10 Things Everyone Should Know About Babies

Ignorance about babies is undermining society.

Have you noticed all the stressed babies? Maybe one in 30 I see has glowing eyes, a sign of thriving. What's up? Perhaps ignorance about babies and their needs. Here are 10 things to know.

1. Babies are social mammals with social mammalian needs. Social mammals emerged more than 30 million years ago with intensive parenting (the developmental nest or niche). This is one of the many (extra-genetic) things that evolved other than genes. This developmental nest is required for an individual to develop properly. Intensive parenting practices include years of breastfeeding to develop brain and body systems, nearly constant touch and physical presence of caregivers, responsiveness to needs without distress, free play with multi-aged playmates, and soothing perinatal experiences. Each of these has significant effects on physical health.

2. Human babies are born "half-baked" and require an external womb. Humans are born way early compared to other animals: 9 months early in terms of mobility and 18 months early in terms of bone development and foraging capacities. Full-term babies have 25% of adult brain volume and most of it grows in the first 5 years. Thus, the human nest for its young evolved to be even more intense than for other social mammals because of the underdeveloped newborn, lasting for 3-5 years. Humans also added to the list of expected care a village of positive social support for both mother and baby. Actually, human brain development lasts into the third decade of life, suggesting that social support and mentoring continue at least that long.

3. If adults mess up on the post-birth “baking,” longterm problems can result. Each of the caregiving practices mentioned above has longterm effects on the physical health but also social health of the individual. For example, distressing babies regularly or intensively (by not giving them what they need) undermines self-regulatory systems. This is common knowledge in other cultures and was so in our past. In Spanish, there is a term used for adolescents and adults who misbehave: malcriado (misraised).

4. Babies thrive on affectionate love. When babies receive food and diaper changes and little else, they die. If they receive partial attention and stay alive, it is still not enough—they won’t reach their full potential. Urie Bronfenbrenner, who emphasized the multiple systems of support that foster optimal development, said that babies do best when at least one person is crazy about them. Others have noted that children grow best with three affectionate, consistent caregivers. In fact, babies expect more than mom and dad for loving care. Babies are ready for a community of close, responsive caregivers that includes mother nearby.

5. Babies’ right hemisphere of the brain is developing rapidly in the first three years. The right hemisphere develops in response to face-to-face social experience, with extended shared eye gaze. The right hemisphere governs self-regulatory systems. If babies are placed in front of screens, ignored or isolated, they are missing critical experiences.

6. Babies expect to play and move. Babies expect to be “in arms” or on the body of the caregiver most of the time. Skin-to-skin contact is a calming influence. After learning this one of my students when at a family gathering took a crying baby and held it to his neck, which calmed it down. Babies expect companionship not isolation or intrusion. They expect to be in the middle of community social life. They are ready to play from birth. Play is a primary method for learning self-control and social skills. Companionship care—friendship, mutual responsiveness and playfulness—builds social and practical intelligence. Babies and caregivers share intersubjective states, building the child’s capacities for the interpersonal “dances” that fill social life.

7. Babies have built-in warning systems. If they are not getting what they need, babies let you know. It is best, as most cultures have long known, to respond to a baby’s grimace or gesture and not to wait till crying occurs. Young babies have difficulty stopping crying once it starts. The best advice for baby care is to sensitively follow the baby, not the experts.

8. Babies lock their experiences into procedural memory vaults that will be inaccessible but apparent in later behavior and attitudes. Babies can be traumatized from neglecting the list of needs above. They won’t forget. It will undermine their trust of others, their health and social wellbeing, and lead to self-centered morality which can do much destruction to the world.

9. Culture does not erase the evolved needs babies have. Babies cannot retract their mammalian needs. Yet, some adult cultures advocate violating baby needs as if they do not matter and despite the protests of the baby. Everyday violations include baby isolation like sleeping alone, “crying it out” sleep training, infant formula, or baby videos and flashcards.* When violations occur regularly, at critical time periods or are intense, they undermine optimal development. These violations are encoded in the baby’s body as the optimal development of systems is undermined (e.g., immunity, neurotransmitters, endocrine systems like oxytocin). Surprisingly, some developmental psychologists think it fine to violate these needs** in order for the child to fit into their culture.

