn’t “resurface” till he was old enough to be eating solids and Mummy me had read somewhere that breastfed babies do very well on breast milk and therefore can start solids later. Well I had a howler on my hand without needing to give him cry time. And me systematically letting him cry about his hungry tummy would not have remedied the situation. Getting to the bootm of the tears did.

Time to cry? What a hoot. My second baby had no need to cry. I watched my diet. When he started makingthe obvious I want to eat signs well… we ate. Needs met - no tears. Howling is not going to make baby’s ‘past pain’ disappear. No I see tears as a way of baby telling you things are not right, right now. (The past as a way of becoming the present. ) You can choose to find out what isn’t or do something silly like putting it arranging a regualar cry time or even worse sticking a pacifier in its mouth.

As an adult when my tears threaten like they did yesterday at my losing war with the housework, I could choose to do one of two things. Cry every 5pm or go out into the forest breathe in some lovely negative ions come back refreshed and tackle it and teach the kids to respect the work of others. As a baby you give me the choice of regular wail time over a loving Mummy who’ll tale me to her breasts and wonder what the heck is bringing this on and solve it - I’ll chose the later.

Well after reading this article if I were a new mom prone to taking advice seriously well what would I do? I’d let the poor tyke have some crying time. Because we don’t want him to bring this emotional trauma into adulthood. Whenever he starts up yep bring on the ‘crying time’. How about just getting behind what ails your baby. A proper nourished child whoses needs are being met by parents who sincerely love him and care for him, who are aware that he is just a baby and acts with consideration towards him does not need crying time. My suggestion, find out waht ails your child and solve it. Then they’ll be no residual trauma to be carried on to adulthood.

MY residual trauma (which thnk God i’ve exorcised) were not caused by lack of ‘espressing my tears’. They were cause by on the site issues which my parents didn’t resolve during my childhood. All the crying in the world on a regular basis would not have made it any different. Only they could have. By altering their behavior and actions.

Let’s listen to our babies. Our kids. For it would be a crying shame when their tears or lack of can’t teach us or point us to the source of the unease. Let’s dig a little further and look beyond the tears.

By: Marion Badenoch Rose

Marion Badenoch Rose — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:12:54 +0000

I’m interested to read Marie’s questions - Which is normal? (crying in Western cultures or hardly crying in hunter gatherer cultures) and What makes a baby cry? (compromised nutrition, an unnatural environment, or both?) From my perspective as an Aware Parenting instructor, I’d like to answer.
There are many things that lead babies to cry - which fit into two categories - 1. present needs that require meeting; 2. stressful events that require healing. In the case of the latter, crying in arms releases the stress and allows them to return to a state of full presence.
In many hunter gatherer cultures, babies have far fewer stressful experiences because they have almost constant body contact, they are part of a continuum, live close to the earth and her cycles and rhythms, are born in their home environment, and so on.
Stressful events for babies include stress in pregnancy, during birth, separation, unmet needs, over-stimulation, frightening events, and so on. Compromised nutrition is certainly a possible additional cause of stress.
However, babies are also inbuilt to learn ways of repressing feelings if that is what the culture around them teaches them. This means that babies in hunter gatherer cultures may also experience stressful events, such as being around stressed parents (for example during illness or food shortages or disharmony) and not cry, because they learn “control patterns” so they do not cry but dissociate from the feelings.
Thus, the amount a baby cries does not in itself indicate the extent to which his needs have been met and the amount of stress he has experienced.
A baby may never cry but may have experienced lots of stress and be engaging in control patterns to stop the feelings being expressed. The built-up stress will come out in other ways later on, such as agitation, difficulty concentrating, hitting, biting, avoiding eye contact, lack of co-operation, and so on.

By: Joanne Hay

Joanne Hay — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:17:50 +0000

I agree whole heartedly. It is traumatic to constantly feed from a breast that just isn’t giving us the Nourishment we deserve. I know, I’ve done that with my first child. His emotional challenges are disappearing as I Nourish him more. And the more I’m Nourished the more I can offer him emotionally also. It’s funny how when we begin to talk about emotions, we divorce them from nutrition. Why do we do that? Even those of us who consider themselves wholistic thinkers do it.

By: Marie

Marie — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:07:04 +0000

It’s amazing what we in the Western world think is “normal”. We think it’s normal for babies to cry several hours a day, peaking at 6 weeks - I’ve heard it all before (my baby cried a lot). Contrast that with what anthropologists (including Western Price) say - in hunter gatherer cultures, the babies hardly cried at all. Which is normal?

So what makes a baby cry? Is it compromised nutrition, an unnatural environment, or both? I think it might be both, but nutrition plays a big part - babies of parents who practise attachment parenting still cry a lot - as the above article shows.