Carol Gray’s Blog

Good Question

Thu, 14 May 2009 19:24:06 -0700

Q: Do you ever advocate shushing, bouncing, putting a pacifier in a crying baby's mouth?

A: I don't ever actively promote these things, but I'm not openly critical of them either. It all depends on the parents, the situation, the reason for the crying and the temperament of the baby. Crying is a distress call, a form of expression and a pain coping practice. It is irritating to parents for a reason: It insures that the parents know the baby is in pain or has an unmet need and causes them to take appropriate action.

Example: The hungry baby cries. We pick up the baby and offer milk. The baby nurses and stops crying.

Babies who cry a lot and whose needs are more mysterious are at increased risk for shaking or other harm at the hands of distressed parents. So, if the parents are close to the edge and they use a pacifier or bouncing to quiet a frequently screaming baby, would you tell them to stop?

If this bouncing/shushing/sucking (you forgot swaddling - the baby straight jacket) is deeply entrenched behavior, my intervention would be to acknowledge that this particular baby cries more than most and that his needs are mysterious at times. I would then introduce the idea that if all the known needs are met and reasonable solutions offered (dry/fed/warm/held, etc.), it is OK to hold a crying baby without the intention of stopping the crying. Distressed, sleep deprived parents might not be able hear this at first, though.

There is something disrespectful about stuffing something (a pacifier) into the mouth of a crying baby. To me it's like saying the "s" word = shut-up. Although, there is a difference between stuffing a pacifier into the mouth of a wailing baby and simply offering it.

Babies are better able to organize themselves neurologically if they are sucking. Sucking is a major survival skill for a baby. It makes sense that it would be intensely pleasurable for the baby to suck. I know that if we are presented with two kinds of stimulation - one pleasurable and one painful - we are actually hard-wired to pay more attention to the pleasurable stimulation and thus feel less pain. That's why soaking in water helps with the pain of labor. When a woman is feeling pleasurable sensations on her skin from the water, the pain gets a smaller slice of her awareness pie.

What if the baby uses crying as a pain coping practice? How many women vocalize in labor? Allowing the baby to cry and offering her support while she does it would be helpful, right? What if bouncing is also a pain coping practice for the baby? Who's to say that one is "better" than the other? If laboring women use vocalization sometimes and movement at other times to cope with the pain, babies can, too, in my book.

Some babies will stop crying if offered pacifiers, swaddled, shushed or bounced. I think it's important for parents to define the goal. If the goal is to stop the crying before the parents go crazy and hurt the baby then I say bounce away. If the goal is to stop the baby from crying because the parents think that a crying baby is a sign of bad parenting then the strategy could use some revision.

I think it all comes down to intention. We want our babies to be safe. We want to be sure we are meeting our babies needs. We want our babies to be able to freely express their emotions - even the ones that are expressed by crying.

The Lead Garden

Sat, 2 May 2009 09:38:13 -0700

I read an article in the Portland Tribune about the hazard of backyard chickens eating lead-based paint fragments in the soil. The lead tastes sweet. After the chickens eat the lead they lay lead-laced eggs which are eaten by their unsuspecting green-leaning owners.

Lead in the soil is a hazard not only for egg raisers and eaters, but also vegetable gardeners and eaters. I wince when I see so many home vegetable gardens snugged up against older (pre 1978) houses.

While chickens eat the lead directly, plants also absorb lead from the soil. The mineral content of plants is variable depending on the soil in which the plants are grown. Minerals in the soil, including lead, end up in the plants we eat. Lead concentrations are usually highest in roots. Next comes leaves, then fruits and last seeds (usually).

Lead concentrations in the soil near a house (that has been painted with lead-based paint) are usually highest about three feet away from the building. It makes sense that most of the scrapings between paint jobs would land there.

* Note: Lead contaminates soils along highways due to our long love affair with leaded automobile fuels.

Plants that are high in calcium (like spinach and broccoli) end up with the highest lead concentrations. The lead binds tightly with calcium. That’s why lead settles in our bones after we ingest it.

In theory, we could eventually get the lead out by planting successive crops of spinach and then pulling and sending the mature plants to the landfill - year after year. Don’t eat or compost these lead-bombs. This is called “cropping out”.

A better solution would be to brick over the area near the building and then build raised beds with clean soil over the bricks. The idea is to keep the roots of our food plants away from the contaminated soil.

Another option is to remove a significant amount of soil and replace it with clean soil. Determining the depth and concentration of the lead wold require testing. More testing would be required to determine if replacing the soil resolves the problem.