The rationalization of “culture over biology” reflects a lack of understandingnot only of human nature but of optimal development. This has occurred in laboratories with other animals whose natures were misunderstood. For example, Harry Harlow, known for his experiments with monkeys and “mother love,” at first did not realize he was raising abnormal monkeys when he isolated them in cages. Similarly, at least one of the aggressive rat strains used in lab studies today were first created when scientists isolated offspring after birth, again not realizing the abnormality of isolation. Note how the cultural assumptions of the scientists created the abnormal animals. So it matters what cultural assumptions you have.

The culture-over-biology view may be doing the same thing with human beings. By not understanding babies and their needs, we are creating species-atypical human beings. We can only know this to be the case in light of knowledge about human beings who develop under evolved conditions, with the evolved developmental nest: typically, small-band hunter-gatherers. They are much wiser, perceptive and virtuous than we humans in the USA today.

Thus the final point:

10. Experiences that consistently violate evolution undermine human nature. When species-atypical childrearing occurs, we end up with people whose health and sociality are compromised (which we can see all over the USA today with epidemics of depression, anxiety, high suicide and drug use rates***). Such mis-raised creatures might do all right on achievement tests or IQ measures but they may also be dangerous reptiles whose world revolves around themselves. A lot of smart reptiles (“snakes in suits”) on Wall Street and elsewhere have been running the country into the ground.

What to do?

(1) Inform others about the needs of babies.

(2) Be aware of the needs of babies around you and interact sensitively with the babies you encounter.

(3) Support parents to be sensitive to the needs of their babies. This will also require many more institutional and social supports for families with children, including extensive parental leave which other developed nations provide.

(4) Read books that convey the evolved principles of caregiving, like the following:

The Science of Parenting

Attached at the Heart

The Attachment Parenting Book

The Other Baby Book

Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids

The Science of Mother-Baby Sleep

* Note that sometimes violations (e.g., formula, isolation) are required under emergency conditions that are matters of life and death.

**Of course they don’t think it’s a violation because they don’t take the set of mammalian needs seriously.

*** In the USA, everyone under 50 has numerous health disadvantages compared to citizens in 16 other developed nations (National Research Council, 2013).

References

Babiak, P. & Hare, R.D. (2006). Snakes in Suits, When Psychopaths Go To Work. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Blum, D. (2002). Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection. New York, NY: Perseus Publishing.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chiron, J.I., Nabbout, R., Lounes, R., Syrota, A., & Dulac, O. (1997). The right brain hemisphere is dominant in human infants. Brain, 120, 1057-1065.

Fry, D. P. (2006). The human potential for peace: An anthropological challenge to assumptions about war and violence. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fry, D. (Ed.) (2013). War, peace and human nature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Hrdy, S. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Ingold, T. (1999). On the social relations of the hunter-gatherer band. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 399–410). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Konner, M. (2010). The evolution of childhood. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Liedloff, J. (1977). The Continuum concept. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

Montagu, A. (1986). Touching: The human significance of the skin. New York: Harper & Row.

Narvaez, D. (2013). Development and socialization within an evolutionary context: Growing Up to Become "A good and useful human being." In D. Fry (Ed.), War, Peace and Human Nature: The convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views (pp. 341-358). New York: Oxford University Press.

Narvaez, D. (forthcoming). Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Narvaez, D., & Gleason, T. (2013). Developmental optimization. In D. Narvaez, J., Panksepp, A. Schore, & T. Gleason (Eds.), Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development: From Research to Practice and Policy (pp. 307-325). New York: Oxford University Press.

Narvaez, D., Panksepp, J., Schore, A., & Gleason, T. (Eds.) (2013).Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development: From Research to Practice and Policy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Narvaez, D., Valentino, K., Fuentes, A., McKenna, J., & Gray, P. (2014).Ancestral Landscapes in Human Evolution: Culture, Childrearing and Social Wellbeing. New York: Oxford University Press.

National Research Council. (2013). U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Schore, A. (1994). Affect regulation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Schore, A.N. (2002). Dysregulation of the right brain: a fundamental mechanism of traumatic attachment and the psychopathogenesis of posttraumatic stress disorder. Australian & New Zealand Journal ofPsychiatry, 36, 9-30.

Schore, A.N. (2003). Affect dysregulation & disorders of the self. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton.

Schore, A.N. (2005). Attachment, affect regulation, and the developing right brain: Linking developmental neuroscience to pediatrics. Pediatrics In Review, 26, 204-211.

