Saturday, September 25, 2010

Picking up

So, our nanny told my DH that we should not pick the kids up in the day when they cry. I am guessing what she actually said was let them cry a little bit rather than jump to pick them up. However, what if she didn't? What if this is the first of the nanny wars. She is great with kids, no doubt about that. Yet, at 5 weeks, if my kids cry she better bloody well pick them up.

When did you start to hold off on picking them up??

6 comments:

  1. Mmm, recently? Ugh, this is so hard. Intellectually, I know that not all cries are pleas for help. Some cries are frustration, some are statements of tiredness, calls for food - that sort of thing. But to a mom, the sound of her baby's cry is heart wrenching. Wrenching! I must admit I picked up my baby shortly after he began crying most of the time. Now that he's trying to learn to crawl, I let him whine and cry a bit in frustration, just because I think he's not really upset, but needs to get the "argh!" of frustration out. At 5 weeks though, your tots are generally calling for something - to be soothed, fed, changed, etc. If you trust your nanny but want to find compromise, ask her to pick them up within one minute (or whatever time you think) of their starting to cry.

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  2. We respond if he cries. He's 3, and gets frustrated or mad about something, but can generally tell us what's going on. At no point as a baby did we just let him cry. It just didn't fit for us, and never made sense to me in terms of sleep--if we responded to him, he didn't scream himself awake, if that makes sense. I've always believed that was part of the reason he's generally slept well (with definite rough patches of course--I don't think anyone gets a pass on those!)

    Paula

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  3. Actually, one expert (Burton White, who studied the first three years of life exclusively for something like nine years through a program at Harvard) recommends that you respond promptly in the early months so that they don't develop what he calls "the demand cry." If they get used to having to cry their hearts out all the time for everything ... including to remedy boredum -- which is a ~huge~ issue especially before they learn to crawl -- if you teach them they have to cry for everything ... watch out. Tough to put that genie back in the bottle. He does advocate setting limits for them when it's developmentally appropriate. But I think 5 weeks is a bit early for that. :)

    White may not be the 'freshest' expert on the shelf, but we found his simple, stage by stage advice helpful. And we have yet to have a really rough ride with the terrible two's and thee's. His theory is that if you get the first three years right -- by avoiding a couple of common pitfalls at each stage -- the rest of development goes generally very well.

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  4. Our twins were preemies so I don't know if that makes a difference but we would quickly respond to their crying up until they were 6-7 months old. Everything I read said they need to develop a sense of trust with you. If you let them "cry it out" too early, they won't develop that bond of trust with you. So far, my kids are developing fine.

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  5. That feels like a red flag to me. I can imagine letting it go for a moment to figure out what kind of cry it is, but they ABSOLUTELY need to be responded to at that age. The book "Bed Timing", which is admittedly about the whys and whens of sleep training, gives very succinct descriptions of what is going on at each stage of development. What seems to happen is that there is roughly a 3 month sea/saw between being focused on the world of people, and the world of objects, and it is during the 'objects' stage that letting a 'cry' go unattended for a a little longer makes sense. Otherwise you are impacting their sense of who is there to care for them. If she was my nanny, I'd want to know a lot more about her thinking in terms of that statement. Is she seeing you wearing yourself to a frazzle trying to hold two babies, when you can't possibly,and trying to give you permission to attend to one at a time? Is she is seeing you interfering with a pretty obviously quick self soothing mechanism, that is one thing,but if she thinks that you are 'spoiling' them, or teaching them to be too dependent, or any other weird psychological projection of them exercising too much power over you, then I'd send her packing. Babies this age are not capable of manipulation. They are counting on their environment (i.e. adult caregivers) to help them make sense of their chaotic internal world, and when we don't, they are are at the mercy of their own frightening experience. Does that mean you can't ever let one of them cry while you finish something? No. Of course not. It's your general approach to responding to their needs that matters. That is why I'd want to know more about what was behind her statement. And don't forget, no matter how great she is you are both the mother, and her employer, and you get to decide if her approach works for your family.

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  6. We listen to see if the cries resolve within 3-5 minutes and for what kind of cry it is. We are pretty good at distinguishing what they are. Yesterday, Roll had a cry that was clearly psin and we flew in there. I wonder if there was something "lost on translation" between what she said to your husband and what was said to you. I'd explore it with her it might not mean what she meant.

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