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).

Your child is particularly vulnerable to tantrums during his second year of life (12-24 months) because his understanding of what is happening around him is clearer than ever.  Yet his ability to determine his own destiny hasn’t caught up.  As he recognizes his own will to do things, his own independence, expect some mild disagreements.  When the refusals escalate, they become tantrums.

This, too will pass.  But until it does, here’s what you can do to minimize the stress for both of you:

Respect his schedule. The newborn baby doesn’t have one, the settled baby has done a lot of work to regulate himself into a schedule, and the toddler desperately needs one.  If his body thinks it’s naptime, and you consider it a great time to stock up on perfume samples at the mall, your child’s point of view will be heard up and down the escalators.

Keep your cool. The word “no” has had a lot of power over him lately, so who can blame him for trying it out for himself?  Expect him to engage in refusals to cooperate.  The best thing you can do is be consistent.  For example: He wears a shirt to playgroup.  Period.  It’s far better in the long run to miss one play date over the standoff, (and have him learn that you mean what you say) than to have a daily, energy-sapping cycle of boundary testing.

Have no shame. If you don’t think your child should play in the revolving door (and you’d be right about that, Mommy) — don’t give in.  Who cares who’s looking, tsk-tsk-ing, or judging?  If those strangers really cared (or mattered), they’d offer to load your groceries into the trunk while you load your screaming child into his car seat.

Hug it out. Once the tantrum is in full-on mode, stay even-tempered and compassionate with your child.  Raising your voice, or your pulse, is exhausting.  Unless somebody’s around to tuck YOU in for a guaranteed nap, save your strength.  Once the storm has passed, your toddler will need some help understanding what just happened.  Words for his feelings won’t end the tantrums right away, but over time, words will be such a useful tool that the confusing, stormy feelings won’t need to be enacted so vigorously. When his mouth can say, “I’m frustrated!” his body won’t have to.

]]> http://www.mommygarten.com/emotional-development/the-taming-of-the-tantrum/feed/ 0 http://www.mommygarten.com/language-development/shout-out-for-crying-part-1/ http://www.mommygarten.com/language-development/shout-out-for-crying-part-1/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:35:21 +0000 Carly Jennings http://www.mommygarten.com/?p=103 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.

So your baby is speaking “Cry”, this mysterious, loud language.  Look on the bright side — by crying, your baby is expressing her belief in two important principles:  1) that her needs are important enough to speak up about, and 2) you will help her.  Later, she’ll add a third basic belief to her system:  Trust.

The calm and confidence of trusting you and the world you’ve provided will have a directly soothing effect.  She might even cry less.  Why shout when a whisper will do?

In an earlier blog post on emotional development, I discussed the varying states of consciousness (six of them) that newborns cycle through during the day.  During each day, which means they’re all normal states.  Only two of the states (so-called “fussy” state and the “crying” state) involve full-on howling.

Most of the rest of the time (in the other states of consciousness), your new baby has better things to do — like socializing, observing, listening, getting acquainted, nursing, or chillaxing (a fierce combo of chilling + relaxing).

If (okay, when) the crying does break out, however, hunger is understandably the usual suspect, and many new parents attempt to soothe a cry with food.  A rather safe guess, especially for breastfeeding moms.  It’s not easy to measure how much milk your child actually consumes during a session at the breast, and the amount quickly changes in response to changing nutritional needs.  So why not try that solution?

Then there’s the fact that babies often calm upon nursing.  So regardless of whether or not your infant was really hungry for that feeding you just offered her, the sucking might have soothed her.  Mystery solved, it seems.  Unless the crying continues.

Crying, without other hunger signals, could mean that hunger is not really the issue that baby needs your help to resolve.

More tomorrow on deciphering crying and what your baby really wants to say.

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?

By the time you have been on the job for about a month, your skill level will catch up to hers!

You’ll begin to recognize and differentiate the tone, pitch, volume, and urgency of her cries.  You’ll respond more quickly, and more accurately.  She’ll learn to trust you to meet her needs.  In the process, you will all settle into being a securely attached and confident family.

Parents often suspect hunger as the cause of the cry.  With baby needing to take in nourishment 8 – 12 times in each 24-hour period, that might be a good guess some of the time.

Continued crying, without other hunger signals, could mean that hunger is not the issue that baby needs your help to resolve.

