The old practice of schedule-feeding babies has been officially rejected in favour of demand-feeding, an important measure for babies’ physical and emotional health. In a 1998 media alert, the American Academy of Pediatrics stated: “…the best feeding schedules for babies are the ones babies design themselves…Scheduled feedings designed by parents may put babies at risk of poor weight gain and dehydration”. Babies signal their hunger to us quite clearly before they begin to cry. They turn their heads toward the breast, they extend their lips, they become agitated, or they begin sucking their hands. These are the kinds of cues that pediatricians now urge mothers to respond to as promptly as possible. A baby’s cry is usually a late indicator of their hunger. And babies hunger for more than milk, they hunger for intimacy; to drink in maternal love.
Many paediatricians, psychologists and other child health experts now advocate co-sleeping, a foundation method of attachment parenting. The sleep patterns of infants who sleep apart from their mothers have been observed to be fitful and restless, with frequent awakening. They tend to suck more on their thumbs or inanimate objects, a sign of increased stress. Their core temperature drops, and they suffer an increase in stress hormones. Infants are sensitive to both the sound and the rhythm of their parents’ breathing and they are directly pacified by the sound of their parents’ heartbeats. There is also a growing consensus that co-sleeping, putting the baby to sleep on his or her back, and night-time breastfeeding can reduce the risk of SIDS. (Please note that families with problems such as alcoholism, obesity, drug or tobacco dependency or psychological instability are not advised to sleep with their babies.)
Attachment parenting is the antithesis of ‘controlled crying’, which has been a controversial technique used by many parents to train their babies to fall asleep by themselves. The Australian Association for Infant Mental Health (AAIMHI) has issued a position statement regarding this practice, which is unequivocal and unambiguous. Part of this statement says: “AAIMHI is concerned that the widely practised technique of ‘controlled crying’ is not consistent with what infants need for their optimal emotional and psychological health, and may have unintended negative consequences.”
If at night, babies feel more secure when they can sleep near us, in the daytime they also want regular body contact. Typically, babies who are carried in a sling, or somehow on the body tend to be more placid and content – as long as the parents are relaxed about it.
Although it will take a few more years for ‘attachment parenting’ to become the norm, attachment thinking has become mainstream among academics and health professionals. Far from being a fad, it is standard practice for child psychiatrists and child psychologists who are up-to-date with new developments, and it is central to paediatrics. Nowadays, formal training in any profession related to child development involves learning attachment theory. Practitioners who qualified before this body of knowledge was established are even being re-trained, so that child health services can more uniformly reflect the findings of this new science.
World conferences on attachment and infant mental health take place every year and provide a forum for disseminating ongoing research.
Our children will behave as well as they are treated. In a world in which all children are treated with dignity, respect, understanding, and compassion they can grow into adulthood with a generous capacity for love and trust.
Robin Grille is a Sydney-based psychologist, and author of Parenting for a Peaceful World (Longueville Media, 2005) and Heart to Heart Parenting (ABC Books, 2008). For more information, visit: www.our-emotional-health.com
