A few days ago I was talking about some conclusions drawn from Eduardo Punset's documentary about children's brains and today I will end with the rest of the analysis of the interview with Sue Gerhardt.
The million dollar question, Are children allowed to cry or not?
No, if crying is the result of a stressful situation And it can be avoided. I explain. Children cry for many things, because they are hungry, sleepy, because they fall to the ground, because a noise scares them, because ... Not all situations cause them stress or fear, but some of them do.
There are children who leave them in the crib alone does not produce any fear or stress and therefore do not cry. There are others who feel alone, feel fear, and live it as a stressful situation, and express it through crying. There are children who feel stressed to a minimum and who cry often, and there are others who, despite being alone or feeling alone, have more tolerance for stress and do not manifest it. It all depends on the child and I repeat Sue Gerhardt's phrase again: "The important thing is that the baby doesn't get too stressed."
And how to know what stresses a baby?
Well, I would say with a little empathy. Putting ourselves in their place and in their immature head to understand that babies know very little where they live, they know little of us and yet they give us their lives and trust us because we are the only thing they have.
Children understand very little about their surroundings and that is why we are their arms, their legs, their ears, their eyes and their quiet corner when we take them in their arms.
"Babies find relatively small things stressful. For example, for a baby being away from their caregiver for too long is very stressful, because survival is going on! A baby does not know if he will survive or not: he needs someone take care of him. "
But if I take him a lot in my arms or I am all day for him, he will spoil himself, right?
Sue Gerhardt comments that "Children who have safe emotional ties work better in school, their performance is superior in all aspects. Touch is proving very important for development. So you have to hold the baby in the arms, take it to the sites, touch it … Everything that generates pleasure, in fact, because the evidence seems to show that the biochemical substances related to pleasure and everything that generates pleasure really help the superior functions of the brain to develop. "
With regard to mental health, one of the great epidemics of the moment, which has the potential to continue increasing "Current research shows that, in personality disorders, specifically, everything points back to early childhood". That is, what happens while a baby's brain is forming can greatly affect the mental health of the future adult, both for good and for bad.
Finally, I am left with a phrase from Sue, "Early childhood is really the basis of mental health."
