A Mother's Guide to Raising Healthy Children--Naturally (7 page)

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Authors: Sue Frederick

Tags: #Health & Fitness, #Women's Health, #test

BOOK: A Mother's Guide to Raising Healthy Children--Naturally
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Chapter 4
Nurturing and Loving Your Child
How to Create a Healthy, Happy Child
Perhaps the most important aspect of raising a healthy child is to provide emotional nurturing. If your child feels truly loved and knows that you'll always be there for her, that inner peace and sense of security will help strengthen her immunity and ability to fight off illnesses. Many researchers, such as Aletha Solter, Ph.D., agree with this theory. Solter, a developmental psychologist and mother of two, published a controversial book entitled
The Aware Baby.
In her books and workshops, Solter bravely proposed that babies, children, and even adults need to cryhave, in fact, a biological need to cryin order to heal past traumas (such as birth trauma) or remembered pains. These remembered pains can be as simple as when an infant watches Mom walk out of a room and fears she'll never return. Solter also proposed that children's cries always need to be answered with loving attentionnever ignored.
Crying is the Solution, Not the Problem
In the first few years of life, babies form lasting opinions about themselves, other people, and the world around them. If a baby's cries are unanswered, he comes to believe the world is unpredictable, and that he can't trust other
 
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people. The baby learns that he is powerless and helpless to get his needs met and feels unlovable and unimportant. Solter feels that the parent who responds each time a child cries creates the opportunity for the child to learn trust and empowerment and to know that she can affect the environment through her actions.
In our society, crying is considered the problem rather than the cure. ''Babies and children are told 'You'll feel better if you stop crying.' Just the opposite is true," explains Solter. "Crying is the process of becoming unhurt, and children will not feel better until they have been allowed the freedom of tears."
Clinical research shows that when an infant or young child is held lovingly and encouraged to cry instead of being hushed, left alone, nursed, or given a pacifier or bottle (unless they're truly hungry), the child will cry out, or "discharge," negative feelings such as pain, fear, and anger and become an emotionally healthy, happy child. It's essential to determine first that all of the baby's physical needs have been met, and that the child is not hungry, cold, wet, in need of a diaper change, or in physical pain. If the child continues to cry after the above needs are met, assume that a "discharge" is needed.
Hold the child lovingly and allow it to cry, even if the tears last as long as an hour. The baby will be renewed, refreshed, and delightful to be around, usually for the rest of the day. A child who is allowed to do this daily will be able to continuously heal inner pains, fears, and traumas as she grows, and become a truly healthy adult and functional member of society.
Research by William Frey, Ph.D., a biochemist at the St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center in Minnesota, shows a biochemical reason for crying. Frey suggests the purpose of crying is to remove waste products or toxic substances from the body through tears. He has identified substances in tears, specifically the hormone ACTH and the catecholamines epinephrine and norepinephrine, which accumulate in the body as a result of stress. These substances are eliminated from the body along with manganese, an element that can have toxic effects on the nervous system if there is too much of it in the body.
We can help our children, notes Solter, by listening to them attentively when they cry. Reflect their emotions back to them with comments like: "Go ahead and cry. You're really angry right now. Just get all those angries out." This approach is healthier for your child, she explains, than trying to stop the crying by distractions or punishment.
 
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Obviously, it's impossible to prevent a child from experiencing stress and pain in life. However, children who are permitted to express themselves have a better chance at successfully negotiating life's traumas and being emotionally healthy.
Solter stresses the importance of sleeping with young children from birth to age four or five (human beings are the only species that leave their young alone in the dark at nighta terrifying experience for infants). Her theory is based on the instinctual need of humans to be protected in order to survive. Sleeping with your child is not a popular idea. Parents tend to leave children alone in their rooms to cry until they become used to sleeping alone. The rationale is that the baby will cry about thirty minutes the first night, ten minutes the second night, and by the third night he'll be "cured" and fall asleep without crying.
This method works for the parents but is harmful to the child. Solter believes it diminishes the baby's trust in the parents, fosters a feeling of helplessness in the child, and leads to childhood fear and anxieties that can last a lifetime. Instead, she recommends holding the baby and paying attention to her while she cries: "She will then have an opportunity to cry, and when she has finished crying she'll fall into a peaceful sleep and won't awaken when you put her down."
Stopping your baby's cries with a pacifier, bottle, or nursing has many long-term ill effects, according to Solter, who calls them control patterns. These accumulated tensions prevent a child from growing, developing, and learning in a healthy way, and they lay the groundwork for emotional problems later in life. Solter also believes these control patterns become addictions, as the child goes from one substance that quiets her troublesome feelings (such as nursing or baby formula) to another substance such as sweets or alcohol.
Many parents believe punishment is a necessary tool for teaching correct behavior. Solter disagrees. She cites numerous studies to show the detrimental effects of punishment: children quit exploring and learning about their world because they fear the consequences of a wrong action; they become aggressive toward other children because they've been treated aggressively; and they learn to lie and deceive adults so they won't be punished again.
 
