Margolioth770 Loc: South Africa

Darcia Narvaez, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University Of Notre Dame, recently wrote in Psychology Today how “crying-it –out” could be dangerous for children, even leading to lifetime harm.
In trauma research, foraging patterns are used to study stress responses by replicating different attachment models.
A research team led by Leonard Rosenblum and Jeremy Coplan from the Primate Behavior Laboratory at the SUNY Health Sciences Center, Brooklyn, studied infant primates nursed by mothers randomly assigned to a variety of foraging conditions.
Using this research model, stress hormones were elevated in infants whose foraging pattern was totally unpredictable (Nonhuman Primates Exposed to Unpredictable Early Rearing: Relevance to PTSD, Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1997).
Good parenting involves a parent correctly identifying and validating a child’s experience. This is sometimes referred to as a mirroring response. When children feel protected, they are more successfully able to learn effective coping strategies, both cognitively (“everything will be all right”) and behaviorally (such as eliciting social support).
Healthy maturation allows one to face negative emotions in relationships by holding onto good internalized objects (such as parents) which have a soothing and containing effect.
When this capacity is lacking because of early neglect or abuse, victims are more likely to continuously re-experience and re-enact their early abuses without any emotional safety buffers.
The Neurobiological underpinning of mood dysregulation appears to be driven by the loss of Hippocampal volume, particularly in the left-brain, during prolonged trauma. This results in the accumulation of cytotoxic levels of glucocorticoids and glutamate.
The Hippocampus and amygdala are structures in the limbic brain that are respectively responsible for the restraint or activation of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis.
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and other functional imaging techniques have recently demonstrated that the right Hippocampus mediates unpleasant moods and subjective experiences, which include feeling endangered and becoming hyper-vigilant.
The left Hippocampus, in contrast, mediates a sense of comfort and well-being.
The fact that trauma appears to cause more shrinkage on the left has a compounding result of more unpleasant feelings, as well as excessive emotional arousal.
Their findings support the notion that adverse early rearing experiences have longstanding effects on neurochemicals relevant to emotional regulation.
By manipulating foraging conditions, these researchers created a laboratory model that corresponds to a parent who is unavailable during the critical “rapprochement phase”, described by Margaret Mahler.
Mahler`s benchmark of successful development requires the transition from a symbiotic dependence on the mother to the achievement of a stable individual identity within the world.
Their findings support the notion that adverse early rearing experiences have longstanding effects on neurochemicals relevant to emotional regulation.
By manipulating foraging conditions, these researchers created a laboratory model that corresponds to a parent who is unavailable during the critical “rapprochement phase”, described by Margaret Mahler.
Mahler`s benchmark of successful development requires the transition from a symbiotic dependence on the mother to the achievement of a stable individual identity within the world.
Mahler refers to this process as essential for the successful psychological birth of the child, or separation-individuation The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant, Margaret Mahler, Fred Pine, and Ann Bergman New York, Basic Books, 1975).
In order to simultaneously facilitate the process of the child`s individuation, the parent has to “walk through” each developmental stage with their child in a sharing and empathic way, paying attention to the child’s bonding cues.
Mature object-relationships require the right balance between nurture and graded separation.
In order to accomplish this, the “good parent” remains only as far as the child can tolerate, and is predictably available for emotional “refueling” upon recall by the child.
This process of internalizing and then self-regulating, is what Masterson calls “secure attachment” where adequate ego functioning must develop within the child to constrain the frustrations inherent to separation.
How the infant internalizes his experience of the caretaker is what determines the final outcome of how the infant will experience himself.
Resolution of the rapprochement crisis is considered by Mahler as essential developmental requirement.
It would appear that this process of “early-soothing” (provided by the good caretaker), also ensures the healthy development of those limbic structures in the Hippocampus that are responsible for subsequent “self-soothing” function (described by Winnicott in “The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment”).
These early experiences are also “downloaded” to form the templates for a variety of subsequent self-functions, including sense of agency, affect-regulation, and sense of empowerment, which are crucial assets for recall during times of psychological trauma.
Extended caretaker failure to provide empathy may lead to deficits ranging from shyness and introversion to serious disorders of the self.
Successful conclusion of this stage is what enables victims, following a trauma, to summon surrogate caretakers such as friends and family in order to reawaken latent soothing self-objects from childhood.
Kohut notes that victims do better when they have assimilated the positive emotions of their caretakers (Restoration of the Self New York: International Universities Press, 1977).
This includes the caretaker’s gentleness, tone of voice, mood, and empathic responses.
If a victim successfully internalized the parent as a good self-object during childhood, the individual will be far more receptive to being comforted during stress by surrogate caretakers.
Under favorable caretaking (foraging) conditions, developmental psychologists explain that these initial good “self-objects” become internalized, and are easily rekindled via bonding with new significant others (such as spouses, siblings, friends, chaplains, or therapists) who can then function as soothing “transitional objects” during times of crisis.

