Effect of mother’s response on baby’s cries.
We do not mean to imply that it is your responsibility to make your baby stop crying. Only baby can do that. It is your job to help him stop crying. Yet there will be times when baby does keep crying because even your holding or feeding doesn’t help, and you’ll have some research to do.* The difference is he’s not being left to cry alone. You continue to hold, rock, bounce, jiggle, take a walk outside – do whatever it takes to help him. Just being with him helps, and you’ll learn as you go. Keeping baby in arms as much as possible helps him cry less and feel supported when he does cry. The cry is baby’s first communication tool. Listen to it.
After the first four to six months, your response to your baby’s fussing will seem to become intuitively less immediate. Baby gradually learns he can wait a bit and anticipate your holding. He can do this because he has learned to trust you and is familiar with that right feeling he gets when you respond to him. You’re in the midst of an activity you want to complete when baby wakes up or decides he’s tired. Instead of rushing over to tend to your baby’s cry you say, “Mummy’s right here …” which can be enough to satisfy baby for a minute or two. Baby develops the ability to wait because he knows you always come. You develop an ear for knowing how urgently he needs you to come.
Teach your baby to cry better. Responding to a baby’s cries is not only good for the baby and the parents, it’s also good for the relationship. Some babies have ear piercing cries that distance them from their parents. These cries shatter nerves and provoke anger, diminishing parents’ enjoyment in being with their baby. Yet immediate responses can help mellow this kind of cry. The opening sounds of baby’s cry are not so aggravating. Instead they have a quality that strikes an empathetic chord in the mother and elicits a nurturing and comforting response. This is the attachment-promoting phase of a baby’s cry. We have noticed that babies whose early cries receive a nurturant response learn to cry better – their cries mellow and do not take on a more disturbing quality. Mothers call these “nicer cries”. But a baby whose cries do not receive an early nurturant response begin to cry in a more disturbing way as she grows angrier. These cries can make the mother angry, promoting an avoidance response. As these babies learn to cry harder, a distance develops between mother and baby. Mothers who follow the advice to let their baby cry it out soon begin giving their babies negative labels, such as “difficult baby” or “fussy baby”. These babies, because their cries go unanswered, use the attachment-promoting phase of the cry less, and the more irritating avoidance-promoting sound more and more. This relationship is at high risk for discipline problems because mother and baby are not communicating well.
The ultimate in crying sensitivity happens when you become so fine-tuned to your baby’s body language that you read and respond to pre-cry signals and intervene before crying is necessary. Baby soon learns he doesn’t have to cry hard (or sometimes at all) to get what he needs. A very attached and nurturant mother who was well on her way to becoming a good disciplinarian told us, “My baby seldom cries. She doesn’t need to.”
2. Breastfeed Your Baby
There is a special connection between breastfeeding and discipline. Promoting desirable behaviour requires that you know your child and help your child feel right. Breastfeeding helps you get to know your baby and provide the response that helps him feel right.
Discipline benefits to mother. Breastfeeding is an exercise in baby-reading. Learning about your baby’s needs and moods is an important part of discipline. Part of learning how to breastfeed is learning to read your baby’s cues rather than watching the clock. You learn to read her body language so that you can tell when she needs to feed, when she’s had enough, and when she just wants to feed for comfort. One veteran disciplinarian told us, “I can tell her moods by the way she behaves at the breast.” Baby gives a cue asking for food or comfort, and you respond by offering to feed. After hundreds of these cue-response practice sessions, your responses become completely natural. What was initially a mental exercise (“Is she hungry? Restless? Upset? I wonder what she needs”) eventually becomes an intuitive response. A flow of communication develops between the little person in need and the big person who is in a position to meet those needs. You get in harmony with your baby.
This harmony is especially helpful if you need to overcome preconceived fears of spoiling that restrain you from naturally responding to your baby. Jan, a first-time mother whom I talked with at a prenatal interview, had a lot of hang-ups from her past that threatened to interfere with her enjoyment of motherhood. She had been on a rigid schedule as a baby, and control was the big issue in her childhood. Jan was now entering motherhood feeling that her main task as a parent was to be sure that her baby did not control or manipulate her. She feared that picking up the baby whenever she cried would result in spoiling. As part of her parenting plans, she was going to train her baby to soothe herself by letting her cry it out. She also planned to put the baby on a feeding schedule, called parent-controlled feeding, and she felt this would be easier to do if she bottle-fed. She thought this would ensure that she would be in charge, and not the baby. I explained that in order to be “in charge” of her baby she had to get to know her baby and become intuitively responsive. Jan changed her mind and decided to give breastfeeding a try. I’m happy to report it not only worked very well for baby but was also therapeutic for Mummy.
The right chemistry. Breastfeeding stimulates your body to produce prolactin and oxytocin – hormones that give your mothering a boost. These magical substances send messages to a mother’s brain, telling her to relax and make milk. The levels of these substances go up during breastfeeding and during other motherly activities such as looking at and caressing the baby. They may form a biological basis for the term “mother’s intuition”. Your reward for spending time touching and enjoying your baby and breastfeeding frequently is a higher level of “feel-good” hormones. A prominent psychotherapist we interviewed revealed her observation that “breastfeeding mothers are better able to empathize with their children”.
Discipline benefits for your baby. Baby’s cues for food and comfort are met, so naturally baby learns to trust. Because he spends many hours each day at the breast, he feels valued and “in touch”. Baby feels right, and this inner feeling of well-being translates into desirable behaviour. Over my twenty-two years in paediatric practice I have observed how mellow breastfeeding babies are, especially toddlers who breastfeed through their second year. A nursing toddler seems to be at peace with himself and with his caregivers. Although in the last century of Western culture we have learned to think of breastfeeding in terms of months or even weeks, historically, in most cultures, babies have nursed for at least two or three years. The behaviour-improving effects of breastfeeding have been known for millennia. You will find breastfeeding particularly useful as a discipline tool when a toddler is going through the stage where he is easily frustrated or when his newfound independence frightens him. We knew a secure and independent two-and-a-half-year-old child who after experiencing a setback such as a toy squabble would come to his mother for consolation saying, “Nursie ’bout it.”
the body chemistry of attachment
Good things happen to the hormones of mothers and babies who are attached. Hormones regulate the body’s systems and help them react to the environment. One of these hormones is Cortisol. Produced by the adrenal glands, one of its jobs is to help a person cope with stress and make sudden adjustments in threatening situations. For the body to function optimally, it must have the right balance of Cortisol – too little and it shuts down, too much and it becomes distressed. Cortisol is one of the hormones that plays a major part in a person’s emotional responses. In reviewing attachment-chemistry studies, we conclude that a secure