Baby crying, a compass to guide us.

In the first months of life, it is spontaneous for a baby to cry. It is the best, almost the only, tool he has to communicate with those around him when speech is not yet part of him. Crying that can represent grief, fear, anger — it is a compass that the child provides to his parents for his survival. It guides them to understand his needs, wants and discomforts: hunger, sleep, heat, boredom… or simply the desire to receive attention, comfort and not be alone.

Will he be hungry? Will he be sleepy? Will he feel cold? Will he be frightened? It will often happen to us that we don’t immediately understand what he needs, sometimes he doesn’t even know! We become overwhelmed with fear not knowing how to handle these cries that hammer us. The first reaction, some times, is panic: we become frightened and alarmed at the baby crying in despair. Seeing him in pain makes us feel an emptiness in our stomach. And so, in these moments, we immediately intervene and look for a way to remove any suffering from him. But this is not always the right way! Some times the child needs to get in touch with and be overwhelmed by uncomfortable, painful and frightening emotions. From the very first months he comes in contact with suffering: colic, feeling alone, hunger, sleep… The parent in these cases is important to act by making the baby feel protected, understood and safe. Lean him against your chest giving him comfort, breastfeed him, rock him or play with him. In this way, the child will feel that the parent is walking beside him, holding his hand, when the wave sweeps over them.

Tuning in to his cry thus turns out to be crucial to understanding what he wants to communicate to us. But what does it mean to tune in? Just as when we can listen to the radio station we wanted to hear, so we can tune our emotional “knob” to hear the emotion the child is expressing and, consequently, the underlying need. Learning to know, over time, his cries to give an appropriate response to his cries for help. A word, a caress, a cuddle, vocalizations … make us tune in to his language so that together we can find a solution to his need. The child will feel this connection (experiments have shown how much our brains respond and are stimulated by even the change in adult facial expressions) and will feel that he is understood. A child who feels that the world responds to him and is not indifferent to him will, more likely, be a child who understands that he has value and so, even in the face of life’s obstacles, he will feel that he is not alone in facing them. This is how they will be able to learn to recognize their own emotions, handle frustration in the face of difficulties, and acquire tools or resources that, even in adulthood, will help them cope with life’s storms. From crying comes a look, from looking comes calm, and from calm a secure foundation on which the roots of the person one will be in the future can mature.