Five Reasons Why You Don't Want a "Good" Baby . . . at least not all the time!

Few things frustrate me more than being asked if I have a "good" baby. I know that most people are wondering if I have a baby who sleeps through the night/naps well, doesn't cry often, keeps himself entertained, etc. but it irks me that somehow my baby isn't "good" if he doesn't fit those parameters.  Especially since those traits may make a baby more convenient, but they have nothing to do with how "good" of a person that baby is.  Just because a baby might have more needs than another or is more expressive about those needs, it doesn't mean that baby is "bad." In fact, it just might be better to have a baby who is decidedly inconvenient and not "good."

1.  Babies who aren't "good" wake up a lot . . . and that makes them less vulnerable to SIDS.

Babies are designed to wake up often for good reason.  SIDS is actually related to a baby's inability to rouse easily or detect a build up of carbon dioxide in their blood.  Now, the general mainstream medical consensus is that babies are safest on their backs in their own beds, but other medical experts have suggested that babies may be safest when with co-sleeping with their sober, non-smoking mothers.  In fact, SIDS rates have continued to stay low despite a rise in safe co-sleeping.  This might have to do with the increase in breastfeeding rates among co-sleeping mothers as much as anything else, but the fact remains that while "good" babies might let their mothers have more uninterrupted sleep, babies who aren't so good (or aren't good all the time) actually demonstrate that they have a good arousal instinct and that is a definite positive!  Besides, there are sweet, snuggly times to be had when babies are awake, sleepily nursing, and snuggling with you that mamas of babies who sleep all the time, just don't get.

2.  Babies who aren't "good" cry a lot . . . and that means they are attached enough to want to communicate and believe that you will respond to their cries.

We all know people who are more verbal about what is going on with them than others.  Babies are just little people.  So, some of them will cry more than others because some of them just have more they want to say.  Some babies also just have more to communicate.  No matter how much or how little your baby cries at night or during the day, it is good because your baby is communicating (even if it doesn't seem that way at two a.m.).  The fact that your baby consistently is communicating with you about his or her needs is a positive thing.  It proves that your baby trusts you enough to tell you about what's going on with her/him.  By responding to your baby's cries, you are forming a trusting, attached relationship with your baby.  This might not mean your baby stops crying right away or that your baby cries less, but it does mean that your baby believes that you are going to respond to his or her needs.  When that baby grows up this will translate into words.  For example, my eldest baby cried a lot, and now, when he is sick, he still talks a lot.  He's just the kind of person who feels things very strongly and he needs to talk about his emotions to process them.  Because of the relationship we've been forming since his very first newborn baby cries, we have a very open communication line and I hope that honest communication continues for years to come.

3.  Babies who aren't "good" don't just lay/sit around and play with their toys . . . they are curious about their world and they want to explore it.

We've all had those moments when we've wanted to just put our babies down and have them keep themselves busy while we finish dinner/pick something up/whatever, and sometimes they may let us, but some babies mostly use that time to get into things, practice their crying communication with you, and generally cause a ruckus.  However, these are all good things!  A baby who isn't very interested in the world around them or who doesn't want to test that you will come running at least part of them time, is not a baby who is very interested in the outside world and that lack of curiosity probably isn't their best trait.  I imagine that if we could interview the mothers of most of the world's greatest inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs, we would probably discover that as babies and small children they were incredibly curious and often got themselves into some scrapes because of it.  Whenever my sons are driving me crazy testing my communication line with them from the next room, I just remind myself that Pavlov's mother was probably his first and best test subject.

4.  Babies who aren't "good" don't stay in their car seats all the time; they insist on being held/worn and seeing the world from a higher level.

Risks of leaving your baby in their car seats frequently and shopping with your baby in his/her car seat aside, babies who are not kept in their car seats all the time actually tend to do a little better because they are held more often and get worn in a carrier.  In fact, God bless babies who aren't "good" all the time because they are the reason babywearing was invented and the benefits of babywearing are amazing.  From heart rate/physiological benefits for newborns to social interactions/connections with toddlers, your babies are made to be in your arms or worn and nothing but good comes from it . ..even if it seems inconvenient for you and what you want to get done at times.