One we have decontaminated the soil in the garden area, we must be vigilant about preventing recontamination from flaking, pressure-washed, sanded or scraped paint.

The easiest solution is to not plant your garden near the house or garage.

Eat

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:10:15 -0700

Parents ask me about introduction of solid foods all the time. Here’s my take on it.

Babies store iron in their livers while they gestate. Milk has next to no iron in it. At some point after birth, babies’ iron stores begin to diminish. This is often when they show signs of interest in iron rich solid food. Hopefully, this occurs around the time they are developmentally ready in other ways. Unfortunately, some babies have their cords cut soon after birth and don’t get all of their own blood - some of which remains in the placenta or umbilical cord. I think this leads to anemia or a premature necessity for solids or supplements before the baby is otherwise ready.

What are the readiness signs? If we sat on the floor and ate with our hands the readiness signs would be obvious. A ready baby would simply join in the family fare. The baby would be able to sit stably. She would probably (but not always) have some teeth. She would be interested in eating food. The interest thing is most important. We need to trust babies to know when they are ready. The ready baby would pick up pieces of food, put them in her mouth, gum, chew or mash them up and swallow them. I believe that when babies can do this they are ready.

When my kids were babies the standard practice was to formula feed and then begin solids in the form of rice cereal at six weeks. Then we were supposed to feed pureed bananas, pears and the like. The idea was that formula was deficient in certain nutrients and early supplementation with solids would somehow make up for it. The myth that babies on solids would sleep better or longer was rampant (and persists today).

For some reason I never followed that template. I must have read some radical article about the “late” introduction of solids and stuck with it. I breastfed my children, but hardly anyone else did in those days. I tried feeding my oldest son at age six months with a spoon, but he wanted to feed himself so I let him.

My middle son didn’t eat any solid food until around his first birthday. When he could sit on his own, we dutifully placed him in a high chair at the table with the rest of us during mealtimes. We offered him little pieces of food which he fed to the dog. His first solid food ended up being guacamole. He ate quite a lot. After that he ate everything we ate. It all happened at once. That was it.

I am against poking rice cereal or other pureed concoctions into babies’ mouths with little spoons. Normal babies don’t really need “baby food”. We don’t need to buy it and we don’t need to make it. Babies can eat what we eat. We might need to mash it up with a fork or cut it into pieces, but if they are really ready that’s all we need to do.

Babies will show interest in spoons and other utensils when they are ready. My philosophy is that if the baby wants a spoon the baby gets a spoon. Sometimes babies want certain utensils before they are ready. One of my granddaughters has been especially interested in using a knife since before age two. Luckily, she lives with adults who can safely cut her food for her.

I do think it makes sense to introduce new foods singly and, in some cases, in a particular order, especially if there are food allergies in the family. That way we know which food is the culprit if the baby has a reaction. Sometimes that doesn’t always go according to plan. One of my granddaughters got the food urge on vacation in Europe at age five months. She grabbed and tried to eat everything she could snag off our plates. She had many multi-ingredient new foods that were not necessarily on her parents’ list of what to introduce first.

Self feeding can be a bit messy. Use a bib. Put plastic under the baby’s chair. Get over the idea of white carpeting in the dining room until the kids are grown. Kids spill. We always employed dogs as part of the self feeding team. The floor can stay pretty clean with the right dog on duty.

Last, self feeding eliminates what I think is the weirdest part of spoon feeding. When we spoon feed our babies they have to eat in order to please us. I would rather my kids eat for healthier reasons.

Fierce Love

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:48:30 -0700

A four-year-old kicked me today. It was great. When I arrived at his home to treat a tiny newborn, Big Brother (the four-year-old) was sleeping on the couch. His mom and I went into the next room with the baby for the Craniosacral treatment. During the treatment Big Brother awoke from his nap. He walked into the room where I was touching his nursing brother. We had never met. He shouted at me to go away and then he kicked me.

I understood completely. He thought I might be hurting “his baby”, but his words did not come. He didn’t have words for that particular feeling. It’s probably the first time he ever felt it. It was so amazing for me to see the magnitude of the sibling bond and his instinct to protect - just a few days after the new baby’s arrival. In an instant, I was privileged to witness the birth of kinship. It happened so fast.

Cry

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:56:58 -0700

A couple years ago I wrote about crying babies here. I had a conversation about crying a couple days ago that made me want to revisit the subject. The conversation revolved around parents trying to prevent their babies and toddlers from crying because they lived in shared-wall dwellings and didn’t want to disturb the neighbors.