Spitz, R.A. (1945). Hospitalism; an inquiry into the genesis of psychiatric conditions in early childhood. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. 1, 53-74.

Tomkins, S. (1965). Affect and the psychology of knowledge. In S.S. Tomkins & C.E. Izard (Eds.), Affect, cognition, and personality. New York: Springer.

Trevarthen, C. (2005). Stepping away from the mirror: Pride and shame in adventures of companionship”—Reflections on the nature and emotional needs of infant intersubjectivity. In C.S. Carter, L. Ahnert, K.E. Grossmann, S.B., Hrdy, M.E. Lamb, S.W. Porges, & N. Sachser (Eds.), Attachment and bonding: A new synthesis (pp. 55-84). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Trevarthen, C. (2006). First things first: infants make good use of the sympathetic rhythm of imitation, without reason or language. Journal of Child Psychotherapy 31(1), 91-113.

Trevarthen, C., & Aitken, (2001). Infant intersubjectivity: Research, theory, and clinical applications; Annual Research Review. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 3-48.

Trevathan, W.R. (2011). Human birth: An evolutionary perspective, 2nd ed..New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

If you'd like to learn more you can find this article here.

31 Things No One Tells You About Becoming A Parent

You’re going to need to know this stuff before you take the plunge.

1. At some point you will accidentally hurt your kid and you’ll feel like the worst parent ever.

Try not to take it so hard. It happens to the best whether they admit it or not.

2. You will know a lot less about this:

“Wait. What happened?”

3. And a whole lot more about this:

4. Your Netflix account will eventually only suggest kids’ shows.

“I am a grown-ass person, Netflix! I don’t want to watch Bubble Guppies!”

5. Your pet will no longer be your top priority.

You: “When did we last feed the dog?” Spouse: “Dog?”

6. You will gain 15 pounds.

Kids love to eat ice cream, and what are you gonna do? Let them eat that tiny, 4-ounce kid’s cup without getting a jumbo for yourself? That would just be rude.

7. The backseat of your car will be nasty.

I don’t care how often you wash your car now. Crushed Cheerios, spilled juice, and a whole lot of other crap are in your car’s future.

8. You will eat 95% of your meals either incredibly fast or with one hand. Or both.

9. You’ll basically become a ninja.

When you need something from the baby’s room late at night you’ll be able to slip in and out without upending a feather.

10. Despite your best efforts, your kids will get their hands on your iPhone.

And this is what your photos will look like afterward.

11. Parenting is harder than you think it’ll be, but you won’t really notice.

Kind of like how lobsters don’t notice the water getting hotter, parents don’t notice how increasingly difficult parenting becomes.

12. You will have to sneak candy like it’s a contraband substance.

If your kid so much as smells chocolate on your breath, you’re screwed.

13. You will laugh more than at any other time in your life.

Kids do and say the funniest stuff ever. It’s pretty awesome.

14. You’ll be awakened at 2 a.m. to fetch a glass of water only to find your kid passed out when you deliver it.

The good news, though, is that the water is now totally yours!

15. You will see your own faults reflected back at you.

It’s sobering when you see your kid imitate your own bad behavior, and it will make you want to be a better person.

16. Folding kid and baby clothes is torture.

A normal-sized pile of laundry will take you three times as long to fold if it’s full of baby stuff.

17. It’s impossible to feel manly when folding said baby clothes.

Aww, look at the big man folding the tiny, widdle clothes.

18. The power of cute is more formidable than you realize.

Right now you’re like, “I’ll never give in to my kid’s whims and desires.” But you have never had a 3-year-old peer up at you and say, “Pwease? PWEASE?”

19. You will find talking to your friends without kids more difficult.

Friend: “I met this gorgeous girl at the club last night and we’ve been texting all day.” You: “I changed a poopy diaper.” Awkward silence.

20. Kids become actual people and not baby blobs way sooner than you think.

By the time your kid is 2, you’ll be having conversations more rewarding than many you have with adults.

21. Something you love will get ruined.

Kids have a knack for breaking, dirtying, or losing your favorite possessions. Don’t get too attached to that deer head, pal.

22. You will turn into your parents.

At some point you will actually find yourself saying, “That’s it! I will turn this car around!” and “Your face is gonna freeze like that!”

