Buzz
1. Poorer Health in Children
When left to cry on their own, infants experience disruptions in their stress responses. This disorder affects not only the brain but also the entire body through the vagus nerve, which influences various organs, including the digestive system. If a child experiences prolonged sadness without receiving parental comfort, this nerve function weakens, leading to various disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome.
2. Poor Communication Skills, Unhappiness, and Less Success in Life
When parents respond to their child's needs, comforting them when they are scared, the child's body shifts from a state of anxiety to balance. In this way, children learn to regulate their emotions. When a child cries and is held by the parents, they develop an expectation of comfort. However, if a child is left to cry alone, they will eventually stop, but this silence will come from a place of despair. Over time, the child will feel that their crying is pointless, and it will no longer be an effective means of communication.
3. Loss of Trust, Selfish Tendencies, Inability to Share, and Mistrust of Others
Erik Erikson pointed out that the first year of life is a critical period for establishing a sense of trust. When a child's needs are met, they come to believe that the world is a reliable place, with supportive figures (such as parents or caregivers), and that they themselves are valuable because their needs are attended to. When parents neglect a child's needs, the child gradually loses trust in relationships and the world around them.
4. The Misconception that Babies Who Self-Soothe Become More Independent
The truth is that children can only grow independent if, during their early years, their needs are consistently met. With clear evidence from neuroscience, Dr. Darcia Narvaez, a medical doctor, asserts that letting a child cry themselves to sleep is a habit that harms the child and their relationships in the long run. In fact, leaving a child to cry without comfort can result in lower intelligence, weaker health, and increased anxiety, which will make it harder for the child to integrate and collaborate effectively with others as they grow.
5. Children will always crave affection and feel insecure
The truth is that parents who make it a habit to meet their children's needs before they become desperate, comforting them before they cry, tend to have children who are more independent and successful than those whose parents act differently. Preventing issues is always better than dealing with them when they escalate. Once despair and frustration build up in a child, it becomes much harder for parents to calm them or help them regain composure. This explains why children who are allowed to cry for a long time before being soothed often cry even louder or become inconsolable. In folklore, this phenomenon is often referred to as 'children sulking'.
6. The Destruction of Neural Connections
When a child cries or feels upset, their nervous system is affected, triggering the release of cortisol, a hormone that gradually destroys neurons. A newborn baby, born full-term (40-42 weeks), only has 25% of its brain developed and is expected to grow rapidly after birth. By the age of one, the child's brain has tripled in size compared to its state at birth. It is important to note that the size of the brain at this stage plays a crucial role in determining the child's intelligence. Who would know that during this first year of life, many neurons in the child's brain fail to form connections and instead are destroyed by the very parents who neglect to respond when the child cries, as the child’s needs are ignored?
