Is Crying it Out Dangerous for Kids?
...In an article published this week in Psychology Today, one researcher says that crying it out could be dangerous for children, leading to a lifetime of harm.
"A crying baby in our ancestral environment would have signaled predators to tasty morsels," writes Darcia Narvaez, an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Collaborative for Ethical Education at the University of Notre Dame. "So our evolved parenting practices alleviated baby distress and precluded crying except in emergencies."
When babies are stressed, their bodies release the hormone cortisol, which can damage or even destroy neurons in their still-developing brains, researchers at Yale University and Harvard Medical School have found. That can lead to a higher incidence of ADHD, poor academic performance, and anti-social tendencies....
"In studies of rats with high or low nurturing mothers, there is a critical period for turning on genes that control anxiety for the rest of life," Narvaez writes. "If in the first 10 days of life you have low nurturing rat mother (the equivalent of the first 6 months of life in a human), the gene never gets turned on and the rat is anxious towards new situations for the rest of its life, unless drugs are administered to alleviate the anxiety."
Could a lack of nurturing explain our "Prozac Nation?" Narvaez points out that she's witnessed the long-term physical effects of it firsthand.
"I was raised in a middle-class family with a depressed mother, harsh father and overall emotionally unsupportive environment -- not unlike others raised in the USA," she writes. "I have only recently realized from extensive reading about the effects of early parenting on body and brain development that I show the signs of undercare -- poor memory (cortisol released during distress harms hippocampus development), irritable bowel and other poor vagal tone issues, and high social anxiety."...
So, between letting children "cry it out," cutting off parts of their genitals, and sticking them with needles some 20 times (vaccines) before they are a year or so old, what kind of people are we creating here?
...RAD arises from a failure to form normal attachments to primary caregivers in early childhood. Such a failure could result from severe early experiences of neglect, abuse, abrupt separation from caregivers between the ages of six months and three years, frequent change of caregivers, or a lack of caregiver responsiveness to a child's communicative efforts. Not all, or even a majority of such experiences, result in the disorder....
Children with RAD are presumed to have grossly disturbed internal working models of relationships which may lead to interpersonal and behavioral difficulties in later life.
-
|2012-01-10 07:32:42 Bhanu Padmo - (Baby's Crying : Academic Curative and Causal CuraBHANU PADMO : Ordinarily we come across two modes to approach and alleviate child’s tragic predicament. These are altruistic-emotional approach and academic/ statistical approach. The first one is advisory and the second, descriptive. These modes seem to be excellent sources of inspiration initially, but the final results have never been commensurable with our lowest expectation. So the child continues to suffer almost without remission.
Our outlook about a baby is heavily dependent on few cardinal notions. Two of such seminal notions are the concept of body pyramid and pyramidal maturing of human being.
The concept of body pyramid depicts body as a hierarchy of its constituents viz. organs, tissues, cells. A reductionist statement about corporeal hierarchy describes body as a pyramidal hierarchy of cells. Such a body-pyramid constitutes of strata of cells and each stratum constitutes of similar tissues and organs.
The higher stratum would be physically more concise and would harbor a greater number of finer organs and would inherit greater body control until we arrive at the minuscule apical stratum called brain. It would be composed of innumerable inconspicuous/ latent/ miniaturized neural organs of immense/ ultimate controlling power.
If we focus our attention on brain and put it under the magnifying glass, brain would appear as a pyramidal hierarchy of psycho-intellectual neural organs. xxx
Influencing power of a body segment rises exponentially upwards in the body hierarchy. On the other hand, the physical size decreases exponentially upwards. This phenomenon of physical hyper-concision and hyper-precision creates the corporal enigma of near-invisible hyper-physical and hyper-sensitive brain apex.
Since genes are assigned with the innate functions of sustaining the infinitely-intricate body mechanism in order to sustain in turn the innumerable ensuing behaviors, genes ought to have a point-to-point correspondence with body. In other words, genes-conglomerate also is to be deemed to be hierarchical and pyramidal in which the genetic prowess rises exponentially towards the apex of the genes-pyramid.
Body at any stage of its development is characterized with the aforesaid pyramidal hierarchy. The nascent hierarchical body in space develops into a much larger hierarchical body in time at an exponential rate. This is akin to projecting a tiny pyramid’s enlarged shadow unto a very large wall. Let us call this as pyramidal maturing of nascent body (viz. baby).
Baby’s crying is to be assessed with reference to its effect on the hypercritical body constituency topping the brain-pyramid. It may be recalled that even a minimum damage to this body constituency in the case of a baby would lead the growing individual into unfathomable misfortune in the form of body-damaging diseases (affecting the whole of body-pyramid) and future-damaging traits (affecting the whole of genes-pyramid and the whole pyramidal maturing process stretching till post-adolescence times). The high probability of such potential consequences is supported by innumerable biological / statistical/ academic findings.