23. Very little will embarrass you.

Singing to your crying baby in public? Dropping your kid off at school in a robe? Nope. It’ll take more than that.

24. You won’t be able to watch movies where kids are killed or kidnapped.

When you have a little person in your house who you love more than anything, those movies hit a little too close to home.

25. You won’t want to spend money on yourself because you’ll know every dollar spent on yourself is a dollar you could’ve spent on your family.

This is why parents are famous for wearing outdated jeans.

26. Buying your kid something will make you way more happy than buying yourself something.

27. When your kid is little, every trip out of the house will feel like getting ready to go to the airport.

“Got the wipes?” “Check.” “The diapers, change of clothes, blanket, baby bottle, pacifier?” “Uh, check.”

28. You will love to watch kids’ movies.

This isn’t because the movies are so great (though most are tolerable these days), but because they’re an amazing bonding experience with your kid.

29. You will cram your entire adult life between the time your kid goes down and you go to sleep.

“Quick! Turn on The Walking Dead! Pour the wine! Tell me what you think about Obamacare! Ah, crap. It’s time for bed.”

30. For a while, only you will be able to understand them, so you’ll basically become their interpreter.

Grandma: “What did she say? Moogle woogle boo?” You: “No, she wants me to take her and her cousin to the park over on Smith Street next Tuesday.”

31. And lastly, it’s all worth it.

OK, so this is something people will tell you, but it’s true. Even with all of the maddening things that come along with being a parent, being someone’s mommy or daddy is one of life’s most rewarding experiences.

The Neuroscience of Calming a Baby

New study explains why babies calm down when they are carried.

Every parent and caregiver knows from first hand experience that babies calm down when they are picked up, gently rocked, and carried around the room. New research published in the journal Current Biology on April 18, 2013 shows that this is a universal phenomenon. Infants experience an automatic calming reaction when they are being carried, whether they are mouse pups or human babies.

"From humans to mice, mammalian infants become calm and relaxed when they are carried by their mother," says Kumi Kuroda of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Saitama, Japan. Being held in a mother's arms is the safest place for a baby to be, and the mother can have peace of mind knowing her baby is happy, content, and relaxed. The fact that babies are neurobiologically wired to stop crying when carried is a part of our evolutionary biology that helps our species survive.

This study is the first to show that the infant calming response to carrying is a coordinated set of central, motor, and cardiac regulations that is an evolutionarily preserved aspect of mother-infant interactions, the researchers say. It also helps to have a scientific explanation for the frustration many new parents struggle with. . . a calm and relaxed infant will often begin crying immediately when he or she is put down. When my daughter was young, swaddling her seemed to create a compact posture and sense of security that triggered an automatic relaxation response when she was put back down and helped break this cycle.

What triggers this calming response?

Kuroda and colleagues at RIKEN determined that the calming response is mediated by the parasympathetic nervous system and a region of the brain called the cerebellum (Latin: little brain). The researchers found that the calming response was dependent on tactile inputs and proprioception. Proprioception is the ability to sense and understand body movements and keep track of your body's position in space. They also found that the parasympathetic nervous system helped lower heart rate as part of mediating the coordinated response to being carried.

Both human and mouse babies calm down and stop moving immediately after they are carried, and mouse pups stop emitting ultrasonic cries. Mouse pups also adopt the characteristic compact posture, with limbs flexed, seen in other mammals such as cats and lions.

The idea that the familiar calming dynamic was also playing out in mice occurred to Kuroda one day when she was cleaning the cages of her mouse colony in the laboratory. She says, "When I picked the pups up at the back skin very softly and swiftly as mouse mothers did, they immediately stopped moving and became compact. They appeared relaxed, but not totally floppy, and kept the limbs flexed. This calming response in mice appeared similar to me to soothing by maternal carrying in human babies."

The Role of the Cerebellum in Calmness

As an athlete, I have written extensively about the cerebellum and its role in coordinating fine-tuned muscle movements, balance, and proprioception... The cerebellum is always on guard to protect your body from danger and prepare you for 'fight-or-flight' by keeping track of everything going on in your environment. 

Among many other jobs, the cerebellum has a huge responsibility to maintain your safety and physical well being. This takes a lot of brain power and energy. Although the cerebellum is only 10% of brain volume it holds over 50% of your brain's neurons. Neuroscientists are perplexed by everything that the cerebellum does. This study offers one more valuable clue. 