5.  Babies who aren't "good" don't listen to what "they" tell you about parenting, they make you learn to listen to your heart and do more research.

You know who "they" are.  "They" are the ones who were asking you whether or not your baby was "good" to begin with.  "They" tell you you need to do XYZ to make your child into a convenient "good" baby or "they" will congratulate you when your baby doesn't cry or make a fuss, but give unsolicited advice when they do.  Babies who aren't "good" don't give a flying fruit what they say and if you let them, they will teach you not to care, either.  Babies who aren't "good" push you to examine who you are as a parent and as a person.  They teach you to make real connections to them and they become the catalyst for you to learn more about them, parenting, and yourself as a person.  Babies who aren't "good" push you to become better than you've ever been before and they teach you where your limitations are.

Babies who aren't "good" all the time are my favorite kind of babies!

Thank you for reading and kiss your "not good all the time" babies for me!
Shawna

A Thought Or Two On Crying

When my siblings, cousins and I go out to eat with my Grandmother, she takes us out to a nice restaurant. When the restaurant host puts the menus on the table, she always says, “Go ahead and get whatever you want. It’s okay. Don’t worry about the price.” She’s done this my entire life. It’s the kind of thing that makes sense for her to say considering that she was raised during the Depression and started her own family during World War II. Meeting the needs of everyone in the family depended on staying within the budget. Eating out was a luxury, and even when one could afford it, one still ordered modestly to keep the cost of the entire meal reasonable. Though when my grandmother took us out as we grew up, she had attained a certain amount of financial comfort, which is why she wanted us to feel comfortable ordering whatever we wanted on the menu.

Except that her telling me not to worry about the cost had the opposite effect. In the millisecond before she said anything, I’d quickly glance over everything, look for the things that sounded the best, and see if they weren’t things I didn’t usually get to have at home. After she said I could have whatever I wanted, I would immediately get self-conscious; that I shouldn’t order whatever I wanted because my grandmother was already thinking about the bill. Before she said anything, I had no reason to be concerned about the cost, but after she said something, I knew she was concerned about the cost. I felt if I ordered what I really wanted, she would think I was greedy or trying to take advantage of her. And I had to wonder to myself, “Well, why wouldn’t I look at a menu and just order what I wanted? Isn’t that what eating out is for?”

I was thinking about this awkward pas de deux with my grandmother that I faced growing up after what seemed to be the last warm Fall day at the playground, when a girl my son’s age tripped and fell. Her father ran over to her, picked her up and held her as she cried. He rubbed her back, and told her, “You can cry. It’s okay to cry. So if it makes you feel better, go ahead.”

In the grand scheme of things, what he said was the well-intentioned thing to say. It certainly beats the “You’re okay” response which – while trying to reassure the child that they didn’t seriously injure themselves – infers that s/he has no reason to cry or the “it’s okay” response which may in fact be the abbreviated form of “it’s okay to cry” but still suggests to the child that they don’t have any reason to be crying. As we know, if a child is crying, s/he has a reason to be crying, even if it’s a reason we don’t know or understand. For many children (and even adults who get hurt), crying is often the most natural response. It’s not much different than a knee jerk reflex after a doctor hits your knee with a rubber mallet.

Which is why I started wondering, if what the dad was saying to his daughter on the playground had the opposite effect of what he intended. I couldn’t help but wonder, if he was in fact projecting his concerns about crying onto his daughter the way my grandmother had projected her concerns about money onto me. When we say these kinds of things to our children, are they actually then saying to themselves, “Well why wouldn’t it be okay for me to cry after a fall?” the same way I wondered, “Well, why wouldn’t I go ahead and just get what I want?” Is the best form of validating their emotional expression to not say anything at all and instead just be with them and hold them?

I couldn’t help but wonder if we say these things to our children more for our sake than theirs. We want to be good parents. We want our children to feel safe expressing themselves – because honestly, children will express themselves anyway when they have something to express- better it be safely and straightforward in a conversation with us than passive aggressive and potentially dangerous in the world at large.

