Parenting
Crying babies, hungry babies, babies who don't sleep well
RomeliaGuest ·
Crying baby, hungry babies, babies who sleep poorly, premature babies, babies born via C-section, toddlers with intense tantrums.
This is a small list of behaviors that babies, toddlers, and children exhibit. And opinions on how to handle this remain divided. This seems so tough for many loving parents! And I have encountered many powerless parents in my work as a maternity nurse, youth care worker, and child and parent coach. I remained driven to search for answers on how to act.
I found it after years of searching! I share this here with great pleasure to help loving parents with their wonderful child!
A baby cannot speak, so it shows what it needs through behavior: crying with full diapers, when hungry, with colic, smacking sounds when hungry.
He or she expresses what it needs through behavior instead of words.
But often parents run into the issue that when they have done everything to help their child, the behavior persists and doesn't go away.... what is that?
I discovered that! Besides factual needs like hunger, full diaper, pain, a baby and a child also have emotional needs that they express through behavior!
It's logical actually, because if you have a rotten day at work making you grumpy, your body shows you need something to process the day.
Often, that's sharing your day with a loved one, which gives literal relief and changes your mood. Going from "crying" to "laughing" actually.
This is the same for a baby because these behaviors don't start at three years old or at adult age as often thought. Human life starts at fertilization, so behavior too! Your body starts growing physically and your emotional system starts too, everything starts as soon as you become a human.
Logical actually, isn't it? Only people often think that's not the case. That when a child can only remember things from a certain age, that's when they can also have issues from it. We partly store memories from age three, so we also think human consciousness starts then.
That is not so, scientists have discovered after 35 years of research and observation of babies in the womb, and out of the womb, and during their first years of life.
A baby experiences everything consciously from the 33rd day after fertilization. And he or she stores those experiences in their body. That is because if it's not so nice in the womb with mom, which can be due to all sorts of causes, the baby can turn on its survival mechanism to stay alive. Causes of not feeling well in the womb can be:
• Because the mother doesn't want to be pregnant at all and therefore has a lot of stress, the baby has stress too. The baby receives not only food through the umbilical cord but also feelings and emotions through the umbilical cord. Everything the mother feels, the baby feels too, so also stress.
• When the mother is very nauseous and feels sick, that also gives stress and often less food to the baby.
• Or when there are relationship problems between the mother and the father.
• A move or death can give a lot of stress to the mother, so also to the baby.
• There are many more, you can't always prevent them. Tension and stress are part of our life, but the baby can do something with it to protect itself, like turning on its survival mode.
If a birth was very overwhelming for the parents and they experienced the birth as tough, that was also the case for the baby. Your child cannot share that by talking, what parents do. Examples of how a baby shows this are:
• By crying
• By being restless
• By sleeping poorly
• By eating little
• By wanting to eat a lot because through the umbilical cord there wasn't enough food, so the baby wants to make up for it. Logical because if we eat too little for a while, as soon as there is food available, we suddenly need a lot of food and start "binge eating", just look at the TV program Expedition Robinson. Those participants know they must start calmly with more eating after their participation. But everyone starts binge eating, because their body demands it. That urge is so strong. The body thinks this won't happen to me again and starts asking for food like crazy, even if it has already received food. Until you realize after a while there is enough food, I'll stop binge eating for now, then my body learns it doesn't need to be hungry anymore because I'm eating well and enough again, and usually after 1 or 2 days your body is used to it. That's how it works with babies and children too.
There are 37 patterns that can be the reason.
So instead of letting the baby cry in the crib, or not giving extra food because it should really have enough food, it's important to take the need seriously and investigate where that need comes from. If you know where it comes from, you can fulfill the baby's need and the behavior will disappear.
This was found through more than 35 years of scientific research and observations. What would you do if you knew this as parents? Then you would, for example, temporarily give a bit more food to let your child realize that there is really more than enough now, and reassure them by talking to them, soothing them, holding them. Because your child is afraid of getting too little food again. If you don't know this and couldn't give your baby this, and your baby or child is already quite a bit older now, it might be good that he or she still shows behavioral patterns originating from the first period. Logical, your child hasn't had reassurance and explanation from you, so remains regularly angry, or sleeps poorly, or eats poorly, or is very
This is a small list of behaviors that babies, toddlers, and children exhibit. And opinions on how to handle this remain divided. This seems so tough for many loving parents! And I have encountered many powerless parents in my work as a maternity nurse, youth care worker, and child and parent coach. I remained driven to search for answers on how to act.
