An Apple a Day - How to raise secure and intelligent children

How to raise secure and intelligent children - Putting baby first

Studies by Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson have shown that the early developmental stages of children are crucial to how the brain is wired, and that the environment provided by parents and caregivers affects their sense of security, how they view the world, and their intellectual development.

               As a biological parent, foster parent, and adoptive parent, I have seen first-hand how true this is. The very first building block to a healthy child, intellectually, socially, and emotionally is for baby to feel that his or her needs are being met. 

This is why the currently popular doctrine of “self-soothing” is so damaging and wrong. I have found that children who are held often are much more secure and independent as they get older than children who are not. You cannot spoil a child with too much holding. That is nonsense. Nothing seems to make up for damage done in the first two years.

               Even as a working mother, my main priority when I got home was to nurse and hold my babies. The house could wait. All other activities could wait. Even though I had excellent childcare from a provider who parented similar to me, my main goal was to make sure my babies felt loved and secure. Next came helping the older children with homework and attending their activities, but taking the babies with me wherever possible.

               It is also wrong to make a hungry baby wait to be fed. The doctrine of forcing a child to wait four hours to be fed is wrong. It creates children who do not trust and may later self-soothe with food. What about overweight babies, you ask? This is much more a risk with bottle-fed babies than breast-fed babies. A nursing baby should eat every 1.5 to 2 hours, as desired. A chubby, breast-fed baby is healthy with brown fat, which goes away as the child learns to walk and run around.

               I am not talking about over-feeding a baby, just common sense. Use some wisdom. I also do not agree with putting baby to bed with a bottle. Never do that. But a forced schedule, where baby feels hungry a lot, is pure evil. Hunger is a real pain to a child. Abuse and neglect rewire a child’s brain.

               Even a bottle-fed baby should be held while being fed. This is key to a child’s emotional development and self-esteem. Do not prop the bottle up and walk away. No one was busier than me with a large family, so no excuses. Take the time. Make the time.

As far as bottle-fed babies getting too fat, use a pacifier between feedings to appease a baby’s natural need to suck. Pacifiers are easier to throw away later (about 2 years) than a thumb. Formula digests slower than breast-milk, so maybe put 3 hours between feedings, but never 4 hours. If the child is truly hungry, feed him or her on demand. Be wise. There is a balance between meeting the child’s needs and over-feeding. If the baby’s emotional needs are being met, he or she will have less need for comfort from a bottle when not truly hungry.

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