But the truth is while scientific study after scientific study proves that crying does indeed relieve stress and is better for one’s health in the long run, it’s still not socially acceptable to cry in public. We tell our children it’s okay on the playground, but by kindergarten they’ve already realized it’s not okay really. Most adults cry - when they do cry - in private, and when they do cry in public, they receive predictions about their professional demise. So are we sending our children mixed messages? Or do they get it’s okay when you’re little to cry because a kid kicked you in the head when you didn’t get off the slide fast enough, but it’s not okay when you’re big? I do cry in front of my son. I even tell him why I’m crying and if I’m sad or upset or frustrated. But I too cry at home, not on the playground.

In the meantime, my son told me today that he lost his favorite car to the subway track. I asked if he was sad and if he cried. He said yes. I said I could get it. I’d cry too. He said he wanted a new car to replace the one he lost, and then he went one to play with something else, completely forgetting about the lost car. I realized this is indeed the point of crying in the first place, to release an emotion so we can move to other things. It’s funny, the things you learn from a three year-old. He cries and moves on. He doesn’t make his crying at the subway station mean anything about him and he certainly didn’t wonder what other people thought as he cried about his lost car on the subway track. I hope he keeps this freedom of expression as he grows up.

Letting Him Cry

"You need to let him cry sometimes."

I can't tell you how many times I was told that when my son was a tiny baby. What I found most irritating about the comment was the assumption that, somehow, I had found a way to have a baby who didn't cry or that if I didn't let him cry enough, he was somehow going to forget how to cry. The truth was that he cried all the time. I just held him while he cried or once I figured out what he was communicating, I would do what he needed me to do and he would stop crying. Just because he didn't cry much during that person's visit, didn't mean that I was somehow magically stopping my child from crying all of the time. (In fact, before we figured out exactly how much I needed to eliminate from my diet for my son's reflux, we went weeks where the nightly routine involved my husband holding my son for one or two hour increments in which he cried the whole time just so I could lie down for an hour or two.) I always viewed his crying as his way of communicating with me and whether I "let" him cry or not, the tears always came because he always needed to communicate. He would just stop crying when it was clear that his message had been communicated.

However, there are times when I was and am "okay" with my son's tears. There were times when, as bad as I feel about how upset he is, I knew that his discomfort is necessary and only temporary and I communicate that to him by "letting him cry." For example, he always cried when I changed his diaper for the first three months, when I bathed him for about the first six months, when I showered, when he was in his car seat, (a few desperate times) when I put him down because I needed to get some emotional space away from his tears, and, recently, he has been crying when I brush his teeth, occasionally when its bath time, and, on rare occasions, when he wants treats instead of his regular food at mealtimes. What has made those times more acceptable to me is that even though I feel bad for his discomfort, I am not ignoring what he is communicating or irnoring the discomfort he feels. Instead, I am communicating to him that there are some things (like safety, hygiene, or nutrition) are more important than temporary discomfort. I really have no guilt about "letting" him cry when I feel I need to communicate those kinds of messages to him. I also don't leave him alone to cry during those times and I don't do things to intentionally push him. I don't force him to bathe every day just to "make him get over it," when he is having a tough time giving up the control needed to let me bathe him, I only do it two or three times during the week. I didn't take extra long showers while he cried in the other room "to show him who was boss" (as was suggested by some people I knew), I took a quick shower, usually with him in the bathroom with me while I talked him through it. If "letting him cry" tore me up inside or made me feel guilty or awful, I always knew that I should be doing what it is I needed to do to ease his tears. My own guilt is my litmus test about when it was important for him to cry.

The strongest message I can send him about what is important is to show how responsive I can be to his cries when there is something he is communicating that I can and should do something about it. If he is hurt, I respond to his cries (even if he isn't very hurt and mainly needs my attention because I've let myself be too distracted with other things like cleaning the house or talking to other people). If it is something I can feel good compromising about, then I feel fine compromising. (For example, when he wants mango at lunch instead of oranges.) By showing him that I will be there with him and will listen to him even when he is communicating discomfort and displeasure, I hope that I setting the stage for him to continue to communicate with me when he does use words as his primary form of communication. Sometimes, I do think its okay to cry, but only when there is a genuine, good reason why the cry is necessary. I think that is a very important lesson. How could I communicate THAT to him, if I didn't first respond to his first forms of communication?

