Two months ago we explained why the baby's crying is one of the most unbearable noises that exist. It bothers us, we want it to be silent. It is such an unbearable noise that it cannot have another objective to achieve that we attend to the baby.
However, that unconscious sensation that occurs in our body, that instinct of wanting to silence it, can be rationally controlled if we believe that they do it to tease us, to control our lives or if we think that attending to them will make them people totally dependent on us, the rest of their childhood and probably their lives. That is, although the crying of the baby bothers a lot, if the parents are convinced that they should not attend to it, they will wait, they will let him cry. Serious error: The baby's cry is a cry for help and his future will depend on our reaction.
"Don't take it, you're going to get used to it"
Babies who have just been born spend hours crying in their cribs because someone has explained to their parents that if they take it, they will get used to it, and each time they will cry more. Already in the same hospital, the day after birth there are children who suffer because of the alerts of family members or hospital staff.
There are women and men who have their highly developed instincts and who feel they should catch it. They suffer seeing them like this and they catch them, despite what they are told. Others, also suffer, but more accustomed to obey, or more accustomed to nullifying their own feelings, try to pay attention thinking that they do their best for their children not attending to them.
The problem is that ignoring the child, the first stone is laid to achieve exactly the same effect: that the children begin to gradually ignore your feelings and emotions, to cancel them. Children who cry and are never taken care of stop crying, the procession goes inside. They suffer, but they do not cry. Why complain.
The funny thing is that the accustoming to the arms of the parents, to be cared for, achieves the same effect: children who spend a lot of time with their parents, who are taken care of early, do not cry either. Sometimes they do, it's true, but they cry much less than those babies whose parents let them cry so they don't get used to it.
Why? Because as I say A baby's cry is like a cry for help. It is the only way he has to ask for what he needs, be it food, be it cold or hot, be a little affection, be sleeping, be he afraid of some noise or sensation, etc. He has no other way of asking for help and he does so hoping that, please, as soon as possible, they will calm him down.
They don't know the source of their discomfort, they don't know how to calm down and that's why they cry more and more. That is why our duty is to help them find the solution. Obviously, it will take months, sometimes years, to be able to understand their feelings and know what they need to do to solve it. A baby cries of hunger, but when he is one year old he no longer does so, because he points to the food to tell us that he wants to eat. A baby cries when he feels cold, and it is possible that with a year he will also do it, for not being clear that he needs a sweater to avoid the cold. A baby cries when he needs love, but when he is one year old he solves it by looking for mom and dad's arms. He only cries then if they consider it a mistake to take him in his arms or if they don't play with him when he asks for time together.
I want to say with this that the crying of a baby is not something they do to bother, tease us or anything like that. They do it because they have a bad feeling and ask us for help to relieve it. It is up to us that we propose the solution, as soon as possible, so that little by little they will know what it is (or what they are, because as they grow up they discover multiple solutions for a problem), or that we deny their feeling so that they, little little by little, pay less attention to your ability to understand yourself.
But what danger is there? Hunger is always hungry
You may ask yourself this question: but what danger is there? Hunger is always hunger, cold is always cold and thirst is always thirsty. Any adult knows what it is and knows how to calm it. And it is true. Those feelings will be learned by babies, yes or yes, when they grow up. Now, it's not hunger that has to worry us, but the world of emotions, communication, affection and affection.
Imagine a child who cries at night because he does not want or can sleep alone. It is easy to imagine because the vast majority of babies do. Imagine that we ignore him, that we go from him, because they tell us that we must make them independent. We will stop crying, but not because the child has learned to be alone, without our help, not because he has stopped needing company, but because He has learned not to listen to his need to be accompanied. Is this what we want for our son, who ignores his desire to be with other people? Because humans are social beings, we function better in groups, because four eyes see more than two and because a group gets much more than the sum of the work of its individuals separately. It makes no sense that we teach our children otherwise, that alone they will be better.
It is just an example, but continuing with it, leaving children crying at night can lead to sleep problems months or years later. Night terrors, nightmares, continuous awakenings. The emotion is still alive, the need to sleep accompanied continues to appear, the fear of loneliness, the terror of darkness. What does not appear is the solution, because this would be to call dad and mom and that they slept with him, but if they have always taught him that this feeling is not solved in this way, that it is not a sensation to consider, that he should cancel it, drown it, the discomfort must come out in some way, and usually comes out in the form of problems to fall asleep or to maintain it.
If we think at a more global level, at the relationship level, something similar happens. The people who have best related to their parents, who have been taken care of, who have seen their needs for affection and affection heard, understood and respected, have no problem expressing feelings, understanding their emotions and talking about them. They know how to love. People who have had more problems in relationships, who were not treated when they cried, who did not learn to calm down as little ones, because no one taught them, have more difficulty managing stress and anxiety and more trouble understanding what they feel and to express it It is those people who hardly trust others, who prefer to be alone so as not to run the risk of failure or to harm them and who, when they are part of a relationship, are not able to open up.
There are so many voided emotions of little ones, there are so many wounds that nobody solved, there are so many scars and so many memories that avoid evoking in adulthood, because even then they feel unprotected and defeated, and they hurt, they have learned to encapsulate All the tears that nobody helped calm down, even though the side effect of it is that their hearts become a little harder and impenetrable.
You should know that life is hard, and that you can't have everything instantly
It is true, life is hard and nobody can have everything instantly, but this is something that children have to learn, for themselves, when they are already a few years old and they will not stop learning until they die. Life has several blows prepared for everyone, blows that will surely arrive when we least expect them. How we face them, how we live them, will depend largely on how healthy our mind is, our heart and how stable our emotional world is. There are people so balanced that they are able to work wonders with very little, always finding solutions to problems and positive parts where there seems to be none. There are people so unbalanced that at the slightest problem it falls apart, feeling that the whole universe is conjugated against them and that there is nothing they can do to get out of it.
What people do we want our children to be? Well, that, we must help them to continue feeling, help them understand their emotions and help them find solutions. When you are little, it is our business. As they grow, they will see how to solve their needs for affection, affection and communication (normally, spending a lot of time with us). It depends on us greatly. Every time your son cries, every time with his tears I yelled for help, go. Try to understand him, try to put yourself in his place, to understand his suffering and to put words to his emotions, so that he understands them, values them, knows that we understand him and see what decision to make. He will learn from our solutions and feel important, heard and loved. Come on, the basis of good self-esteem and self confidence.
I repeat: it depends on us.
Photos | Thinkstock
In Babies and more | Do not let a day go by without telling them how much you love them, That my family tells me that the child always wants to be in his arms because the first few days I took him too much, For future parents: your son will love you more than anything else in the world
