Читать книгу The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five - Martha Sears - Страница 36

High-need babies don’t merely request feeding and holding, they demand it – loudly. This personality trait more than any of the others pushes parents’ buttons, causing them to feel manipulated and controlled. Adults who are stuck in the “parenting equals control” mind-set may have great difficulty realizing that baby’s demands equal communication, not control.

Mothers of high-need babies often say, “I just can’t get to him fast enough.” These babies convey a sense of urgency in their signals; they do not like waiting, and they do not readily accept alternatives. Woe to the parent who offers baby the rattle when he is expecting a breast. He will let you know quickly and loudly that you’ve misread his cues. The concept of “delayed gratification” is totally foreign to infants. It must be sensitively and gradually taught when the child is developmentally ready to learn it.

It may be easier to cope with your baby’s demanding signals if you understand why high-need babies have to be demanding in order to thrive. Suppose baby had high needs but did not have a strong personality to “demand” that these needs get met. Suppose he did not use the kind of persistent cry that ensures a response. This would be a lose-lose situation: baby would not thrive because his needs would not be met, and parents would not get enough practice at cue reading to ever pick up on the baby’s real need level.

If the child feels that she can trust her caregivers, she will eventually learn to make her demands in a more socially acceptable way, rather than overwhelming the whole care-giving environment. With parents who both respond to and wisely channel her demands, the high-need child develops into a person with determination, one who will fight for her rights. The child becomes a leader instead of a follower, one who does not just follow the path of least resistance and do what everyone else is doing. Certainly, our country needs more such citizens.

Although being demanding is the trait of high-need children that is most likely to drive parents bananas, it is also the trait that drives children to succeed and excel. A high-need child with a demanding personality will, if nurtured and channelled appropriately during the formative years, exhaust teachers as she did her parents; yet she will also be able to extract from adult resources, such as teachers, the level of help and education she will need to thrive in academic and social endeavours. This is why it is so important not to squelch an infant’s expressiveness. The ability to know one’s needs and be able to express them comfortably is a valuable tool for success in life.

As the high-need infant grows into a high-need toddler and child, parents must also help her learn that her demands have to be balanced against the needs of others, so that she can learn to be a likable and compassionate person. Helping a demanding infant develop persistence without becoming a controlling person is one of the challenges we will discuss throughout this book.