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Learning to Listen
Solter advocates building a listening relationship with your child from the start to foster unconditional acceptance. When a child cries or "rages," the process is a healing one.
Linda Quigley, a social worker and director of the Family Nurturing Center in Boulder, Colorado, as well as a nationally certified trainer in the Nurturing Parenting program, agrees with Solter. Since 1975, in Quigley's work with disturbed children, she has seen numerous examples of the healing power of expressing and releasing troublesome feelings. Adults are trained from early childhood to repress emotions, and they become conflicted about how to handle emotions: "It's not the feelings we have that get us in trouble, it's the ones we didn't get to have since the day we were born that cause the problems."
Quigley incorporates the three techniques of mirroring feelings, listening attentively, and joining in with the person in pain, in combination with encouraging crying to assist even the most severely disturbed children.
In working with one clinically depressed little boy who had been badly abused, she experienced the power of simply reflecting feelings. The child was isolated in his world of pain and wouldn't communicate. Quigley sat beside him and tried to align herself with his physical posture, which expressed his pain, and with his slow breathing. "As he took a big sigh, I sighed too and said gently, 'That's right, you're really so, so sad .'After a while, he completely opened up to me, and a lot of healing took place," she remembers.
Quigley believes we are always communicating with each other, even when no words are exchanged, and that remembering this will help us interact with children more effectively.
It's important to understand that while every emotion is OK, every behavior is not. If a child is acting aggressively against other children or pets, it must be made clear that those actions are not acceptable, even though the emotions are.
The Link Between Emotional and Physical Health
Emotional health and physical health are deeply intertwined. A person who is depressed, for example, has lowered immunity to disease. Cortisol, a hormone that we produce while under emotional stress, is responsible for this
 
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because it interferes with healthy bodily functions including immunity. Researchers have found that crying reduces cortisol levels in the bodythus allowing immunity to improve.
We must supplement the medical care of sick children with emotional support in order to help them heal. "When kids are sick with a high fever, they don't cry because it takes too much energy. When they start to get better, they'll do more crying, and that crying is important for healing. Hold them and allow them to cry," suggests Solter.
When people pay attention to their physical pain and truly experience it, the pain goes away faster than if they try to ignore it. The same is true of emotional pain. Children understand this instinctively.
Until I began working on this book, I had rarely allowed my daughter, Sarah, to cry. She had nursed "on demand" as an infant and always received immediate comfort from the breast. However, she had numerous fussy days as an infant and numerous temper tantrums as a toddler. Solter says that I used nursing as a control pattern, even though that was not my intent.
As I've changed my approach to Sarah's crying, I've seen a remarkable shift in her behavior. When she gets upset about something now, I hold her in my arms (even if she struggles to get away from me) and whisper to her lovingly, "Go ahead and cry it out, baby. You're really angry and you'll feel better when you cry it all out." She'll often scream and cry for ten minutes, then she's done and usually is calm and happy.
Healing Our Own Pain
It's a glorious revelation when you realize that motherhood provides you with an astounding opportunity to heal your own past traumas. I have found this to be quite true for me. As I've held and loved Sarah through her infancy and childhood, I've been able to heal many of my own wounds from childhood. In 1951, the year I was born, my mother wanted to be a good mother and listened to everything her misguided physician told her to do: don't nurse your baby, put her on a strict feeding schedule, and don't hold her too much or you'll "spoil" her.
Solter claims that children who aren't held enough as babies spend much of their adult life seeking physical contact, often in inappropriate ways. Being a mom offers an opportunity to heal that unresolved pain.
 
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Many mothers are forced to miss this tremendous healing opportunity because they must return to work soon after the birth of their child. Solter doesn't criticize working mothers, but she says these women should realize that both child and mom will reap great long-term emotional benefits if they can spend as much nuturing time together as possible.
I urge you to read Solter's books on child rearing. Even if you don't agree with everything she says, I believe you'll find parts of her theory that will improve your mothering skills, as they did mine.
 
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Chapter 5
Encouraging Your Child's Spiritual Development
As I sat down to write this section, the airwaves were filled with the painful news of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in which fifteen students were killed. This was a tragic and deeply disturbing event, and every parent's nightmare. As a mother, I felt the terrible grief of those parents who sent their children off to school in the morning and never saw them alive again. Yet I am also disturbed by the debate among the experts as to the reasons for the violence in our schools.
What could cause two young boys to resort to such anger and violence? Some experts say it's because of the easy access to weapons in our culture. Some say it's because there is too much violence in our television, movies, and video games. I believe we have lost our connections to one another and to God. Our communities have broken down. Children often grow up without any sense of connection to adults other than their parents. And if that bond is itself weak, the children are basically set astray with no one to turn to for help. If our children don't grow up with a strong sense of higher purpose, a strong connection to people and to God, they are easy prey for the darkness of our world. As parents, it is our job to connect them, first to ourselves, then to God and the community.
One's spirituality is a personal matter, and there are many paths to God. Regardless of the path you take, God must be a part of your child's life.

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