The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five

Because Hayden was a challenge to our discipline skills, we were forced to get to know her in a way we had not experienced with our sons. The endless hours spent parenting Hayden produced a deep knowledge of who she was as a person, and this in turn helped her understand herself as a person. Rather than muzzling her, by responding to Hayden we rewarded her for being an expressive person. She became a master at expressing her needs and engaging the resources of adult caregivers at a very early age. She was a very resourceful three-year-old. The ability to express herself is an asset that will serve Hayden well as an adult.

As we watched Hayden dominate her peers in playgroups, we saw why she had earned the label “bossy”. Like a quarterback addressing a huddle, she commanded all the kids’ attention, and they lined up to listen as she told them how they were going to play the game. Now, we watch her dominate student council meetings in our living room, and we marvel at how she works on the members until they agree with her point of view.

Hayden early on caused us to re-evaluate the issue of control. We gradually figured out that the child shouldn’t control the parents, or the parents control the child. Yet parents must control situations; when there is no limit-setting, family life is a disaster. We needed to be in charge of Hayden, to give her “house rules” and then control her environment so that it was not difficult for her to comply with these rules.

We were unprepared for the strong-mindedness we encountered in Hayden as a toddler. The older children had responded well to verbal cues. Hayden seemed not to hear us. So, rather than be constantly yelling “no, don’t touch” (which was futile), we taught her that throughout the house there were “yes-touches” and “no-touches”. Our job included making the “yes-touches” more accessible to her than the forbidden things. Hayden could operate from her own inner controls in a setting that communicated order and structure of some sort. (Every family will do this differently.) When she had the opportunity to behave properly, independent of endless no’s from us, she would start to get a sense of her own inner controls. When she’s older and on her own, this set of inner rules will help her operate responsibly and confidently on her own. She’ll feel right when she follows the rules and won’t feel right when she doesn’t. And we learned that in order to set limits and model desirable behaviour, we ourselves had to be disciplined.

lesson

Everything we did with and for Hayden from day one was discipline. We were teaching her the tools to succeed in life.

our needs versus her needs (#ulink_7294e991-e31f-5811-ba86-fb358472c23d)

Toward the middle of Hayden’s first year, we realized that parenting a high-need child could have a better or worse effect on our relationship as husband and wife. Such a child can easily dominate the home. There were times when Martha risked burning out from over-giving. A warning sign of impending burnout was Martha saying: “I don’t even have time to take a shower, Hayden needs me so much.” For Martha’s sake, and ultimately for the sanity of the whole family, I had to remind her, “What Hayden needs most is a happy, rested mother.” It wasn’t enough just to preach. Besides pitching in more around the house and with the older children, I took over with Hayden whenever I could. I would take her for a walk or car ride so that she would be out of Martha’s sight and earshot.

lesson

As a mother, I realized I had to take good care of myself so I could take better care of my baby.

Having a high-need child helped us communicate more maturely with each other. There was always the “our needs versus her needs” dilemma. We had to steal time for ourselves, realizing that even the best parenting can be undermined if the marriage falls apart. I saw how important it was to Martha for me to validate her mothering. I frequently offered not only a reassuring “you know best”, but when I saw that her drive to give was outpacing her energy reserves, I realized I needed to intervene and help. I sometimes wondered when I would ever have my wife back, but then realized we couldn’t rewind this parenting tape. I was an adult, and Hayden would go through this stage only once.

From Martha’s perspective, this balancing act was more easily said than done. There were plenty of times when I managed to let my own neediness send Martha double messages (“I’ve got needs, too, you know”). She would feel this pressure even when I thought I was doing a good job putting Martha’s and Hayden’s needs ahead of my own. And we both quickly found out that it is difficult for some women to accept help with the responsibility of baby care even when they need it a lot. They often can’t see that they need nurturing for themselves. Nor do they know how to make their own needs a high priority. We discovered that Martha was very good at taking care of everyone else but really did not know how to take care of herself. (We are still working on this seventeen years later.)

how we grew – the payoff (#ulink_7d388699-c174-5597-a335-68cf06d5befd)