I found it after years of searching! I share this here with great pleasure to help loving parents with their wonderful child!
A baby cannot speak, so it shows what it needs through behavior: crying with full diapers, when hungry, with colic, smacking sounds when hungry.
He or she expresses what it needs through behavior instead of words.
But often parents run into the issue that when they have done everything to help their child, the behavior persists and doesn't go away.... what is that?
I discovered that! Besides factual needs like hunger, full diaper, pain, a baby and a child also have emotional needs that they express through behavior!
It's logical actually, because if you have a rotten day at work making you grumpy, your body shows you need something to process the day.
Often, that's sharing your day with a loved one, which gives literal relief and changes your mood. Going from "crying" to "laughing" actually.
This is the same for a baby because these behaviors don't start at three years old or at adult age as often thought. Human life starts at fertilization, so behavior too! Your body starts growing physically and your emotional system starts too, everything starts as soon as you become a human.
Logical actually, isn't it? Only people often think that's not the case. That when a child can only remember things from a certain age, that's when they can also have issues from it. We partly store memories from age three, so we also think human consciousness starts then.
That is not so, scientists have discovered after 35 years of research and observation of babies in the womb, and out of the womb, and during their first years of life.
A baby experiences everything consciously from the 33rd day after fertilization. And he or she stores those experiences in their body. That is because if it's not so nice in the womb with mom, which can be due to all sorts of causes, the baby can turn on its survival mechanism to stay alive. Causes of not feeling well in the womb can be:
• Because the mother doesn't want to be pregnant at all and therefore has a lot of stress, the baby has stress too. The baby receives not only food through the umbilical cord but also feelings and emotions through the umbilical cord. Everything the mother feels, the baby feels too, so also stress.
• When the mother is very nauseous and feels sick, that also gives stress and often less food to the baby.
• Or when there are relationship problems between the mother and the father.
• A move or death can give a lot of stress to the mother, so also to the baby.
• There are many more, you can't always prevent them. Tension and stress are part of our life, but the baby can do something with it to protect itself, like turning on its survival mode.
If a birth was very overwhelming for the parents and they experienced the birth as tough, that was also the case for the baby. Your child cannot share that by talking, what parents do. Examples of how a baby shows this are:
• By crying
• By being restless
• By sleeping poorly
• By eating little
• By wanting to eat a lot because through the umbilical cord there wasn't enough food, so the baby wants to make up for it. Logical because if we eat too little for a while, as soon as there is food available, we suddenly need a lot of food and start "binge eating", just look at the TV program Expedition Robinson. Those participants know they must start calmly with more eating after their participation. But everyone starts binge eating, because their body demands it. That urge is so strong. The body thinks this won't happen to me again and starts asking for food like crazy, even if it has already received food. Until you realize after a while there is enough food, I'll stop binge eating for now, then my body learns it doesn't need to be hungry anymore because I'm eating well and enough again, and usually after 1 or 2 days your body is used to it. That's how it works with babies and children too.
There are 37 patterns that can be the reason.
So instead of letting the baby cry in the crib, or not giving extra food because it should really have enough food, it's important to take the need seriously and investigate where that need comes from. If you know where it comes from, you can fulfill the baby's need and the behavior will disappear.
This was found through more than 35 years of scientific research and observations. What would you do if you knew this as parents? Then you would, for example, temporarily give a bit more food to let your child realize that there is really more than enough now, and reassure them by talking to them, soothing them, holding them. Because your child is afraid of getting too little food again. If you don't know this and couldn't give your baby this, and your baby or child is already quite a bit older now, it might be good that he or she still shows behavioral patterns originating from the first period. Logical, your child hasn't had reassurance and explanation from you, so remains regularly angry, or sleeps poorly, or eats poorly, or is very
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