Children Need Touching and Attention, Harvard Researchers Say

[Brigid Rowan]

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.09/ChildrenNeedTou.html


The early stress resulting from separation causes changes in infant brains that makes future adults more susceptible to stress in their lives, say Commons and Miller.
"Parents should recognize that having their babies cry unnecessarily harms the baby permanently," Commons said. "It changes the nervous system so they're overly sensitive to future trauma."

[Chesna]

Umm interesting article....I am not sure if I agree totally. What was not made clear was how they defined responding immediately to a child's cry. Which to anyone who study statistics and done research knows is important. Depending on that definition...one could view that article in a variety of ways. It also appeared to be a veiled attempt to promote co-sleeping and shame those parents who do not share those desires. It also appears to critize the suggestion that parents are given when they can't soothe their baby, to put them down and walk away until the parent feels they can deal with the crying infant. Also, how come it does not talk about the impact this could place parents in if they constatly hold a screaming child?? I remember with each of my kids the need to just put them down a walk away when nothing is working....when i started to feel overwhelmed, frustrated and angry..I think it was far more important and better for me to put my child down in a safe environment and try and collect myself. In all that article raises more eyebrows for me than a feeling of great importance.

Chesna

[Brigid Rowan]

I certainly had times where I, too, had to put the baby down and go collect myself, and calm down. I didnt get the impression that is what they were refering to, though. It seemed a bit more leaning towards the cry it out types of deals, where babies (pre crawling) are left to cry for long periods of time.

One would have to look over their published paper to see what the time left crying constituted..for all I know it was an hour, or ten minutes, or somewhere in between.

But I think it as a study, does raise some topics that we as parents don't feel very pleased about talking about. We do raise our kids a bit differently that our ancestors did, just 80-100 years ago.

[Tanya]

duh!!!

Anyone who has ever seen kids in a Asian orphanage where they fed and cleaned but seldom held can tell the kids are suffering significant lags intellectually and emotionally....


putting down your baby for a few minutes or letting a child cry herself out is NOT the problem

[darkchild]

I held both of my sons quite a bit, but for different reasons.
My first child had colic and cried for the first 6 months of his life. I actually had to lay him in his crib at times to give myself a break for a few minutes. He would cry for hours at a time.

My second son was completely opposite. He slept a lot and I would hold him for the sheer joy of it and to bond with him.

I probably held them both for about the same amount of time, but for different reasons. Trying to comfort one and just for the joy of holding the other.

I am equally close to both of them now. They are 17 and 19. So, I guess just being close to them for whatever reason gave the same result. Babies need love and comfort no matter what the circumstances.

[aluokaloo]

uh duh we all do. were social critters so touching reinforces bonds, I love cuddling and tickling my little girl, and i feel all lovey whenever i get a kiss or a hug back from her, adults need it too.

[aluokaloo]

i also would sometimes have to go away from my kid and put her in a crib when she was crying and take a few deep breaths, the reasearchers and experts always forget one thing, they generalize and forget that each child is an individual, but leaving them to cry it out won't turn every single kid into a depressed social outcast.

[Tanya]

with my own baby, I went very natural, I carried her constantly in a baby pack unless she was sleeping...i felt it would make her more confident, improve her balance, leave her less fussy, and smarter..

my thinking being, a secure child ho knows her parent is there for her is more confident
a baby always bouncing around learns to balance herself
a baby on her mom is able to let mom know if she's wet, hungry, gassy, whatever, right away instead of wailing for attention
a baby that goes everywhere on mom gets more stimulation than a baby in a cot... stimulation helps babies build their neuralnetworks.... more stimulation= smarter kids all other things being equal....

and though 1 mom's experience is purely anicdotal... my daughter is very outgoing, was walking at 8 months, toilet trained at 18 mo, was an easy baby and at 4 is reading...

now I can't say if that was all from being in the baby pack, but I ain't messing with what worked for me

[Ceres]

When making parenting decisions of this sort, in which the long term consequences of my actions would have a psychological impact, I always asked myself: What is their brain wired for? How have they evolved over tens of thousands of years and what action on my part will answer to that?
How serious will messing with that wiring be?

