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Crawling Baby

Cry-it-Out may appear to "work". But at what cost?

by Kathi Valeii

spiritofilithyia.jpg "What has actually “worked?” A child neglected during the nighttime hours has not learned, “Huh, I guess I can go to sleep by myself; it’s not so bad. Thanks for teaching me how.” She has instead learned, quite sadly, that no matter how hard she wails, no matter how long she protests, agonizes or frets, her parents simply will not respond. This is quite different than gently teaching her a skill. This, instead, lays a foundation for mistrust, a direct roadblock to healthy independence.

(Science is again confirming what mother-instinct knew all along – that allowing a child high levels of distress and routine periods of neglect has harmful developmental effects. Read here and here and here if you are interested in understanding how high cortisol levels in infants affects brain development.) go to spiritofilithyia

 

How do I get my baby to sleep better?

"Keeping a regular feeding, napping, and activity schedule helps set your baby's internal clock. As an example, while you may enjoy sleeping in on the weekends, this can disrupt your baby's regular schedule; he neither knows nor cares what day it is. ... I am not suggesting a clock-watching program. Such regimens only put necessary stress on you and your baby. Instead, ... what you want to avoid is a haphazard week of events -- awaking Monday morning at 7, Tuesday morning at 9, lunch on Wednesday at 11, on Thursday not until 1; naptime on Monday at 11, on Tuesday at 1."

"Timing is very very important! You have probably experienced this scenario: Your baby looks tired and you think, 'Time for a nap.' So you wash her hands and face, change her diaper, answer a phone call, put out the dog, and head for your baby's crib, only to find that she's suddenly wide awake and eager to play! What happened? She has moved through her window of tiredness and gotten that 'second wind' that buys her another hour or two of alert time before she reenters her tired state." [View source]

The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night, pp. 107,111.

 

Late crawling babies

by Lisa Nolan

"I get asked this question more than a few times! What to do about late crawlers? ... It is good to encourage at least ten minutes of tummy time several sessions a day by placing your infant on her tummy." go to Confessions of a Montessori Mom

 

Piercing baby's ears

Cultural differences. A tough thing. At what age to pierce a girl's ears?

 

Study says Hippocampus bigger in nurtured children

by Luby, Barch et al.

"Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that when young children get plenty of nurturing from their mothers, those children end up with a bigger hippocampus in the brain by the time they reach school age. the hippocampus is an important structure related to learning, memory and stress response. [..] As part of the initial study, the children were closely observed and videotaped interacting with a parent, almost always a mother, as the parent was completing a required task, and the child was asked to wait to open an attractive gift. How much or how little the parent was able to support and nurture the child in this stressful circumstance -- which was designed to approximate the stresses of daily parenting -- was evaluated by raters who knew nothing about the child's health or the parent's temperament.

"It's very objective," says Luby, professor of child psychiatry. "Whether a parent was considered a nurturer was not based on that parent's own self-assessment. Rather, it was based on their behavior and the extent to which they nurtured their child under these challenging conditions." go to medicalxpress.com

 

Raising a Continuum Child

by Sam

"The Continuum Concept is a theory devised by author Jean Liedloff after spending long periods of time living with and observing the Yequana tribe in the jungles of South America. She observed that the people of the tribe were the happiest she had ever witnessed and found through studying their child rearing practices, this to be a huge contributing factor." go to loveparenting.org


Interested in more? Here are other articles:
sleep India
customs child development
Breast-feeding bedsharing
anxiety

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