Quote (pg. 16): It is interesting that the word "emotion" comes from a Latin word meaning "to move." The English language further expresses this when we say, for example, "I was very moved by the film." This implies that our uninhibited, primitive response to strong feelings is to become physically active. Crying and raging in children are indeed very active processes, involving the entire body. Children kick their legs and flail their arms, using a large amount of energy. We adults would probably cry in a similar manner if such a strong display of emotions were socially sanctioned.
Quote (pg 18): Crying is therefore not an unnecessary byproduct of stress, but a important part of the stress-relaxation cycle. When we cry as a response to emotional stress, we release energy, reduce tension, lower our blood pressure, and remove stress hormones and neurotransmitters from our body through tears, thereby restoring physiological balance (homeostasis).
Quote (pg 19): Psychologists have studied crying in children during the highly stressful experience of a long hospitalization. Children who protested openly by crying and screaming at the begining of their hospital stay showed better adjustment than the ones who were "good" patients right from the start. The latter appeared to be calm and cooperative, but were more likely to show signs of stress later on, such as regression to infantile modes of behavior, eating or sleeping difficulties, and learning disorders.
Quote (pg 20): Psychologists call this phenomenon the "generaliztion of a conditioned emotional response." Anything that reminds a person of a previous stressful event will trigger a stress response, even though the new situation is totally harmless ... Eventually, conditioned responses wear out if similar situations prove repeatedly to be harmless. When this happens, psychologists call this "extinction of the condition response." This can take a long time ....
Quote (pg 22) It is important to respond to a crying child, rather than to reject or punish her. When parents fail to respond to a baby's crying during hte first year, the baby may show disturbed attachment patterns. She may be aggressive towards or parents, or excessively demanding or clingy. Some children appear to be self-sufficient and they resist closeness or show lack of affection. Researchers have observed children as young as one year of age who seek communication with their mothers only when they are content, never when they are distressed. Bowlby considered this to be a serious breakdown in communication between mother and child. Children with this extreme avoidant pattern tend to have serious behavioral and emotional problems later on.
Simply responding, however, is not enough when a child needs to release stress by crying. Even though parents may not openly reject a crying child, any attempts to distract a child away from his crying will be felt by him as a form of emotional abandonment. Children need parents who are able to listen to their expressions of anger, grief, and fear, and who can empathize with them. If children can openly express these feelings from birth on, they will learn that they do not need to repress painful emotions, and they will feel unconditionally loved.
Quote: (pg 22) Babies who are allowed to cry in their parents' arms will grow up feeling understood and accepted. As teenagers, tehy will feel comfortable talking about their problems with their parents, and crying if they need to, nowing that they can count on their parents to listen.
Quote (page 23): If children are shown love and approval only when they are smiling and happy, they will learn to deny and repress a part of themselves in order to please adults. Their deepest emotions will eventually feel unacceptable, even to themselves. Without full acceptance of their feelings and emotional expressions, therefore, children cannot grow up with high self-esteem.
Quote (pg 33): How crying is repressed in children: telling child to stop crying; punishing (or threatening); withdrawing love or attention, isolating child; distracting with talk, music, movement, games; putting something in child's mouth (food, pacifier); teasing, shaming; denying or minimizing child's pain; praising child for not crying; getting child to talk or laugh.
Quote (pg 35) Although spontaneous, animated talking does provide a certain amount of emotional release for older children and adults, getting a child to label his feelings is not sufficient to provide a healing release. This forces children to switch from an emotional level to a premature conceptual level, and, if done frequently, could lead to over-intellectualizing tendencies in the child. This cuts the child off from his inner self.
Quote (pg 43): There are several reasons why the theory of an immature digestive system is inadequate to explain prolonged crying in infants. First of all, this theory does not fit with Dr. Spock's observation that "colicky babies" usually prosper physically. They gain weight normally, sometimes better than average, in spite of hours of crying. Furthermore, no gastrointestinal malfunction has been found in babies who cry extensively, except in very rare instances.
Quote (pg 45): This shows that the baby is not crying only because of a desire to have the toy, but because of emotional pain caused by his singling's behavior. The baby certainly feels some frustration and indignation, but perhaps also confusion and anxiety. These emotions are accompanied by tension and arousal, and they need to be released before the baby can return to his calm state and continue investigating the toy. Crying in this example is not hurt. It is the process of becoming unhurt.
Quote (pg 47): William Emerson, an expert on prenatal and birth trauma (mentioned in Part I, Section 5), found that 55% of a sample of 200 children showed signs of moderate to severe birth trauma. Babies whose mothers experienced a difficult delivery cry more than babies whose mothers had a less stressful one. One study showed that crying in babies was greater if there had been obstetrical interventions and if the mother had felt powerless during the birth process. Another study showed that babies who had problems at birth were more likely to wake up crying frequently at night during the first 14 months. Crying is greater in newborns following epidural anesthesia of the mother.
Birth stressed babies are often tense and irritable, probably because of an excess of stress hormones. This explains the sleep difficulties so often seen in babies who had difficult births. The arousal of the sympathetic nervous system during stress inhibits the digestive system. This may lead to feelings of discomfort after feeding in babies who are highly stressed from a difficult birth or other trauma. This brings us back to the colic theory! The cause of indigestion is not an immature digestive system, however, but the baby's own stress response.
Quote (pg 49): Babies benefit from close physical contact not only during the day, but also at night. Mothers in traditional cultures usually sleep with their babies. Unfortunately, this practice has been discouraged in technologically developed countries, where babies' need for physical closeness at bedtime and during the night is often disregarded.
Quote (pg 51): The intent to master a new skill always precedes the a bility to learn it. There is a gap in time between a baby's desire to do something new and his ability to do it. During this gap, frustrations can be expected as a normal part of the learning process. That is why they are called "developmental frustrations." For example, a three-month-old infant may become frustrated when trying to grasp an object because she has not yet learned how to make her hand go where she wants it to go. These frustrations build up and are then released in periodic crying sessions.