When as a baby to expect to be responded to by my parents?

[BooseysMom]

Just reading a rather upsetting book DH got me for Mother's Day called 'The Book you wish your Parents had read' by Philippa Perry, a psychotherapist married to the artist Grayson Perry.

One chapter on pregnancy covers attachment parenting and the different versions of this. I'll try to keep it as brief as i can .. basically it's saying if as a baby you were left to 'cry it out' you are likely going to develop neurosis in later life and have a negative outlook and life experiences and not be able to form relationships easily ... all because as a baby your needs were not met and you were left to cry for hours. This really got to me and left me wondering whether my late DM left me for hours which is why i tend to be anxious and find it hard to be positive. I clearly remember her telling me to ignore DS when he was just 6 weeks old! I was utterly flabbergasted .. how can a tiny baby be left to cry? Of course she was the one i ignored! Last night was bad and during my regular insomnia i just kept going over it in my head. I mean, in the old days the advice was to leave babies to cry ..so surely that means most of our generation are in some way screwed up?!
What do you think? Is this woman right to state this? Should i just step away from the book now?!

I'm not sure most parents would have left their babies cry for hours and if they did I could well imagine it could have bad effects on them in later life

I've certainly heard similar. That babies who are left to cry don't form as many brain synapses at a crucial development stage and then have issues in later life.

But like you say it was standard advice in the past. I'm sure I was left to cry. My parents got a bolt for the outside of my older brother's bedroom to lock him in as a toddler as he'd try to come out in the evening. Their GP told them to do it!

I'm also reading that book and found that section particularly hard. My mum left db and me (he's a year older) to sleep in a separate room from 2 weeks old "because we were so noisy" and almost proudly tells me she never woke to our cries. It makes me so, sooo sad to think about as I have followed attachment parenting to some extent as it feels natural. It's a hard read because everything she talks about, in terms of listening and being there for your child, is so foreign to me when thinking about how i was brought up. My mum is 75, had us in the early 80s. Maybe you're right about it being a thing of the times but i'm sure my friends parents were warmer, truly kinder and more responsive to their needs than mine were.

So, based on little but gut instinct, I think that those parents who are most likely to leave their children to cry on and on for hours are also those same parents who do not have the skills to nurture their children while they are awake. It might not be the crying it out specifically that causes the damage but the correlation with poor parenting. I think, given how plastic the brain is, and in the absence of neglect more generally then it wouldn't cause the kind of trauma that would rattle through a lifetime.

Also my parents gave me advice that as long as the mothers happy, the baby will be, and i'm not sure that's right with small babies. It seems selfish and again not responding to a baby's needs. I believe you can't spoil a baby, they need what they need, so it's our job to provide it. Very different approaches. It still comes up when my dps are with my dd - i have to remind them to empathize with her and just to listen, not treat her as an object for their entertainment. It's really strange.

This really got to me and left me wondering whether my late DM left me for hours which is why i tend to be anxious and find it hard to be positive.

My DD is 6 and was never, never left to cry, which I know for a fact as I was always with her. She has serious anxiety issues for which she's getting treatment. It runs in our family, unfortunately.

I'm just saying that it's not necessarily as clear-cut as it might seem. Certainly all our experiences shape us, but there's also a genetic factor.

I would say that nothing is a given so you can’t know these things for sure. I also think there are different degrees of leaving a baby to cry which are also harmful in degrees.
As has been mentioned it would correlate to say that a parent who leaves newborn to cry for hours probably had problems with the emotional care which may then cause difficult experiences later on. However shorter periods of say letting a newborn cry themselves to sleep over feeding or rocking them to sleep are not going to cause the same levels of harm.
Also try to remind yourself that advice at that time was very different as what was known was different so it’s not fair to judge our parents on today’s standards.

I think you might be overthinking. You actually have to neglect a child quite extremely to give them brain damage, being put outside for a nap sceream yourself to sleep a la 1960s wont do it.