This visualization of interior of body and its maturing mechanism is meant to underscore the import of health of baby’s psyche and its complete protection. A small anomaly in the making of baby’s brain has contemporary/ lateral and prospective/ vertical consequences of unimaginable magnitude.
Empathetic evaluation of crying, even prior to its being supported by academic and statistical evaluation, leaves no doubt about profundity of the crying state, especially in the case of a baby. Intensity of crying is proportional (exponential proportionality) to the extent of damage to the invisible brain apex.
Crying may be categorized into two main forms : profound complaint and profound coping. This profundity refers to the top level of brain hierarchy. The latter type of crying cures an already-damaged brain apex (vital brain). The former type of crying indicates an impending or on-going event effecting damage to vital brain. In both predicaments, a crying baby needs extreme care.
How do we go about to avert the social disaster of such magnitude? Are emotional descriptions of such tragedies and altruistic advices there for or academic analyses thereof with statistical supports enough to alleviate and eradicate child abuse? Which methodology will suffice such an endeavor?
Such an omnipresent social/ community problem may be deemed to be capable of being arrested/ controlled and fully eradicated only through religious administering of causal curatives, if known.
An academic curative is very different from a causal curative, though both look alike. A deep awareness (academic curative) becomes a causal curative when it is administered as a part of a unified theory/ versatile theory. Administering of the causal curative to the suffering environ makes the latter (environ) vulnerable to the unified theory itself that indeed is the curator of life. This beneficial/ elevating vulnerability needs to be protracted in order to allow the unified theory to take effect.
Religiosity and ritualism as the pro-wisdom attitude and wisdom-holding technique respectively become immensely useful at this point of potentiating the causal curative and bringing about the fateful cure.
The mist about this cue will not clear away unless we give an instance in which an academic cure is updated into a causal cure and unless we show how this causal cure needs to be administered through commensurable religious rituals to yield great social benefits.
Biological analysis of reproduction brings out the identity of offspring/ baby as parental double-genes. This awareness about offspring/ baby constitutes an academic cure and becomes a source of altruistic advices and light inspiration. However, identifying offspring/ baby with true parental double-reincarnation, understanding the deciding role of parental double-culture (conjugal culture wrought out of coexistent personal cultures of spouses/ parents) in successful maturing of the double-genes, understanding hierarchical nature of baby‘s corporeity, understanding baby’s exponential maturing, identifying baby’s prospective life with parental afterlife etc drag the academic curative steadily into the folds of a unified theory/ versatile theory (of life and universe) and thus turn it into a causal curative.
You can carry a lightweight (viz. a stone) in your palm, but not a heavyweight (viz. a barrel). You need a wheeled carrier to carry the latter. Similarly, a causal curative which is weighed with so many far-reaching postulates needs religiosity and commensurable ritualism to be carried unto hearts of millions and billions of people.
Requisite religiosity and appropriate child-conducive ritualism would influence and affect life prospectively and retrospectively to ensure welfare of baby-kind, the contingent source of eternal fortune.
To stop a baby’s crying proactively, we may have to consecrate amour, wedlock, conjugality and womb in a manner unknown hitherto.
(Bhanu Padmo)
http://www.bhanupadmo.com
You may reply this thread upon http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/greenlogic/ as well
or consign a copy to greenlogic@yahoogroups.co.in for extended discussions.
"It took them so long to understand".
I don't think the vast majority has understood anything at all, it's the pretense of understanding. Of something that should require no elaborate research since it is common sense. (How to handle a small child.)
I was reading a certified Mohel's explanation of why circumcision, bris milah, of the 8 day old baby, is necessary for "communion with G-d", complete with verses from his religious text. He's a pracitising Mohel in urban North America, with a flourishing practice.
The explanation makes no sense of course, you can't justify the bizarre. But it makes perfect sense to him and to people who use his services.
In my opinion the emotional make up of a vast majority of humans is downright bizarre, resembling the emotional make up of the mythological ghouls and demons that one reads about in fairy tales and religious books....
Societies that do not practice circumcision (like Indian hindus) are bizarre towards little children in their own way.
5 year back, an educated, elite North Indian and his household help abducted and cannibalised at least six little girls (below age 10) because they were convinced that eating little girls would improve their sperm quality. (Noida serial killings). They raped and then cannibalised a 20 year old girl too.
Both men look normal, talk normally. Are married with children of their own.
Rape of little children, often accompanied by killing is everyday news here. Newspapers are full of such news.
And of course.....we Indians have our share of very bizarre beliefs and rituals. (How can we not?!)
A classic example from hindu myth is the "ashvamedha yagya" (Ramayan) that hindus hold in high esteem because it was performed by "Bhagwan Ram".
This yagya ritual is nothing but beastiality combined with "black magic".....(Wikipedia: Ashvamedha, reference 2)