Infant Crying: To Soothe or Not to Soothe

Montessori Life, 2006 by Thompson, Josh, Leeds, Lydia

NATURE OF CRYING

What is normal crying for an infant? Is there an underlying purpose? What is culturally appropriate? Can you spoil an infant? These questions, and the thousand others besieging a busy caregiver, beg an examination of the nature of crying. Many ancient references to the life of the infant report bouts of crying, with detailed descriptions of interventions and strategies, some more universally successful than others (Marrou, 1956). With Darwin's baby biography (1872), the advent of modern sociological records led to the collection and analysis of ample data documenting cry frequency, duration, and tone, as well as successful or unsuccessful intervention strategies by caregivers. The Yale Rooming-In Project (Wessel et al., 1954) produced significant data documenting what normal crying looks like, and what constitutes extremes. The germinal work of T. Berry Brazelton (1962) gathered data about normally developing infants from the home diaries and anecdotal reports of a large population of parents of newborns. According to Barr, Hopkins & Green (2000), Brazelton's work "was the first systematic description of the so-called 'peak pattern' of early crying, and demonstrated (among other things) that the pattern was not specific to a distinct clinical syndrome, but was characteristic of non-clinical crying as well" (p. 3).

OFF THE CURVE

Normal crying has its boundaries and parameters, and is ameliorated by responsive caregiving; this is not so with abnormal crying. Three causes for abnormal crying are colic, trauma, and disability (Frodi & Senchak, 1990; Michelsson 1980).

The colic cry is off the curve, beyond the realm of normal, and often does not change, no matter what the caregiver does. Wessel, and others, defined colic in 1954 in what has become known as the rule of threes: A threemonth-old infant ". . . who, otherwise healthy and well-fed, had paroxysms of irritability, fussing, or crying for a total of three hours a day and occurring on more than three days in any one week" for more than three weeks (Lester & Boukydis, 1992, p. 15).

Trauma, either physical or emotional, results in prolonged disequilibrium: The traumatized infant does not develop normal cry patterns that are predictable. A caregiver's inability to recognize erratic cries further compounds this needy infant's developmental distress.

Disabilities can stem from neurological disruptions, chronic pain, or genetic abnormalities. The cry of an infant with disabilities is characteristically different than normal, and thereby off the curve (Frodi & Senchak, 1990; Michelsson, 1980). While this infant may develop withinindividual continuity, or predictability of cry patterns, enough variance across individuals leads to no substantial generalizations about the nature of crying by an infant with disabilities.

OBSERVATION AND ASSESSMENT

The role of the caregiver as an observer of the crying patterns of the infant intersects and interferes with the caregiver's responsibility as a participant, an agent of change in charge of modifying the environment, and soothing the infant. This dual position requires the successful caregiver to become fluent in the "language" of crying as a sign, symptom, or a signal, to the point of providing competent, secure care for the infant (Epstein, 1991).