Читать книгу The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five - Martha Sears - Страница 27

“Why is my baby so different? She is not like any of my friends’ babies. They sleep through the night. They’re happy being held by anyone. My friends don’t seem as tired as I am. What am I doing wrong?” Sound familiar? Your baby acts the way she does because that’s the way she is. It’s her personality.

In the first weeks after birth you get a glimpse of who this little person really is. Even while pregnant you may have had a hint of the challenge to come. High-need infants tend to be full-time tummy-thumpers and bladder-kickers, as if telling the world even before they’re born that they need more space.

In some ways all babies are high-need babies, and most babies have high needs in at least one area of their life. Some have more high-need areas than others. All babies need attachment – high-need babies don’t give up expressing this need. The neediness of the baby is often in the mind of the parent. Some experienced parents of children have widened their expectations of what babies are “normally” like, and they adapt more easily to a baby with high needs; new parents often are not so realistic. After Hayden introduced us to high-need babies, we learned a whole new way to parent. The babies that followed her each had their own particular high needs. We were able to recognize and respond to them because of our experience with Hayden. None of them were as thoroughly “high need” as Hayden, but they came close. In retrospect, we realize that the babies who came before Hayden had high needs, too, in some areas. The difference between those babies and Hayden was not only a difference in need levels; Hayden also had the forceful personality to let us know just what she needed. (Factored into our whole spectrum of parenting is that we were young and full of energy with the first babies. Hayden was born eleven years after our first child, Jim. By then we had less energy, perhaps, but more experience.)

We have met many high-need babies over the years. Based on this “gallery” we have compiled the following profile of a high-need baby. All babies will show some of these features some of the time, and these features are descriptive only. As you will see, each of these personality traits has its blessings and its trials. These personality traits should not be judged as good or bad. They simply show differences among babies; but these differences do make high-need babies challenging to parent. Ultimately, what matters is how the child learns to use these special gifts. Our goal is to help parents identify these unique features in their infant and channel these traits to work to their child’s advantage.