The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five. Martha Sears

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СКАЧАТЬ areas than others. All babies need attachment – high-need babies don’t give up expressing this need. The neediness of the baby is often in the mind of the parent. Some experienced parents of children have widened their expectations of what babies are “normally” like, and they adapt more easily to a baby with high needs; new parents often are not so realistic. After Hayden introduced us to high-need babies, we learned a whole new way to parent. The babies that followed her each had their own particular high needs. We were able to recognize and respond to them because of our experience with Hayden. None of them were as thoroughly “high need” as Hayden, but they came close. In retrospect, we realize that the babies who came before Hayden had high needs, too, in some areas. The difference between those babies and Hayden was not only a difference in need levels; Hayden also had the forceful personality to let us know just what she needed. (Factored into our whole spectrum of parenting is that we were young and full of energy with the first babies. Hayden was born eleven years after our first child, Jim. By then we had less energy, perhaps, but more experience.)

      We have met many high-need babies over the years. Based on this “gallery” we have compiled the following profile of a high-need baby. All babies will show some of these features some of the time, and these features are descriptive only. As you will see, each of these personality traits has its blessings and its trials. These personality traits should not be judged as good or bad. They simply show differences among babies; but these differences do make high-need babies challenging to parent. Ultimately, what matters is how the child learns to use these special gifts. Our goal is to help parents identify these unique features in their infant and channel these traits to work to their child’s advantage.

intense

      “He’s going to be a handful”, one midwife said to another as they tried to console newborn baby George. You can often spot high-need babies in the hospital. Even at a few hours of age, George had an instinct about what he needed and the persistence required to get it. The cry of a high-need baby is not a mere request; it’s an urgent demand. These babies put more energy into everything they do. They cry loudly, feed voraciously, laugh with gusto, and protest more forcefully if their needs are not met. Because they feel everything so deeply, they react more powerfully if their feelings are disturbed. “If I don’t feed him as soon as he fusses, he falls apart” is a common statement from the mother of such a baby.

      You can read the intensity of the baby’s feelings in her body language. The fists are clenched, back arched, muscles tensed, as if ready for action.

      

       I set up a cradle in our room so we could hear Mara’s cries at night. It quickly became clear that not only would we be able to hear her, so would everyone on the block. Mara was LOUD! When she started crying, it would quickly escalate. The intensity and shrillness sounded as if something must be very wrong. We would feed her, burp her, change her, rock her, walk with her, but sometimes nothing seemed to help. After a while, I found myself going into overdrive instantly whenever she cried, because I knew if it got out of control she’d quickly disintegrate, and it would take her a long time to come back around. I became obsessive in trying to prevent her from getting upset in any way because there was hell to pay if she did. She was a type A personality right from birth.

      Intense babies become intense toddlers, characterized by one word: “driven”. They seem in high gear all the time. Their drive to explore and experiment with everything within reach leaves no household item safe. Some high-need toddlers manoeuvre around the house carefully, but most do not. Most of these babies run headlong toward a desired object, seemingly oblivious of everything in their path. Soon it dawns on you that the same behavioural trait that can exhaust you will also delight you. The same drive that gets your toddler into trouble also leads him to a level of creativity that other children may not venture to reach. Your job is to help him drive carefully on roads that he can handle.

      can you make a child high-need?

       We believe that most high-need children are born with this trait. In fact, all babies have high needs for being held and comforted, but some babies are able to express their needs more strongly than others because they haven’t shut down (withdrawn) due to the trauma of separation. Some critics believe that parents make their child needy by how they parent. The great majority of parents we have counselled brought their high-need babies into the world and followed their own intuitive parenting to give their child the level of care he needed. This is healthy behaviour which will work to the advantage of parent and child. On occasion, however, we see a “helicopter mother”, who hovers over the child and anxiously responds within a millisecond to the child’s every whim. This is unhealthy for both mother and child. The mother’s needs for intimacy are being met by her doting over her child, and the child uses the perceived neediness to control the mother. In extreme cases, the child is crippled by not learning self-management skills. This parent needs professional counselling.

hyperactive

      This feature of high-need babies, and its cousin, hypertonic, are directly related to the quality of intensity. The term “hypertonic” refers to muscles that are frequently tensed and ready to go, tight and waiting to explode into action. The muscles and mind of high-need children are seldom relaxed or still. “Even when he was a newborn, I could feel the wiry in him”, one mother related. “She hated being swaddled”, another mother volunteered. Most infants, even high-need ones, welcome being wrapped in a blanket, worn in a sling, or draped over your shoulder to mould into the contour of your body, but there are some high-need babies who seem to shun containment and physical restraint. They stiffen their limbs and arch their backs when you try to hold them, and they are frequently seen doing back dives in your lap, turning even breast-feeding into a gymnastic event.

      Parents, remember that, like all the words used to describe high-need children, the term “hyperactive” is not a negative tag. At what point a normally active child becomes a hyperactive child is a judgment call. Calling your busy toddler hyperactive does not mean he will be burdened with this label forever, or that a school psychologist will someday tag him “hyperactive”. This term just describes how your child acts, without making any judgment about whether it’s good or bad. Hyperactive in an infant or toddler is not a disorder, it’s a description.

      “Hyper” is often in the eye of the child-watcher. Activity level is relative to the company the child keeps. Place an intense, creative, enthusiastic child in the midst of a group of more reserved children, and the doer gets tagged “hyper”. Also, the activity level of the child depends on the setting. A child may play quietly in the comfortable, known environment of his own home, yet be frantic and undirected in a playgroup full of strangers.

      “There’s no such thing as a still shot”, said one photographer-father of a high-need baby. “His motor seems stuck in fast idle”, another father commented. These motor traits are part of the baby’s personality. They may be hard to live with at times, but this restlessness is not necessarily a negative trait. Many highly creative, world-changing people were labelled hyperactive as children.

draining

      High-need babies extract every bit of energy from tired parents – and then want more. Though parents use the term “draining”, it’s not an apt description. What you give your baby doesn’t go down the drain. Perhaps “siphoning” is a more accurate term, because what you are really doing is transferring much of your energy into your baby’s tank to help her thrive. You will need to СКАЧАТЬ