There has been quite a lot of research to show that characteristics such as anxiety, social conservatism etc are genetically coded for. I expect you inherited a good dose of worry genes.

Tbf, if you are going to read a book called how your parents caused all your problems, you've already decided who is to blame.

Agree with pp that leaving a baby to cry for a defined period isn’t neglect enough to cause lasting damage- who knows perhaps it even built resilience in the generation of babies born in the sixties. Those mothers were strongly advised to have a strict four hourly feeding regime and leave the baby to cry in between. It was common practice to put them in a pram at the end of the garden to avoid being disturbed!

I couldn’t have done it but my own mother felt very pressured to follow the rules.

I believe a lot of the science in this field is based on eg Romanian orphanages where babies and young children were completely ignored day after day.

That’s not the same as cry it out sleep training which involves allowing a child to cry at bedtime, for a few nights until the child learns to go to sleep without rocking/bf/etc. And being a loving parent at all other times.

Personally I don’t like the idea of CIO sleep training (though am ok with CC where there is repeated reassurance) but I don’t think you can equate CIO sleep training used for a very short period at bedtimes only, with being left to cry most of the time.

My 8 year old DD was never left to cry and I followed attachment parenting with all of my DC so babywearing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding on demand etc. She has always been an anxious child, I have no idea why. She’s just afraid of everything pretty much and I’ve never been able to take her to a birthday party for example, she just screams and refuses to go in. My other DC are not like her.

She used to scream when anyone so much as looked at her when she was a baby/toddler. She has many fears such as dogs, flying insects, birds, doors being locked (public toilets for example- she won’t go in one alone).

Never left any of my babies to cry.

YOU are totally over thinking things.

My mum was the most amazing mum you could wish for and I’m quite an anxious person. Nothing to do with my upbringing and all to do with my nature.

I'm pretty sure the research relating to the damage of being left to cry mainly relates to kids in a Romanian orphanage who were given very little attention and left to cry for hours. Sleep training or leaving a baby to cry for a little while when they are otherwise loved and cared for isn't the same kettle of fish. Chronic leaving of babies to cry obviously isn't good, but that level of emotional neglect will most likely come with other neglect markers too.

The thing is, babies cry for different reasons. Some of it is genuine distress, and those cries will generally be responded to quickly as they are different to grumbling or frustrated cries, some of which is part of a baby's settling routine. In my DD's case, she will often have some whingy crying at bedtime and actually if she's in the process of settling herself with that, me going to her can actually make things escalate again.

The best book to read would be 'Don't read all these rubbishy books which are designed to make you feel bad and to make their unqualified writers a lot of money.'
Were a lot of the rubbish spouted of any scientific validity they would be able to account for children of the same family, brought up in the same way, who develop totally differently.

Baguetteaboutit makes a very interesting point there.

My parents are in their 80s. I was born in the early 60s. It was very standard then to put the baby in a pram at the bottom of the garden for large chunks of the day so that the mother could get on with her housework uninterrupted. It was rationalised as giving the baby lots of healthy fresh air. I am quite certain I was sometimes left to cry until it was time for my four-hourly feed (another strict rule dictated by doctors, midwives and health visitors - based on a system devised by a doctor who had been observing cows ).

I don't think I'm messed up, though. My parents are affectionate people. I knew I was loved and wanted. I would never have been ignored if I was ill.They weren't perfect parents, but how many parents are?

It's not a system I could ever have implemented myself, though. We didn't talk about attachment parenting in the early 90s when I had my children, but there was plenty of advice about feeding on demand, especially if you were breastfeeding, and that's what I did. I carried my children about in my arms when we were in the house, or in a sling outdoors, or sat down with them on my lap, for huge chunks of the day (and night). Even when they were in the pushchair they were looking at me, as it was rearfacing. Lovely times. Knackering, but lovely. It helped that I am not houseproud!