Scientists have known for years that the cerebellum is directly linked to a feedback loop with the vagus nerve which keeps heart rate slow and gives you grace under pressure. As adults, we can calm ourselves by practicing mindfulness and Loving-Kindness Meditation which puts the cerebellum at peace and creates a parasympathetic response of well being. This appears to be the same response that occurs in infants when they are being carried. 

Interestingly, the only time during the day that the cerebellum is allowed to let down it's guard and go offline is during REM sleep when your body is paralyzed to prevent you from acting out your dreams. It makes sense that being picked up and carried would send automatic signals that allow the cerebellum to relax and create healthy vagal tone which would lower heart rates in infants.

Conclusion

The researchers believe that these findings could have broad implications for parenting and contribute to preventing child abuse. “This infant response reduces the maternal burden of carrying and is beneficial for both the mother and the infant," explains Kuroda. She goes on to say, “Such proper understanding of infants would reduce frustration of parents and be beneficial, because unsoothable crying is a major risk factor for child abuse.”

"A scientific understanding of this infant response will save parents from misreading the restart of crying as the intention of the infant to control the parents, as some parenting theories—such as the 'cry it out' type of strategy—suggest," Kuroda says. "Rather, this phenomenon should be interpreted as a natural consequence of the infant sensorimotor systems." If parents understand that properly, perhaps they will be less frustrated by the crying, Kuroda says. And that puts those children at lower risk of abuse.

The authors conclude that, “Although our study was done on mothers, we believe that this is not specific to moms and can be used by any primary caregiver.”

This article can be found here.

What's the Difference Between Limits and Consequences?

This was a MUST share article from Aha! Parenting.

"Dr. Laura, How do you set loving limits, when you do not give consequences? For example, my son's bouncing a soccer ball inside the house. I try to give him a choice: "You remember balls are for bouncing outside. You may take it in front of the house or into the backyard. The choice is yours." Sometimes it works...sometimes he ignores me and continues to bounce the ball...I repeat again, and he does not listen. Should I take the ball away? He did not listen and there should be a consequence, no?"

Mom sees behavior that is against the family rules. She sets a limit, in this case by giving her son a choice of two alternate, acceptable, options. He ignores her. She repeats herself. He ignores her. Shouldn't there be a "consequence"?

Let's take this a step at a time.

1. Your son is bouncing the ball in the house, which he knows is against the family rules. You're worried about the walls getting scuffed. You need to set a limit. 

If you're doing daily preventive maintenance -- connecting with warmth and empathy, spending one on one time -- your child will always be more cooperative. So you can usually just set a clear, kind limit: "Michael! Ball bouncing is for outside. Thank you!" and hold open the door, and he'll comply.

What do I mean by connecting with warmth and empathy? Your basic 24/7 response to him is seeing things from his perspective, with compassion. In other words, what comes out of your mouth sounds mostly like this (in a warm, heart-felt voice):

• "You don't want to stop playing and take a bath. I understand. I bet when you're a grownup, you'll never take a bath, will you?"
• "Sometimes it's really hard to share your parents."
• "You sound really mad!"

2. Do you need to give him a choice? 

Some younger kids feel overwhelmed by choices. But strong-willed kids, even more than the rest of us, react badly when they feel backed into a corner. I would generally recommend giving your child the choice of continuing his activity in an appropriate place, or finding a different activity.

"Michael! No ball playing in the house. You can bounce the ball outside, or you can find another activity."

3. He ignores you. 

Maybe he's not being defiant; he's just really focused on his ball skills and doesn't even hear you. Or maybe you haven't been connecting with him much lately, and this is your red flag that you need to spend some dedicated special time with him daily, starting tonight. Or maybe he knows from past experience that there's a good chance you'll give up and leave him alone. Or maybe he's just a strong-willed kid, who needs to push on a limit 100 times to see if it holds firm. So he ignores you.

Do you repeat yourself? No! 

If you've asked once and not gotten a response, don't just repeat yourself. You don't have your child's attention yet. Instead, you get in his face in a friendly way, so he gets that you mean it. 

So in this case, you walk over to your son and -- hopefully with a smile on your face, but at least with a neutral expression -- you intercept the soccer ball. You hold the ball in one arm, putting the other arm around his shoulder. He looks up at you, aggravated.