Crying! It is, after all, a distress call. It’s supposed to attract parental attention. It’s one of the baby’s main survival skills. It helps a baby tell parents that she has an unmet need. Sometimes crying is a pain coping practice. Other times it is a form of release. I always felt that there was nothing more disturbing than the sound of my own baby crying. The sound of someone else’s baby crying, not so disturbing. If I’m not the one caring for the baby I really can tune it out. And frankly, now that I have achieved grandmother status I care less and less about what other people think. It’s a great place to be, but I didn’t get here all at once.

I grew up in a small, but loud family. We lived close to our neighbors. The climate was warm so we had open windows much of the time. We heard our neighbors. Our neighbors heard us. My little sister was ultra colicky. She cried constantly until sometime after her first birthday. I was eleven at the time. My parents and I took turns holding and walking with her while she cried. Although, my mom did most of the hard-core soothing. I never thought much about whether my sister disturbed the neighbors. After all, she disturbed us a lot more. We had to live with Miss Cranky: an eleven-year-old perspective.

My oldest son, Jason, was colicky. I remember fleeing restaurants and other public places because he started to cry and I was afraid of disturbing people. Over the years I mellowed out.

My third son, Paul, sustained a brain injury when he was a toddler. His frontal lobes were injured causing him to have poor impulse control, a volatile temper and difficulty modulating his emotions. He was that nine-year-old who threw himself on the floor, screaming at Fred Meyer because I told him we weren’t going to buy whatever it was he wanted in the moment. Perhaps you saw us. He did it a number of times. I think the Paul experience is what pushed me over the edge of caring less about what a bunch of strangers thought about me or my child and more about what was right for us in the moment. Paul really needed to grieve the loss of the Doritos. I needed to be consistent about who made most of the decisions about the groceries we bought.

A couple years ago my husband and I traveled to Italy with my son, daughter-in-law and five month old granddaughter. On a long train ride, Anna, my granddaughter cried and cried. Her mother was really worried about the crying disturbing other passengers. I, on the other hand, was way less concerned about whether Anna cried on the train. I carried Anna to the vestibule between cars and held her while she cried until she fell asleep. A bonus for me: Since I was holding the sleeping child, I didn’t have to carry any bags when we changed trains.

This past year I have spend a lot of time on airplanes. Flights are usually packed these days and they wouldn’t be complete without a crying baby or two - or more. What I’ve noticed is that the mothers of the crying babies seem to be distressed about the crying. The other passengers seem way less distressed about it. In fact, the other passengers usually appear to have great compassion for the struggling mother and child.

So, we live in a world where all human babies cry. It really is a universal experience. Most parents would agree that it’s good for babies and children to express their emotions. So why do we stuff pacifiers into the mouths of screaming children? What kind of message does that send about our interest in what the baby is trying to express? If we do our best to meet our children’s needs and they are still crying, it makes sense to be present with them without attachment to stopping the crying, right? So how did we get to the place where we turn ourselves inside-out worrying about whether our babies are disturbing other people - even when those other people really don’t seem to mind? Why do we do all kinds of crazy things to get children to stop crying when we know it’s really OK?

Respect

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:44:45 -0700

This is the sixth and final installment of the Tribute to Magda Gerber Series.

The sign outside the bathroom door read. “Due to her great love of the water Christa should wash her hands last.” Hand washing time for the children at Our Own School could have been a disaster if the teacher had not respected and appreciated Christa.

Magda took what she had learned about infant/child development and adapted the principles to the home and day care setting. She taught parents and professionals how to foster cooperative relationships with babies and children while respecting and honoring their individuality.

Respect was the foundation of everything Magda taught.

We show respect by not picking up infants without telling them in advance. We show respect by speaking directly to infants and waiting for their response. We show respect by creating a safe space for infants and children to explore and learn. We show respect for children’s abilities by giving them household responsibilities appropriate for their development. We show respect for infants and children by telling them when we are leaving the room and when we will return. We show respect for children by allowing them the opportunity to resolve their own conflicts. We show respect by giving undivided attention to children when caregiving and also just for fun. This modeling of respect helps children grow to be respectful adults.

This sweet video provides glimpses of how it looks in action:

Thank you, Magda.

Connected Caregiving

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:14:15 -0700

This is part five of The Tribute to Magda Gerber Series.

It is important for babies to explore their worlds with some degree of independence. However, they are still babies and we must do certain things for them. Many of these activities fall into the category of caregiving. These are things like diapering, pottying, dressing, grooming, bathing and feeding.