As Hayden grew, her neediness remained but her personality blossomed. One of the earliest qualities we noticed was her sensitivity, her ability to care and comfort when playmates were hurt or upset. As a preschooler, she had already developed a keen sense of justice and social values. Often she would say, “That’s not right” or “How sad.” Her love of people and her ability to connect with them was another payoff we witnessed. She would be aware of other children who needed mothering, and she would do what she could to help. Her sense of intimacy was appropriate, giving eye contact or a touch on the arm during a conversation. She had a confident way of being in the presence of adults. A child psychiatrist who was at our home one evening remarked, “Hayden knows where her body is in space.” We knew what that meant. Because she had been held and nursed and responded to appropriately, Hayden already had a good sense of herself as a unique physical presence and she responded to others in their uniqueness. She was able even then to affirm each person she met. Since Hayden was used to being understood and responded to, she could express herself comfortably. This ability, combined with her high energy, caused us to joke about our “Sarah Bernhardt”. It’s no wonder that through her grade school and high school years, she enjoyed and excelled at being onstage. Her chosen course of study in college, if you haven’t already guessed, is psychology and drama.

As Hayden matured as a person, we were maturing as parents. Gradually and subtly our parenting style, besides being nurturing to Hayden, became a source of growth for us. Hayden’s high needs caused us to stretch ourselves to higher levels of giving with the ever-present challenge of balancing Hayden’s needs with the rest of the family’s. Hayden opened us up to be more flexible, more patient, and more disciplined. We came to realize that, although there are a few basic principles of good parenting that apply to every child and every temperament, how parents apply these principles is affected, for better or for worse, by the need level of the child. Compliant babies who can be put down in a cot while awake and who fall asleep on their own will accept a less intensive style of nighttime parenting. Compliant children will often switch gears from their agenda to their parents’ at the slightest suggestion and come immediately when called to dinner from a distance. High-need children, on the other hand, need an eye-to-eye summons before switching from their agenda to yours.

Parenting high-need children has matured us as individuals, too. High-need children push buttons that reveal pleasant and unpleasant scenes from our childhoods. Parenting Hayden led us to make personal discoveries about how we ourselves were parented, and how this was affecting us as adults. When these flashbacks surfaced, we soon learned which ones we could use to our parenting advantage and which ones to discard, for example, the impulse to smack. Some people would have considered Hayden’s behaviour cause for smacking, but we realized that she needed a different kind of “hands-on” discipline.

Hayden also caused our marriage to mature. We became very different partners as a result of our experience with parenting a high-need child. We knew that the best parenting requires two parents in the home. As tempting as it was for Martha to throw herself totally into mothering, she wisely directed some energy toward me. We have become much more sensitive to each other’s temperaments and better at anticipating each other’s needs. We have continued to avail ourselves of marriage-enrichment opportunities and plain old “enjoying time” together often.

Now that Hayden is about to leave the nest and enter college, we look back at our parenting with few regrets. We cannot take all the credit or blame for the person she becomes, yet it’s comforting to know we gave her a good start. The rest is up to Hayden.

Hayden has gone from being a high-need child to a high-energy teen. Her life as a baby is chronicled in our earlier book The Fussy Baby. She sometimes opens that book and shows her friends, “That’s me.” One prom night, as she stood posed for her picture, she looked so grown up in her formal gown. I whispered to Martha, “Fussy baby fills out”, and this mature teen-woman gave her daddy a wink. As she was escorted out the door, our minds and hearts filled with flashbacks of those countless energy-draining scenes of babyhood, toddlerhood, and childhood. Martha and I looked at each other and thought, “It’s been a long and bumpy road, yet all that time in arms, at breast, and in our bed, the many discipline confrontations, and the years of high-touch parenting have produced a confident, compassionate, caring person. It has all been worthwhile.”

chapter 2 (#ulink_07011f6a-c519-5ac9-87eb-641c1bda7adb)

profile of a high-need baby (#ulink_07011f6a-c519-5ac9-87eb-641c1bda7adb)

“Why is my baby so different? She is not like any of my friends’ babies. They sleep through the night. They’re happy being held by anyone. My friends don’t seem as tired as I am. What am I doing wrong?” Sound familiar? Your baby acts the way she does because that’s the way she is. It’s her personality.

In the first weeks after birth you get a glimpse of who this little person really is. Even while pregnant you may have had a hint of the challenge to come. High-need infants tend to be full-time tummy-thumpers and bladder-kickers, as if telling the world even before they’re born that they need more space.

