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A Baby Cries: How Should Parents Respond?
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by Jan Hunt, M.Sc.
Imagine for a moment that you have been abducted by
space ship to a distant planet, and you are surrounded by giant
strangers whose language you do not speak. Two of those strangers
take you under their care. You are entirely dependent on them for
the satisfaction of all your needs - hunger, thirst, comfort, and
- especially - reassurance that you are safe in this strange place.
Then imagine that something is very wrong - you are in pain, or
terribly thirsty, or in need of emotional support. But your two
attendants ignore your cries of distress, and you are unable to
get them to help you or to understand your needs. Now you have another
problem, more serious than the first: you feel completely helpless
and alone in an alien world.
In all innocence, a baby assumes that we, as his parents, are correct
- that whatever we do is what we ought to be doing. If we do nothing,
the baby can only conclude that he is unloved because he is unlovable.
It is not within his capabilities to conclude that we are only busy,
distracted, worried, misled by "experts", or simply inexperienced
as parents. No matter how deeply we love our baby, it is mostly
the outward manifestations of that love that the baby can understand.
No one likes to have his communication ignored. and if it is, this
brings on feelings of helplessness and anger that inevitably damage
the relationship. Such a response seems to be one that is universally
experienced by adults, and there is no reason to conclude that it
is any different for babies and children. Few people would ignore
an adult while he repeatedly said, "Can you help me? I'm not
feeling right." Ignoring such a request would be considered
most unkind. But a baby cannot make such a statement; he can only
cry and cry until someone responds - or until he gives up in despair.
Immediate response to a baby's cry went unquestioned for thousands
of years until recent times. In our culture, we assume that crying
is normal and unavoidable for babies. Yet in natural societies where
babies are carried close to the care-giver much of the day and night
for the first several months, such crying is rare. In contrast to
what many in our society would expect, babies cared for in this
way show self-sufficiency sooner than do babies not receiving such
care.
In fact, research on early childhood experiences consistently shows
that children who have enjoyed the most loving care in infancy become
the most secure and loving adults, while those babies who have been
forced into submissive behavior build up feelings of resentment
and anger that may well be expressed later in harmful ways.
In spite of this research, most arguments for ignoring crying are
based on fears of "spoiling" the baby. A typical baby-care
brochure advises the parent to "let the baby handle it for
a while". Though infancy can be a challenging time for the
parents, a baby is simply too young and inexperienced to "handle"
the cause of the crying, whatever it may be. He cannot feed himself,
change himself, or comfort himself in the way that nature intended.
Clearly, it is the parents' responsibility to meet their baby's
needs for nurturing, security, and love, not the baby's responsibility
to meet his parents' need for peace and solitude.
The pamphlet implies that if the parents give their baby an opportunity
to become self-reliant, they are helping him to mature. But an infant
is simply not capable of such maturity. True maturity reflects a
strong foundation of emotional security that can only come about
from the love and support of those closest to him during the earliest
years.
An immature person can only respond to stress in an immature way.
A baby denied his birthright of comforting from his parents may
respond by turning to ineffective self-stimulation (head-banging,
rhythmic rocking, thumb-sucking, etc.) and emotional withdrawal
from others. If his needs are routinely ignored, he may decide that
loneliness and despair are preferable to risking further disappointment
and rejection. Unfortunately, this decision, once made, can become
a permanent outlook on life, leading to an emotionally impoverished
life.
Many child-care professionals feel that parental encouragement
of self-satisfiers and over-substitution of material objects - teddy
bears substituting for parents, strollers for arms, cribs for shared
sleep, pacifiers for nursing, toys for parents' attention, music
boxes for voices, formula for breast-milk, wind-up swings for laps
- have led to an age of materialistic acquisition, personal loneliness
and lack of emotional fulfillment.
Ignoring a baby's crying is like using earplugs to stop the distressing
noise of a smoke detector. The sound of a smoke detector is meant
to alert us to a serious matter that requires a response - and so
is the cry of a baby. As Jean Liedloff wrote in The Continuum Concept,
"a baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds."
Stressful though it may be, infant crying should be seen not as
a power struggle between parent and child, but as a gift of nature
to ensure that all babies can grow to adulthood with a generous
capacity for love and trust.
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