4. You connect before you correct.

How do you feel when someone implies that you're wrong? A little bristly? An urgent need to prove you're right, or to fight back? That's not exactly a recipe for cooperation.

You can avoid your child feeling that way by reconnecting. He's much more likely to really hear you, and to care what you want, which means he's more likely to cooperate. You do that by seeing his perspective, even as you set your limit.

"Hey, Buddy...I guess you were so focused on those ball skills that you didn't hear me. Your ball skills are looking good. AND where do we play with balls? Right! Outside!" 

As you speak, you are walking him towards the door. You open it, and as he goes out, you give him the ball, and a smile.

5. Find a win/win solution. Usually, that's the end of incident. You've enforced your limit. If you do this regularly, your son will skip the inside bouncing and head straight outdoors, because who wants their mom interrupting when they're practicing ball skills? 

But maybe you only have a lawn outside and the ball doesn't bounce there. Maybe your son needs a hard surface to bounce the ball. In that case, he will almost certainly keep using your hallway. Time for a win/win solution.

"Hmm...I hear you that the lawn isn't good for bouncing the ball....and bouncing it in the house doesn't work for me because it damages the wall....What can we do?....You think the blacktop at the school would work? Great idea! I can't go with you now, but if you help me chop these veggies, we can go over for half an hour before dinner. Let's work together." 

Notice your child has to delay gratification. That's not easy. But if you're maintaining a positive connection, he'll be a lot more motivated.

6. Should you take the ball away? If your child is using a toy in an unsafe way, and does not respond to your redirection, then of course you take the toy away. "Balls are not for bouncing in the house. I hear you really don't want to go outside, so let's put the ball away and find something you can do in the house. It looks like you need something active to do....Want to jump on the trampoline in the basement? Or throw your stuffed animals over the railing and then rescue them?" Notice this is not a punishment. You are simply redirecting your child's energy. 

7. Teach Your Child to Repair. Let's say you come upon your son bouncing his ball in the hall, and you notice scuff marks on the wall. You say say "Whoa! Look at that wall! We need to clean that up. Sweetie, let's go get the cleaning supplies, and I'll help you. You know we always clean up our own messes." If you do this cheerfully, without blame, from the time your child is little, he will comply. And he will also start taking the ball outside without your intervention, because who wants to clean the walls when they could be outside doing soccer drills?

8. Shouldn't there be a "consequence"? Of course! Look at all the consequences of what happened here! Your son has learned:

• When mom tells me to do something, she means it. There's no point in trying to ignore her.
• Bouncing the ball in the house scuffs the wall and I'm responsible to help clean up the scuff marks...I'd rather just go outside with the ball.
• I make mistakes, but Mom always understands.
• I repair my mistakes and clean up my own messes.
• My mom really cares about what I want. So I care about what she wants.
• If I don't like what Mom tells me to do, she listens and tries to find a good solution for both of us.
• I'm good at finding solutions.
• If I use a toy unsafely, I have to find another activity.
• I don't always get what I want, but I get something better -- a mom who understands.
• Everyone in our family takes our family rules seriously. The most important one is treating each other with respect and kindness.

By contrast, if you had punished him -- which is what parents usually mean by "consequences" -- what would he have learned? 

• She's always yelling and punishing me. Why should I do what she wants?
• When I bounce the ball in the house, she takes it away and punishes me. But not until she's yelling. So I don't have to listen until she yells and takes the ball away. I know just how far to push it before I get a consequence.
• She took my ball. I'm going to annoy my sister. In fact, I'm going to make this afternoon miserable for everyone.
• When she's not here, I'll bounce the ball in the house as much as I want. 
• No, I don't know who made those scuff marks. I'm getting good at lying.
• She can't make me.

The truth is, we can't make another human being do what we want. We can only help them WANT to. Loving guidance and empathic limits help your child WANT to follow your guidance, so those good habits become part of who he is, whether you're there or not. "Consequences" that are designed to punish? Just the opposite.

The difference between loving limits and consequences is that there's no room for punishment in loving limits. If you'd like to learn more you can find this article here.