Thanks for reading,
Shawna

Nothing To Cry About

The week my husband was out of town my almost three year old son and my new born daughter and I weathered a hurricane-turned-tropical-storm, having the drunk who lives on our block harass us one dark night by banging on and yelling through our living room windows, and an out of the blue request for a brief TV appearance. All this, I took in as if it was par for the course, just the normal run of things when my husband left town – never mind that I was still a wee bit tired and recovering from giving birth to the daughter who still fits in the sling I wear her in. But it’s the morning when my son wakes up before he’s ready to at 6:45 am that made me think I was going to lose my mind, that made me question myself and think I was a terrible mother, and that made me put myself in time out so I could think through and figure out the appropriate course of action.

When my son wakes up after a good night’s sleep, he’s cheerful, independent, and playful. He thinks everything is exciting and a game. When my son has woken up before he should have, for reasons unbeknownst to all of us, he’s indecisive, impish and well, there’s just lots of crying, simply because he’s tired.

Like many mothers, I want to give my child everything his heart desires, and if he can’t have it or if I can’t give it to him, well, I want him to at least feel like he can ask, and I do explain when he can’t have something. And I do often say when he’s in such foul moods that I will give him anything he wants but he just has to tell me what it is. Except when he’s in that too-tired-still-needs-to-be-asleep mood, he can’t tell me what it is.

His request for breakfast goes something along the lines of:

“I want blue berries.”

“No. I don’t want blue berries.”

“I want a spoon.”

“No. I don’t want a spoon.”

And in between all of it is crying and screaming. I think some would describe it as a temper tantrum. A really good one. Except the cause is unknown to all except him. I just happen to suspect it’s because he’s tired.

When I was a child and something made me cry, my mother uttered the line that many mothers of her generation did: “Stop or I’ll give you something to cry about.” This never made sense to me as a child. I swear I remember thinking, “But I’m already crying, thanks. I don’t need any further help from you.” I think my mother was attempting to make me stop crying, which is part of why it doesn’t make sense. Such a sentence suggests that the child is crying for no reason, except that children don’t cry for no reason. Just because we as parents don’t know the reason, or the child is unable to tell us the reason doesn’t mean they don’t have one. It infers that even if the child has a reason, the parent considers it invalid or unworthy of tears.

Needless to say, I hated it when my mother said this line to me, and when I was teenager I often made lists of the things I promised I would never do to my children. At the top of this list: washing a child’s mouth out with soap and uttering this famous line.

Watching my son crying and asking for something only to refuse it, I thought, this is one of those moments that my mother – if she were here – would indeed say, “Stop, or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Or she’d want to, and bite her tongue, knowing I don’t believe in corporal punishment or really, any kind of punishment. And, I can get how frustrating it must have been for my mother in such moments, simply because it is frustrating, when your child is endlessly crying and frustrated and screaming when you give him what he asks for.

I walked out of the room to give myself a moment. (Just because I don’t see the sense in time outs for children doesn’t mean I don’t regularly take them myself.) On my living room bookshelf are half a dozen of the child rearing books I have read and refer to: You Are Your Child’s First Teacher, my favorite, Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting, Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves and so on. On my refrigerator are clippings from parenting articles, so I have reminders of how to stay rational in such situations. Despite all my reading and research, I felt completely inept at the moment. Until my eye falls on a quote from one of the articles, “When you can ask nicely, Mommy will be ready to listen.”

It wasn’t an exact fit for the situation, but close enough. I adapted it, and said calmly, “I will give you whatever you want, when you can ask nicely.”

His immediate response, of course, was to hit, kick, open the fridge and slam it shut. But I knew I couldn’t take it personally. I just repeated what I had said, with the added, we don’t kick or hit or slam doors.

I had to repeat myself I don’t know how many times. The phase became a mantra that for whatever reason removed the anger from both of us and the situation.

Finally, my son hugged my legs, looked up at me and said through his tears, “I want a nap.”

“I thought so.” I said. “Let’s go back to bed.” So we went back to bed. He didn’t sleep, but he curled up and rested his head on my shoulder, while his sister continued sleeping on the other side of me, and we read the latest installment of books from the library.

Half an hour later, my playful, excited, game loving independent almost three year old, sat up as if he was now ready to start the day.

Thank Heavens, I thought, for the morning re-start. And thank heavens I didn’t give him something to cry about.