Magda got her infant/child development mentoring with Emmi Pikler, pediatrician and director of Loczy, now known as the Pikler Institute in Budapest Hungary. Loczy was founded in 1946 as an orphanage for children whose parents had died in World War II. Today it mostly serves social orphans - some are abandoned. Others are children whose parents can’t take care of them due to things like poverty, drug abuse or mental illness.

One of the challenging things about orphanages is that there are more babies than caregivers. At Loczy they worked hard to develop caregiving routines that maximized interaction, focused attention on the child and fostered cooperation. At Loczy they found that when the children got the individual attention they needed from one special adult they were better able to form secure attachments, develop relationship skills and prepare for a transition to family life.

Way back when - Magda taught me her method of cooperative, language-rich diapering. It took me longer than usual, but when I understood the benefits I was on my way to becoming a reformed speed-diaperer.

Here’s how it works: The caregiver tells the child that it’s time to change the diaper and waits for a response. In fact, every step of the way the caregiver tells the child what is going to happen next. She asks for cooperation and waits for a response, “Please hold your legs up. I’m going to wipe you off.”

The diapering table is set up so that the baby and caregiver are face-to-face with the baby’s feet against the caregiver’s belly. This is distinctly different from the sideways set-up of most American changing tables.

The baby and caregiver participate in a mutual exchange. The baby is offered appropriate choices, “Do you want to wear the pink or the blue diaper wrap?” The baby gets focused attention. When the diapering is over the baby is free to return to another activity. Because his attention needs have been met, the baby will have less need for adult participation during the next activity (usually what we call free play).

In an institutional setting this works great because the caregiver probably has a few babies to look after. One at a time they can get their diapers changed and then go on to something else without any further adult intervention.

But why bother trying this at home?

I think it makes sense to give concentrated attention during caregiving activities that have to be done anyway. We might as well, right? Asking for cooperation and expecting the baby to participate, even at a very young age, fosters increasing cooperation over time. Babies who are tended in this way avoid those diapering (or other care-giving) power struggles later on. Last, it helps give babies the confidence to be more independent at other times - like when they are working on motor skill acquisition.

Of course, this model can be applied to any caregiving activity, “Are you hungry? Do you want to nurse? OK wait just a moment while I get ready. Now open your mouth wide. Thank you.”

A silent, swift, efficient caregiving moment is a lost opportunity.

A Few Simple Toys, Free Play and Big Money

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:36:10 -0700

This is part four of The Tribute to Magda Gerber Series.

Magda used to say that when the child development experts observed her groups she would show them children cleaning a table with a wet sponge. She would say that it taught the kids object constancy. They could pick up the water with the sponge and it would disappear from the table. Then, the children could squeeze the water back out onto the table again. “But really,” she said, “we were just letting the children mess around with the water”.

Magda promoted simple, ordinary objects as toys. She felt strongly that babies and children are competent individuals who can direct their own learning through play. She taught me that toys designed to dictate a particular kind of play were less valuable than more open-ended toys. She was especially against toys that lit up, beeped, buzzed required batteries or played music.

For infants, Magda felt that toys should be placed nearby, but not directly into a baby’s hand. It is important to respect the baby’s choice about which toy in which hand, etc. Babies should have the opportunity to reach out, move toward and grasp whatever gets their attention. This is why the safe space with safe toys is so important.

Magda also taught that it’s OK to let a baby express frustration in the learning process. She cautioned against immediately intervening to hand an out-of-reach toy to a baby. Sometimes saying something like, “You really want that toy.” is enough to allow a child to console herself and go on to solve the problem.

Other times babies are in such distress they really need consoling from an adult. The point is to pause, observe the whole child, acknowledge the situation and the emotion, and intervene only if necessary. This approach acknowledges the baby’s competence as a problem solver and capable learner.

Magda was also a big fan of indoor-outdoor play space. At Our Own School, the preschool we founded on Magda’s philosophy and teachings, we had an open structure. That means the children had access to indoor and outdoor space and a variety of play areas with a variety of “toys” - whatever they chose - during play times. Most times were play times. This set-up required supervision in both places at once, but it was well worth it.

Infants and toddlers don’t need hundreds of toys either. A selection of just a few at a time is better. Even very small children can learn to put something away before selecting the next thing if there are fewer toys and they are stored in little tubs on a shelf at toddler height.

It is popular these days for parents to focus on stimulating children’s learning (see the post on the Developmental Derby). I feel that it is actually more common for American children to be over stimulated than under stimulated.