Six Ways to Allow Your Child to Become a Responsible Adult

Lately there seem to be many parents yelling about how much they hate our current generation of entitled children or young adults who can’t function on their own and don’t take responsibility for their actions. They seem to argue that it’s parents who are responsive that are a problem, something I’ve heard first hand (because didn’t you know that letting my child breastfeed at 2 means she’ll be a spoiled, rotten brat??). They often push for things like bullying being okay or leaving your child to cry because the real world is harsh: The problem is that we just haven’t been harsh enough with our kids and that’s why they can’t cope. I think it’s bullshit. You want to raise responsible adults? Here are six things you should allow your child to do if you want them to grow into adults who understand responsibility, will work hard, and be self-motivated…

Allow your baby to be totally dependent on you. Our society focuses far too much on trying to make babies independent but quite simply, it won’t work. Think of your child as a house or tree, without the right foundation or roots, you will have problems. Attachment is absolutely necessary to children’s well-being. Although historical or evolutionary practices are very easy ways to get this attachment (because of the constant proximity between baby and a caregiver – typically mom but certainly not always given the high prevalence of alloparenting in these societies), as written about before it’s really all about responsiveness. Whereas leaving your baby to cry or refusing to feed or comfort at certain points is non-responsive, you simply cannot spoil a baby with too much love and you will not create “bad habits” or “clingy children” by responding to them. You just won’t. In fact, you’ll raise children who feel secure enough to go out and explore the world on their own, knowing they have a safe place to return to if necessary.

Allow your child to grow into his/her independence. You see, we have it backwards. We force independence in babies and then restrict it as our children develop and are yearning for independence. Does this mean we hand our 2 year old a knife and wish them luck? No, it means that we allow them to explore. In the younger years, it may be as simple as just letting them climb on the play structure themselves. In the older years, it’ll be letting them go on bike rides or walks to friends’ houses by themselves. You can always make sure your child is doing something as safely as possible but if you remove the chances for them to practice their independence out of fear of anything happening, you will stunt them.

If they have the secure foundation of responsive parenting in their early years, they know they can come to you if they run into problems and they most likely will. They may face problems that you wish they didn’t, but you’ll be there to see them through it, from cuts and broken bones to broken hearts and lost dreams. Remember that each child will grow into their independence in their own time – you can’t actually force independence. You can force independent-like behaviour, but if a child isn’t ready, it will be done with extreme anxiety which is not good for future exploration. (Also remember that a child who is set on being independent will find ways and if you make it too difficult for them, expect them to start doing it behind your back and probably not in the safest or sanest of ways.)

Allow your child to play, and play rough (if she/he wants). Until the age of around 6 or 7, children should spend most of their time playing (and still a lot of time after that). Outdoors when possible, but at least playing. In our world of daycare and preschool and kindergarten readiness tests, we are so focused on trying to teach our children, I’m not sure that there’s any room for them to learn. Will they memorize things? Sure. But are they learning about their interests, the world around them, and how to engage with it? I don’t think so. Play is key to this process of learning and we need to allow them to cultivate it far more than we currently do.

One more thing, many kids (yes, girls included) will want to play rough – toy swords, toy knives, wrestling – and we should let them. Every bit of play is learning, including roughhousing, and from it they can learn a lot about safety, respect for others, and the appropriate ways to use tools. I know many people panic when their child shows an interest in rough play, especially those that identify as “gentle parents”. Remember: Gentle parenting is not about restricting play to gentle play, it’s about how you respond as a parent to your child.

Allow your child to take responsibility for his/her actions. There are two different problems in our society in this realm. Either parents, in an effort to avoid seeing their child in pain or suffering any type of punishment, cover for them or they offer harsh punishments that don’t fit “the crime”. In more traditional societies where groups are small and people have to work together, it is common for people to know how to make amends and if they don’t, allow the group or the elder to decide what actions should be taken while all accept the outcome to move forward. As we don’t have such small groups, we’re not used to that type of awareness of how our actions influence or affect other people, thus parents are used to either doling out punishments or hiding their child from responsibility.

What does taking responsibility look like? Well, at the basic level it’s letting your child take part in figuring out how to make amends if they’ve hurt someone, fix something they’ve done “wrong”, own up to any behaviour that hurt someone, or accept the natural consequences of their own behaviours. It’s bringing them into the fold and having them come up with solutions with you (to help guide them, but not tell them what to do). You should also be giving them things to be responsible for, whether it be a chore in the house, cleaning up after themselves, or being in charge of whatever toys they bring out in public. If they don’t have ways to practice responsibility, they can never learn it. Children as young as 2 or 3 can help come up with ideas and the more they do, the better they get at it and the more they learn to be responsible for themselves.

