What happens to babies who are fed and sleep when they need to but deprived of touch? Mostly, they don’t make it, sadly. It is called the failure to thrive and the death is quite sudden too. The infant hasn’t had half a chance to thrive despite all its physical needs being met. Some will survive but the lack of warmth will linger which might serve a perfect harvesting ground for all that’s cold. One can just imagine what that might be in later adult life.
An infants natural instinct is to stay close to the mother for safety. When the baby feels nested cozy and relaxed his body can vary on unhindered so much so they might outgrow their milestones. The baby will gain weight and develop healthily. When we take out babies off the breast and into the cot they cry. The cry is their signal to communicate their anxiety and their feeling of being in unknown territory, they just don’t feel safe. So, what do we do because one more sleepless night just won’t do? We sleep train. We either let them cry it out, or phase out our presence against their will. What can they do but to succumb since they don’t really have a choice? The baby will meld it’s way to what’s presented as their option. Their instinct says no I want to sleep next to mama but their mama says no you can’t because you need to learn to self soothe and sleep independently!!! Say what?!? I barely got here. Give me a chance to at least find my bearings!
It was bad enough talk my the nipple away and now even the comfort of being next to Mama goes. This is where the seeds of “limited” love translating as an ability of getting all out needs met, are sown. The infant takes note of this in his map which will all come to use when he is a grown adult still fighting for survival whether it’s getting the next promotion at work or over achieving always competing or in his relationship with another who will be his “gap” in the “need” filler.
As long as the baby’s instincts are not met, for example by keeping them close until they show a willingness to move away, we will keep the instinct alive in them. These then had projected in other ways in their later lives.
These instincts are always there as long as the need to survive exists which is all must always there keeping various diseases from wiping the human race. But, unless we have a real threat to our race, in very normal life, there is hardly a reason for us to be led by primal instincts. These will mainly be set in wraps and working behind the scenes to ensure we are safe from any potential harm. The key to conquer and transcend the animal is to provide safety and connection. The connection is where most of us suffer because we might deem that in itself unsafe depending on how our brain has been washed!
The very first encounter of safe for us is our mothers bosom. This moves to being carried lulled and comforted when in distress. When we are hurt we cry and run to mama. Mama kisses us better. What happens when mama says “not now”, or “I told you not to play with that, look what you have done now” or “oh gosh now what I am already inundated with my work deadlines”? Or the mama verbally cooing the baby attends to the hurt but lacks the warmth? Baby feels it all. He has just understood not to share his pain. He has absorbed that not all his needs can be met. Perhaps he will grow up to be super resilient independent and shy away from help even when he needs it all because he would fear being rejected again! Except there is no again, because this stems from a past long gone.
Most of the latest trends we have in getting out babies to sleep on their own, get them to nursery as early as you can, and more, are designed to regulate our own response to our children’s emotions. We cannot handle them we say, but really it’s that we haven’t learnt to regulate our own emotions because of our own early care setting. But we care not look that deep because it might lead to whole can of worms and inner work we simply have no time to indulge in.
The patterns will continue as long as we don’t attune ourselves to our natural self and therefore to our offspring as they naturally are ad opposed to training them like we do our dogs.
It is not a parental preference or parenting style. It is a coping mechanism that the new parent develops as a result of the resistance the baby brings up in them. The baby is doing what is normal and natural to their nature at their age.
Are we doing what’s natural as new parents? Perhaps the real question is why we are not able to meet all of our children’s needs.