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For some reason our culture
has decided that babies are manipulative from birth and
need to be taught independence, from birth. This is a
cultural belief, not based in child development or any
scientific research.
Mothers are told by friends,
family, even medical professionals that they must let
their babies cry..."it's good for their lungs", "it
won't hurt them", "they'll never learn to sleep if you
don't"...etc etc etc...
We are often told that
our mother's instincts are wrong, and that we must
ignore our innermost feelings and let our babies "cry it
out", that they are "just manipulating you."
Attachment parenting
disagrees vehemently with all of this. Attachment
parents believe in the value of a baby's cries. They
trust their feelings that baby needs us and needs us to
attend to them when they cry. We believe that a baby's
wants and needs are the same thing. We believe that a
mother knows, deep in her heart that leaving her baby to
cry is wrong and damaging, to baby and to mother &
family members. We do not believe that you must harden
yourself to your baby, as the "baby trainers" say we
need to...we believe that this hardening only creates a
barrier to the deep bonding that all children need to be
able to grow up loving and trusting of their world.
We don't believe that
babies can be "spoiled" by responding to them...but that
we are instead doing just what nature designed us to
do...nurture.
In our very plastic
society, where everything is based on convenience,
attachment parents feel that our babies need us to
respond to them 24/7, not just during waking hours and
not just when it is convenient to us. We feel strongly
that "nighttime parenting" is as crucial as daytime
parenting, and lack of sleep comes with the
responsibility of parenthood. (Although severe lack of
sleep is not...and there are many ways to deal with
this, one that works for many people is to
sleep
with your baby.)
And we have experts and
research to support our beliefs...
I recently learned
something very interesting from the author of the book
"Playful Parenting", Dr. Larry Cohen...this was that
children who are left to cry themselves to sleep as
babies, and hence do not receive what they needed back
then, can grow to be 10, 11, 12yr olds with sleeping
problems. He sees it in his practice all the time and
stresses to parents to NOT let babies "cry-it-out."
So why does our culture
encourage this cruel practice? Because we are a culture
of convenience. And night-time parenting is not
convenient.
And even though this is a
practice that could very well be damaging your
child...our culture encourages us to push our babies
towards independence from the day they are born!
Nevermind that we are mammals, and mammals are
biologically DEPENDENT for the first years!
Think about it...a baby
cannot feed herself, dress herself, burp herself, sit up
by herself, go to the bathroom by herself, clean
herself, get around by herself, or communicate as an
adult does...yet we expect her to comfort herself and
sleep by herself?? This makes absolutely NO SENSE.
BABIES ARE DESIGNED BY
NATURE TO BE DEPENDENT!
They are not designed to
move towards INdependence until they are toddlers...and
then it is a slow process towards independence that last
YEARS before they truly are INdependent...during which
time, DEpendence is very much a part of their lives!
It's SUPPOSED to be!
So please do not expect
your baby to comfort themselves. That's YOUR job, as her
parent! |