Allowing responsibility does not mean never helping them when they ask for it out of fear that they will not learn to be responsible. You also want to teach them to help others if they can and when the request is reasonable, so be prepared to do the same for them. It does not mean covering for them or fixing their problems without their input and work or helping when the request is not reasonable.

[My own personal take is that when we instill this, we are helping reduce bullying. If you are consistently aware of how your actions affect other people and become used to having to take responsibility for that, you don’t intentionally hurt others and certain apologize when you do.]

Allow your child to say “no”. If you were to actually step back for a day and observe your interactions with your child, how often do you think you’d allow them to say “no” to you? How often do you allow yourself to say “no” to them? It’s inherently going to be unequal, but in our society it is so skewed that we might as well be honest that we seem to have the primary goal of obedience, not raising children to think for themselves. Sometimes allowing them to do what they want will lead to failure for them (something I know we hate seeing) and that’s okay. They need to fail. We all do. With failure we learn: We learn what doesn’t work and we learn we need to change our plan if we want to reach our goal.

We also need to allow them to say no to develop their own voice. If they can’t feel safe saying “no” to a parent and having it be respected at least once in a while, how can we expect them to feel confident saying it to someone else? We worry about our kids running off with the wrong “crowd”, doing drugs or drinking too much, saying “yes” to sex when they aren’t feeling truly ready themselves. Although these behaviours stem from a multitude of issues, part of it comes down to kids who just don’t believe their “no” has a voice. It’s up to us as parents to give that “no” a voice.

One last thought on it: how can we expect them to respect our “no” when we don’t respect theirs?

Allow your child to be a child out in public. I have to qualify this by being clear that I’m not talking about all places, as there are areas where we need to be aware of how we all act and kids need to learn that too; however, we seem to look askew at anyone with a child who is being a child anywhere. Folks, public is public and it’s for everyone, children included. I don’t like the behaviours of many of the adults around me, but I acknowledge their right to behave that way in these spaces. My child has the same rights to behave like a child (arguably more because they don’t have the neurological capacity to always behave as others’ might like). That may mean being a bit too loud, running around, squealing with delight, and yes, sometimes breaking down. These are all normal behaviours. It’s how we handle things when they go too far that we must be aware of.

A child who is screaming at the top of her lungs should be reminded that it hurts other people’s ears and to be quieter or to find a place where that won’t bother people. Running around and crashing into people without regard is also something children need to learn not to do. And breaking down often requires gently removing a child from the situation until he or she is calm and figuring out what happened while offering comfort and understanding. Adults in our society need to be exposed to children as children are. Children need the exposure to public places and adults to learn how to behave, while also being allowed to be themselves in a respectful way. When we hide them from it or force them to behave in ways that aren’t aligned with their developmental level, we are making it harder and harder for them to learn to consider others (because they’re too focused on their own behaviour) or to take responsibility and learn about thinking of others. It also tells them that they are not worthy of respect (but others are) and frankly that’s not a lesson that’s going to serve anyone well if we want them to grow up to feel confident and secure in themselves.

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There we have it. Six things you can allow your child to do that will help them be responsible, independent, caring grown-ups. You don’t need to force them to toughen up or even force them to be independent because they’ll get there on their own. The problem isn’t that we haven’t been “harsh” enough, the problem is that we’ve been harsh when we should be gentle, permissive when we should encourage responsibility, and driven by fear to restrict our children’s growth into independent beings. Let’s end that. If you'd like to learn more on the topic you can click here.

Rock and Buy Baby launching Summer of 2014!

It's official, for those of you who didn't already know, we're opening up a store online! After business picks up then hopefully a small store front (not sure yet of a location).

The website has been purchased and our name secured!

www.rockandbuybaby.com

We've also got Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and our email address! Will be working on a logo and page layouts over the next few months while gathering inventory and listing that online as well. Keep following the blog and like/become a fan of our other social media pages. Each one will be having their own giveaways and coupon codes. An example would be a free diaper on Facebook, free wet bag for instagram, or gift card on twitter. I wouldn't want to miss anything!

Big things coming soon... stay posted for more updates. Soft opening estimated for summer 2014.