For several weeks we have been talking about different situations in which mothers and fathers of high demand babies.
Thanks to these entries, which have served as examples, many people have been able to understand some of the behaviors that such babies have.
In order to explain where the definition of high demand baby comes from, what does it mean and what does it bring you a series of tickets that we started today. To start, we will know how the term "high demand baby" is born.
Where does the term come from?
The first to talk about high demand babies or with high needs was the pediatrician William Sears, known for being also responsible for the term "Parenting with Attachment", with which he showed the entire world that it was possible to raise babies in a different way than usual.
Sears He started talking about high-demand babies when, after three children with similar and predictable behavior, his fourth baby, Hayden, showed a very different behavior.
"I can't let her go for a moment," said his wife. Apparently it was leaving her and starting to cry. Breastfeeding was not only a way to feed the girl, but it was also a means of comfort, a tranquilizer. The girl did not accept substitutes. Only his mother's arms and chest made her calm.
Faced with such dependence, some friends recommended that they simply leave her, that she would stop crying. The result was just the opposite. The girl cried more and more, in an extraordinarily persistent way that intensified if they did not respond.
Thus, little by little, the girl began to live always in the arms of her mother and, when it could not be so, in the arms of the father. In the neighborhood began to say: "Wherever Bill and Martha go, Hayden will be" and the same parents began to call her "the velcro girl."
The turning point of the Sears
Given this situation, they could do two things: try to understand the girl and accept that she was very capable of requesting what she needed at all times or trying to overcome her concerns by using behaviorism or "you'll get tired".
The Sears They decided to opt for the first solution. If a baby cries and demands something, it is because he needs it, no more no less. They closed the baby books, left behind hundreds of theories and recommendations and chose to listen to what their daughter was trying to tell them from the day she was born: "Hi mom and dad, you have been blessed with a different kind of baby and I need a different kind of parents. If you agree to it we will get along. If not, we will live a long struggle. "
The moment they put aside the preconceived ideas of what a baby should be like and understood how her daughter was, Hayden realized that babies do not try to manipulate with their demands, but simply communicate them.
As the Dr. Sears in his web page:
Hayden made us reassess our roles as parents. We had always thought that in order to carry out an effective upbringing a constant control was necessary… It is assumed that there is a relationship of confrontation between parents and children: the baby is trying to harm you (manipulate, control), so it is better to give us First.
But they realized that this assumption was not fulfilled with their daughter. There was no intention to manipulate or control, she only asked for what she needed.
This is how they decided not to try to change their baby to be like the others, but to accept her as she was:
Our role as parents was like that of a gardener: we cannot change the color of a flower or decide the day it blooms, but we can remove the weeds and prune the plant to bloom more beautifully.
The term "high demand babies" is born
A different kind of baby, like Hayden was, needed to be understood by the environment. Her parents soon observed that few people understood the girl's behavior and that it was necessary to somehow catalog her way of being in order to explain it to others.
The usual labels were not entirely representative and most were too negative (difficult baby, annoying girl, excessively energetic, ...) to represent a baby with the ability to express their needs, so, after two years, and after talk to different parents of children with the same characteristics as their daughter, the term "high demand babies".
To be continue…
What does it mean to have a baby in high demand and what are its characteristics we will talk about in future entries.