In responding to crying, my feeling was that our ancestors couldnt afford not to respond immediately to crying. Some animals "cache" their babies in the wild, meaning they hide them when they go hunt or forage, like cheetas or deer. Other animals carry their babies when they hunt or forage, like chimpanzees and apes - those whose DNA most closely resembles ours. We were clearly carrying animals. Tens of thousands of years of evolution doesnt change in a few generations because we CAN cache our babies now. It goes against what adults are wired to do too. Thats why it is so upsetting to hear babies cry.

It also makes sense that an person whose cries were not responded to as an infant needs to develop earlier and have more sensitive responses to his environment, even at the expense of producing too much cortisol and adrenaline in an over-responsive fight or flight sequence because if he is going to be alone so young, its important he be able to look after himself.

The result, Commons and Miller said, is a nation that doesn't like caring for its own children, a violent nation marked by loose, nonphysical relationships.

"I think there's a real resistance in this culture to caring for children," Commons said. But "punishment and abandonment has never been a good way to get warm, caring, independent people."

This information has been around for a long time. I recall reading anthropology books when I had my first 14 years ago that discussed this impact of popular parenting trends that ignored crying. One, by Ashley Montagu, ironically called Touching, discussed specifically different cultures and how they treated their infants and children. War centered tribes ignored the crying of their infants and treated their children as a nuiscence. It appeared to be deliberate, to make the members of their tribe tough, independent and able to kill the enemy without remorse.

Tribes for whom warfare was not a focus did not treat their infants and children this way. Or perhaps they just treated their babies this way and thus werent inclined to go to war? In any case , it seems the idea that there is a long term impact of our chosen parenting practrices has been around for at least 50 years. As said previously, "duh" :lol:

The article was very matter-of-fact. I dont think there was any finger pointing or bad mommy finger wagging in it. I dont think it would be a very scientific approach to not print such an article so as not to make people feel bad. Many mothers can benefit from such information by making parenting choices with scientific research to back them rather than bowing to societal pressure to do things a certain way that may not be in the best interests of their children or society in the long run.

[Morr]

I don't carry or hold Scarlet on me 24/7 and she is a very happy and secure baby.

She is great with strangers (ie. our friends, but people she doesn't know or is not used to being with) holding her. She smiles at them and evey giggles when they talk to her or make funny faces to her.

She LOVES her bouncer with the elephants and lion hanging off of it. She loves looking at them, and talking to them. Yesterday she started reaching towards one a little, while she was talking to it.

We do cuddle her, lay next to her and hug her a lot for fun and cuddle time. But she is not carried everywhere all the time. My back would break. Besides, she gets overheated very fast, so if we hold her close for too long (unless she is sick), she gets overheated and angry.

When she is sick, we do cuddle her and hold her untill she is calm and feels better. Or when she starts crying. When I see she is done with the bouncer, or the swing, and starts making unhappy noises (the ones before they start really crying), I get her out of there. There's no reason for her to cry for me to get her out of it.

We don't let her cry it out. We did set her a couple of times in her crib when she was completely out of it and crying, and we were frustrated, but just for a few mins to calm ourselves down. This was during the very first weeks, when we were still leraning to get to know her and a routine.

I think it depends on each child. Depends on their needs.

Surely kids need attention, playtime, cuddle time, soothing time, etc.

But I think that letting them hang out in their bouncer or swing is a good thing too. It lets them explore themselves and environment without someone attached to them.

I am very proud of my daughter. She is very independent and secure, has no problem hanging out in her bouncer or swing (if she's n the mood for it, of course LOL), and sleeping in her crib.

This gives us a chance to get a break here and there. Hell, thanks to the bouncer I can go pee when I am alone with her! I can wash her bottles so she has clean fresh ones for the next feedings.

I don't plan to let her cry it out until she is old enough to understand, and is crying for attention or because she is not getting her way.