My mum is houseproud, and would have struggled massively with having a messy or (God forbid) a slightly dusty house, piles of ironing, washing, washing up etc etc. She was a lot happier with a regime that prioritised getting all of that done and making the baby wait a bit.

Even at very early ages, you can see clues to a baby's temperament, before there's any real chance for parents to cause 'damage'. My DD is very placid and laid back like her dad, fine with new places and experiences and very adaptable, and has been since birth. Her little pal of the same age has always been very sensitive, quick to cry, struggles with changes to routine and with new places and experiences.

It'll be interesting to see whether those traits stay the same as they grow.

Surely though, if we look back a few generations - to Victorian times, for example, when working class mothers had to drug their babies with gin or leave them with a minder (with 30 other children) in order to work to pay for food, or upper class parents, whose children were relegated to the nursery and a governess or tutor and a night nanny....this should mean that entire generations of people were damaged and anxious and unable to function.

Doesn't seem to have. Parenting goes in fashions and cycles, and there's no real 'definitive' way that It Must Be Done Or Your Child Will Turn Out To Be A Serial Killer.

Back away from the books.

Also given the increasing numbers of children nowadays who seem to have anxiety (or at least are now actually being diagnosed with it), I'm not sure being left to cry can really be to blame as that advice isn't really as popular now, in favour of more attachment style of parenting. I think a more likely reason is temperament coupled with the fact modern life has brought with it a new set of challenges and pressure on children that perhaps weren't there before (social media, schooling, body image, etc.)

It's not a system I could ever have implemented myself, though

The thing is you can't know that. You would have probably followed the advice of the times which is all our parents did. It's impossible to know what you would or would not have done in retrospect.

Even at very early ages, you can see clues to a baby's temperament, before there's any real chance for parents to cause 'damage'. My DD is very placid and laid back like her dad, fine with new places and experiences and very adaptable, and has been since birth. Her little pal of the same age has always been very sensitive, quick to cry, struggles with changes to routine and with new places and experiences.

Totally agree - but this is then compounded by the fact that those two babies will inevitably be parented differently, because you respond differently to a calm baby than to one who needs a lot of soothing. It can become very difficult to separate cause and effect. My friend was v critical of her SIL, who she felt had made her child clingy and spoilt with her own anxiety and hyperattentiveness. I felt that my friend couldn't see how much easier it is to be chilled out with a chilled out child (like her own) and that her SIL was stressed because her child was hard work, he wasn't hard work because she was stressed. But looking back the truth was probably somewhere in the middle.

I was a baby left in a pram in the garden.I am not anxious.
My DD wasn't left to cry and has diagnosed anxiety,?Asperger's so probably got that from her dad.
I think it takes a bit more than crying to harm a baby.Being left to cry uncomforted and frightened in an older child repeatedly probably could.

Sorry to hear about your anxiety, OP.

I think anxiety can be really complex, have lots and lots of contributary factors and is different for everyone. So, no, it's not as clearcut as 'crying it out' will cause this and this.

To help alleviate it, it's worth looking at lots of different angles - lifestyle, diet, exercise, counselling/talk therapy, medication, etc.

A book like this is pop science, interesting but not an analysis tool and no substitute for one-to-one therapy/care from a trusted person.

I agree with posters saying that it's a bit more complicated than that.

I know my mum used CIO techniques with me as she bought the Dr Ferber book for me when my DC were born and told me how useful she'd found it (I'm another 70s baby).

But she was otherwise a loving and present mother, and as an adult I am not anxious at all and have a very positive outlook on life.

I couldn’t even do sleep training and let them cry for a little bit ,I was neglected as a child ,and it sent me so far in the opposite direction,I couldn’t even let them go to preschool or school Incase something happened.
My mum had a difficult childhood herself ,no one suffered as much as she did ,no matter what I went through,it was nothing compared to what she went through.blah blah blah
Yeah I would agree with your book op
But I’d never read it ,as I’m trying to move on and be normal