Crying and Breastfeeding

Dear parent,

Aletha Solter is a colleague of mine whose work I respect. Breastfeeding, food and other distractions are often used to avoid emotional expression. When we stuff the boob (or a pacifier) in the mouth of a crying baby or toddler, we stop the emotional expression and if the crying is for a specific need, we don’t meet the real need. The toddler or baby learns, “I should distract myself from emotions by putting something in my mouth.” Later in life they might smoke, bite their nails or develop food disorders. Likewise, distracting a baby or child with a toy or by pointing to something else teaches the same message and leads to shoving down emotions. The result can be what we see daily; people distracting themselves with shopping, drugs, alcohol, media and other addictions.

When a baby cries, she usually has a reason other than the crying itself. Therefore, first and always respond to the actual need. If the baby needs to breastfeed, then it is the kind and loving response to offer the breast. If she needs motion, sleep, diaper change or holding, we must respond to the need. However, when the baby’s actual need is to cry and unleash emotions, then meeting some other need makes no sense and confuses the baby. Crying is a wonderful and vital tool of healing and it is best to support the need to cry by holding, loving and staying calm so the baby knows it is fine to feel intense emotions.

However, we want to be careful not to be the cause of the crying by depriving the baby of her needs. Not giving the breast can cause crying unnecessarily. This is not the same as responding to the baby’s need to cry.

I notice that if babies know that emotional expression through tears or tantrums is totally fine with their parents, they have no need to stop themselves from crying by latching on. They can breastfeed at bedtime and it is not instead of crying, or else they would do the crying first. In this case, if you refuse the breast, you cause the crying.

Aletha Solter correctly guides parent away from using the breast to shove emotions down in those situations where the baby or toddler is already “trained” to seek nursing in order to stop himself from crying. 

Falling asleep on the breast is the way of nature and I don’t see a reason to oppose it. I trust babies and children and do not see a need to manipulate their ways. However,

make sure not to teach your baby to seek the breast as an escape from needing to express herself with tears. When your baby knows that she can cry when she needs to, she will do so freely and will not rush to stop herself by suckling.

If you have trained your child to seek the breast in order to avoid crying, she will regain her freedom to cry as soon as you stop this pattern. By nature, babies don’t want their crying distracted. I have seen mothers offering the breast to crying babies who push away and insist on crying. There is no need to manipulate babies and worry that they will not do enough crying. I totally trust babies and children; unless manipulated, they assert themselves. When they need to cry - they will. 

Warmly, http://authenticparent.com/index.html