Your toddler is at a confusing crossroads.

He’s finally good at walking (but you keep trying to stop him), he’s talking (but the big people act like they don’t understand what he’s trying to say), he can eat alone (if somebody would just let him pick out the green things), and he remembers where you hid his best toys (you call them Hummel figurines, or some such thing).

Crying unnerves adults.

It sounds so urgent, looks so awful, and it does a new parent’s head (not to mention self-esteem) in when they feel unable to help their baby.

That’s kind of how crying is engineered — to be unpleasant.  To motivate you to solve the problem to which baby has just alerted you.  Yes, crying (“stress” translated into baby language) is contagious, but so is calm.

Before you pick up your baby, get a grip on yourself.  Do something to dissipate your anxiety  – something to calm you.  You could breathe … sigh … genuflect?

Clear your tension, so you’ll be able to focus on the work at hand.  Like translating your baby’s language of the cry.  By 3 to 4 weeks of parenting, you’ll have the skills to hear and decipher the different cries and their different meanings.

Yesterday, I talked about how crying is engineered to produce a response from parents and caregivers.

Just as an adorable baby is irresistible, an upset baby is difficult to ignore.  We have an instinct to want to make things alright.

I think crying is an amazing accomplishment on your baby’s part.  This is the sound of your resourceful baby, already organizing her communication skills into a message.  An attention-getting one, eh?

Your baby is in cahoots with Mother Nature.

Together, they lure you (and any other helpless adult) into feeding, touching, talking to, listening to, and bonding with the newborn members of our species. About twelve inches from target is the best distance for a newborn’s built-in binoculars to see most clearly.

You play into their hands every time you position the highly-favored roundness of your face and your eyes’ rounded irises approximately that distance from your baby’s face — an inevitable consequence of breastfeeding.

Your new infant also appreciates the easy-to-see contrast between light and dark.  That’s why you’ll notice his gaze fixed on your hairline, your eyebrows, and even your moving mouth — you are talking to him during feedings, right?