• She might feel sick. This possibility worries new parents the most.  You should worry less.  Most of the days of her life, she will have a range of needs that you’ll be able to respond to without medical help.
• Your newborn could be uncomfortable. She just relocated from her own personal climate-controlled nudist colony, to a diaper.
• Again, with the discomfort. She might cry if she’s too warm.  She might cry if she’s too cool.  Hey –  some things confuse even me, so that’s all I got on this one.  You’re welcome.
• She might be tired. Swaddling is a way to calm a new baby by helping her to regain some stability in her body, and control over her limbs.  Some babies like to be swaddled in a way that allows freedom for a favorite thumb.
• What if she’s lonely? Once she finds out all that cool stuff you’ll do for her, she’s going to want you to do all that cool stuff for her.  Like rocking, holding, counting her toes, gazing, smiling.
• Lonely, schmonely.  She might be overstimulated.  At first newborns will fall asleep to ward this off, but later, she will develop much more of an interest in spit bubbles, playing, smiling, all that.  How much goo-goo, gaa-gaa can a gal take?  She’ll let ya know.
• Then there’s the diaper change. A full diaper is a likely target of her disdain.  From day one, she’ll be producing a couple of wet diapers, and one or two soiled ones.  Within a week, she will QUADruple her daily output.

Your baby might be trying to tell you a number things in the relatively small amount of time she spends crying.  Most of the rest of the time, she will be busy with other things like bonding, finding her hand, looking at stuff.  When crying does come up, it is a natural sign of healthy development.  Especially language and emotional development.   A cry for help is her way of putting into words her expression of faith that the help will come.

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?

Your Baby’s Physical Tools

Within the first moments of life outside the womb, your baby has reflexes that help ensure survival.  Some reflexes are strongest in the hours following birth, but subside, then disappear, within days or weeks.  Just in time for mother to bounce back from the labor of … well, labor.  And delivery.  One of the most powerful of these survival tools is the rooting reflex.  When a nipple (or even a finger) brushes by his cheek is touched baby’s mouth opens, and his head turns toward the stimulus, as he searches for the breast.  What comes next, a strong sucking action, is another survival strategy.  Your baby’s perfectly engineered taste bud system and mouth are ready to receive whatever nutrition he manages to extract with all that rooting, hoping, searching, and sucking.

Your Baby’s Psychological Tools

Just as day-to-day Mommy rebounds from the postpartum period, layer by later of Mother Nature’s innate physical protections for the newborn melt away — to be replaced by parenting skills.  Different states of consciousness can be observed (think “hints-on-how-to-handle-me”).  No longer living in a climate-controlled, sound-insulated womb, baby learns to rely on strategies (like falling asleep in a roomful of noisy voices) to ward off sensory overload. Learning to ask to have his needs met is another valiant attempt to communicate.  My work with babies and their parents has shown me that the seemingly complex relationships between new baby and nervous parent could be much simpler, with the addition of a few tools to the parenting kit.  The moms, dads, and caregivers who learn how to observe and recognize the distinct states of consciousness will soon learn how to respond to cues, and therefore, needs.  In the school of life, displeased babies issue loud progress reports.

States of Consciousness

It might seem like there are only two states of mind for a newborn:  crying or not.   Your child is much more interesting than that!

Here are some notes for your upcoming pop quizzes:  To assess what state of consciousness your baby is experiencing, observe the level of physical activity, facial expressions and activity, breathing rhythms, responsiveness to people and things in the environment.  There are six-count-em six distinct states of consciousness that your little one will experience during the day:

• Deep sleep — my mother used to call this “sound asleep.”  That makes sense.  During this state, the baby seems oblivious to sounds, or siblings, and most other stimulation for that matter.  This is what people mean when they say “slept like a baby.”  It’s not a great time for attempting a feeding; it is a great time for caregivers to rest.
• Light sleep — there’s a lot of activity during this kind of sleep.  Fluttering eyes, sucking motions, and body movements in this state can be confusing to new parents.  It’s actually a very normal state that accounts for a lot of newborn sleeping time.
• Drowsy, but awake — I call this “to be determined.”  It really could go either way.  Your baby might sleep more, or wake on up.  He will  respond to stimulation but then again, he might have a good cry.
• Quiet, but alert — Great time for feedings, conversations, hugs, or tapping on the pages of a cardboard book.  An infant’s bright eyes, fully open, signal that he is receptive to paying attention and receiving attention.  If you shake a rattle, and he’ll look at it.  Speak his favorite language (parentese), and he might move his mouth, too.
• Active and alert — Some parents call this fussy.  Baby might be getting hungry, he might want some space, or he might want to be soothed by you.  Observant parents will note that this isn’t the best time for playing, or chatting, but it’s a great time to make sure baby is comfy, and that the environment isn’t overwhelming his senses.
• Crying — Okay, so you’re new at this, and you didn’t quite handle the “fussy” window of opportunity to his liking.  No worries, you’ll get more chances.  And you’ll get better at it.  Just so you’ll know, most babies under 3 months old have crying periods, especially toward the end of the day.  It’s important to respond immediately, knowing that it is impossible to “spoil” a baby under six months of age.  If he can soothe himself, let him.  If he needs your help, give it calmly.  Just be glad he still tells you what’s on his mind.  That will change in about 12 years.