Here’s an example of a simple toy a la Magda: You know those metal disks on the ends of frozen juice cans? They make great baby and toddler toys. They are shiny, non-toxic, not sharp, too big for choking. They make a great noise, can be rolled on the floor or placed in or dumped out of a cup or other container. Get the picture? One of my granddaughters calls them Big Money.

Safe Space

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:51:04 -0700

This is part three of The Tribute to Magda Gerber Series.

If we are really serious about allowing babies to explore their worlds and develop their skills naturally, we need to provide appropriate places for them to do it - a concept that goes beyond child-proofing. In a way this seems like a no-brainer, but I’m amazed at how many homes I visit that are not set up like this.

Imagine yourself as a baby. You have your eye on the remote control. It’s not far away. It’s somewhere in the living room most days - though not always in the same place. You have been admiring it for days. You have been working hard to perfect rolling from back to front so you can get closer to that remote. You are starting to roll. You are almost almost there. Suddenly, without warning, someone pushes you the rest of the way onto your belly. What a surprise! You have temporarily forgotten about the remote.

The next day you are on the floor again. You can almost touch the remote. You spend 20 minutes wiggling, rolling, reaching, squirming until FINALLY you get your hands on the remote control. Then, amazingly, someone takes it away from you.

How would it be if your baby-self enjoyed a safe place filled with interesting, simple objects that were OK to touch? What if you were free to discover your own ways of playing and interacting with everything in this safe space? This is the essence of one of my gifts from Magda Gerber.

Until I met Magda, it never occurred to me that I could use baby gates or a separate room to define a safe area for my babies and toddlers to play and explore once they were mobile or working on mobility. I honestly thought that I was supposed to teach or direct my children’s play. I thought I was supposed to somehow train (or vigilantly supervise and redirect) them to not touch fascinating, but fragile/dangerous adult objects or put everything away for several years - maybe forever. “Honey, where’s the remote?”

Natural Skill Acquisition Vs. The Developmental Derby

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:31:59 -0700

This is part two of The Tribute to Magda Gerber Series.

Notice the picture of the baby in the walker. This isn’t really walking. This baby isn’t ready to walk. Walkers don’t teach walking. Walkers can have a negative effect on the baby’s future walking skills. You can’t tell from this picture, but the baby’s toes are the only part of his feet in contact with the floor. This can cause the baby’s calf muscles to shorten leading to toe-walking, other unnatural gaits and a lack of walking coordination with more frequent falls and injuries later on.

This baby, shown above, isn’t walking either. This activity doesn’t teach walking. This baby is clearly not ready to walk. In addition to all the perils listed above, this activity can load the baby’s spine, pelvis, legs, knees, ankles and feet in gravity before those structures are ready to support his weight in an upright position. This activity is also hard on the baby’s shoulders. For some reason, in our culture, this activity gives parents great pleasure.

This baby isn’t standing. She can’t get into a standing position on her own. All the negative consequences listed above apply to this activity. Note the expression of pleasure on the mother’s face.

This baby isn’t sitting. Prolonged propping in a seated position can load the spine in a way that’s not healthy for a baby who can’t get into a sitting position on his own.

The Developmental Derby
Parents are excited and proud to have children who sit, stand and walk earlier than their peers. I call this competition the Developmental Derby. Parents like the idea of training, exercising or helping their children to accomplish these motor skill goals. Although, when we do this we potentially cause harm to tiny bodies. We also deprive our children of their own process on their own timetable. This normal learning process includes frustration, trial and error, synthesis, learning from experience, integration of skills and pride of accomplishment.

My Sons: The Research Subjects
My oldest son, Jason, spent time in a walker and a Johnny Jump-Up, the contraption pictured below.

Like most other American parents I propped him up when he couldn’t get into a sitting position on his own, I stood him up and I “walked” him. After he learned to walk on his own, until he was about 5, he had a perpetual bandage on his chin - sometimes with stitches underneath. He was fearless - often overestimating his capabilities. He fell a lot and usually landed on his chin.

I met Magda Gerber when I was pregnant with my second son, Adam. She taught me to let him develop in his own way. I learned not to interfere. I allowed him to find his own way in his own time. He met most gross motor skill milestones a little later than average for American children, but he has always been graceful, grounded in his body and less prone to falling and other accidents.

The developmental derby is seductive. I still really want you to know that Jason, in spite of his frequent falls, was able to ride a two-wheeler without training wheels at 4 1/2. Note the expression of pleasure on my face.