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

It is a miracle that humans survived and thrived for thousands of years, without higher education and science - and their incessant need to write papers, conduct research and form expert opinions on everything - to keep tenure, get grants, keep grants, write books and stay relevant.

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

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EL Loc: Massachusetts

Right!! How did they ever manage???

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Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

I so agree!



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Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

I don't need a fancy essay to let me know you should not let an infant "cry it out". They depend on us for warmth and security and when we deny that to the baby they are stressed and frightened. Keep it up and you will have a damaged child on your hands and that damage can manifest itself in many ways. Love your Baby.
;-)

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

I partly agree with you. Crying in babies serves many functions. One function is to strengthen lungs, diaphragm muscles, and vocal cords. A certain amount of crying should be tolerated. Now I do not agree in allowing a child or baby to go unattended because crying is a way of alerting us that something is wrong...... but to jump at every whimper or cajole a child who is having a tantrum... no. I guess I am old school and you youngsters know more.

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

Babies don't do temper tantrums when they cry they NEED attention. Even animals know that, why is it so complicated for people to understand. On the other hand when a 4 year old starts screaming, best find out if he needs help or is having a temper tantrum. Dogs can figure out when to interfere with puppies when they should be ignored, and when their temper tantrums require discipline. Time we used common sense not the psychobabble of the pseudo experts to guide our parenting. If necessary ask your dog what is right to do. Amazingly enough they know when children need help, need to be ignored and when they need to be growled at and told to grow up.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

I consider a child as a baby up until they are 5 years old. I guess I should have made that clear.

I resent your comparison of my, implied, bad parenting to animals knowing better..... I will make sure that the children we raised get immediate psychological help! For those doctors, lawyers, and engineers that my husband and I raised is apparently unaware that we mistreated them.

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

I had no intention of implying that you mistreated kids, far from it. I was referring to those people who believe that ignoring babies is good for them. You and I are much on the same page. sorry that you misinterpreted my comments.

Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

Don't call me a youngster. I am sixty two
. Now I agree jumping at every little whimper is a sure way to have a spoiled brat on your hands. We are talking about infants. totally different from a little boy or girl.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

Infants, weeks old to age 4, their cries should be immediately investigated... wet diapers, constricting clothing, hunger are the often cause, but there can be other reason such as running a fever or other physical problems. Mothers are quick to learn what the different crying means and if they do it right, a baby soon learns other means of communicating their needs. I have raised a gaggle of kids, some came to me weeks old..... some as teenagers, and I had two natural sons.... trust me when I say, in the first couple of weeks a baby or small child will spend on average of 3 hours each day crying. And then they calm down, knowing that their needs (to include physical comfort) will be met. It is up to the mother to learn from her baby. And babies are adapt teachers.

And you are young Tom.... !!!



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Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

You did alright and so am I. I am raising 2 grandchildren a boy age 13 and a girl age 3. the girl has been in our care since being released from the hospital. she was born 3 months early. We were taught by doctors to not let her cry it out. We followed that advice and have a happy well adjusted little girl. The 13 year old boy has spent most of his life with us since age 4. He is happy. He is a United States Navy Sea Cadet. He will be staying with it. Raising children is for me a big responsibility. Doing things right means a happy adult with high capabilities will be the final result.

Margolioth770 Loc: South Africa

In response to your comment, at first glance the article would appear to fit your cynicism about disconnected academics looking for some topic to show that they can still find something, or anything, to publish. The opposite is true. This article began as a comment to an article by Darcia Narvaez, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University Of Notre Dame, whose post in Psychology Today of how parents of the "me-generation, whose child-rearing practice of allowing their babies to “cry-it–out” for the night (enabling them not be disturbed) was showing up in "doodle-diaries". The post garnished a record number of reads. Since I have an interest in the science of early childhoodhood deprivation, my post attempts to apply theories of Developmental Psychologists, Attachment Theory, with studies currently being conducted at the Primate Behavior Laboratory at the SUNY Health Sciences Center. In a study of infant-primates nursed by mothers those infant-cubs randomly assigned to a model of unpredictable foraging, not only showed persistent patterns of stress-hormone elevation, but were more aggressive with their siblings, and became less-nurturing to their own infants when they became mothers. The Study was published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science, and provides a scientific template to support the findings that infants subjected to erratic foraging or deprivation later show disruption of neural pathways involved in self-soothing functions, which are also reflected in Hippocampal volume loss and underactivity in Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Studies.

Margolioth770 Loc: South Africa

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