In some ways all babies are high-need babies, and most babies have high needs in at least one area of their life. Some have more high-need areas than others. All babies need attachment – high-need babies don’t give up expressing this need. The neediness of the baby is often in the mind of the parent. Some experienced parents of children have widened their expectations of what babies are “normally” like, and they adapt more easily to a baby with high needs; new parents often are not so realistic. After Hayden introduced us to high-need babies, we learned a whole new way to parent. The babies that followed her each had their own particular high needs. We were able to recognize and respond to them because of our experience with Hayden. None of them were as thoroughly “high need” as Hayden, but they came close. In retrospect, we realize that the babies who came before Hayden had high needs, too, in some areas. The difference between those babies and Hayden was not only a difference in need levels; Hayden also had the forceful personality to let us know just what she needed. (Factored into our whole spectrum of parenting is that we were young and full of energy with the first babies. Hayden was born eleven years after our first child, Jim. By then we had less energy, perhaps, but more experience.)

We have met many high-need babies over the years. Based on this “gallery” we have compiled the following profile of a high-need baby. All babies will show some of these features some of the time, and these features are descriptive only. As you will see, each of these personality traits has its blessings and its trials. These personality traits should not be judged as good or bad. They simply show differences among babies; but these differences do make high-need babies challenging to parent. Ultimately, what matters is how the child learns to use these special gifts. Our goal is to help parents identify these unique features in their infant and channel these traits to work to their child’s advantage.

intense (#ulink_9fb0d721-24b8-5205-bbbf-85a52ebfd33e)

“He’s going to be a handful”, one midwife said to another as they tried to console newborn baby George. You can often spot high-need babies in the hospital. Even at a few hours of age, George had an instinct about what he needed and the persistence required to get it. The cry of a high-need baby is not a mere request; it’s an urgent demand. These babies put more energy into everything they do. They cry loudly, feed voraciously, laugh with gusto, and protest more forcefully if their needs are not met. Because they feel everything so deeply, they react more powerfully if their feelings are disturbed. “If I don’t feed him as soon as he fusses, he falls apart” is a common statement from the mother of such a baby.

You can read the intensity of the baby’s feelings in her body language. The fists are clenched, back arched, muscles tensed, as if ready for action.

I set up a cradle in our room so we could hear Mara’s cries at night. It quickly became clear that not only would we be able to hear her, so would everyone on the block. Mara was LOUD! When she started crying, it would quickly escalate. The intensity and shrillness sounded as if something must be very wrong. We would feed her, burp her, change her, rock her, walk with her, but sometimes nothing seemed to help. After a while, I found myself going into overdrive instantly whenever she cried, because I knew if it got out of control she’d quickly disintegrate, and it would take her a long time to come back around. I became obsessive in trying to prevent her from getting upset in any way because there was hell to pay if she did. She was a type A personality right from birth.

Intense babies become intense toddlers, characterized by one word: “driven”. They seem in high gear all the time. Their drive to explore and experiment with everything within reach leaves no household item safe. Some high-need toddlers manoeuvre around the house carefully, but most do not. Most of these babies run headlong toward a desired object, seemingly oblivious of everything in their path. Soon it dawns on you that the same behavioural trait that can exhaust you will also delight you. The same drive that gets your toddler into trouble also leads him to a level of creativity that other children may not venture to reach. Your job is to help him drive carefully on roads that he can handle.

can you make a child high-need?

We believe that most high-need children are born with this trait. In fact, all babies have high needs for being held and comforted, but some babies are able to express their needs more strongly than others because they haven’t shut down (withdrawn) due to the trauma of separation. Some critics believe that parents make their child needy by how they parent. The great majority of parents we have counselled brought their high-need babies into the world and followed their own intuitive parenting to give their child the level of care he needed. This is healthy behaviour which will work to the advantage of parent and child. On occasion, however, we see a “helicopter mother”, who hovers over the child and anxiously responds within a millisecond to the child’s every whim. This is unhealthy for both mother and child. The mother’s needs for intimacy are being met by her doting over her child, and the child uses the perceived neediness to control the mother. In extreme cases, the child is crippled by not learning self-management skills. This parent needs professional counselling.

hyperactive (#ulink_b9a8d19d-682d-5df5-8b45-f054827967c6)

This feature of high-need babies, and its cousin, hypertonic, are directly related to the quality of intensity. The term “hypertonic” refers to muscles that are frequently tensed and ready to go, tight and waiting to explode into action. The muscles and mind of high-need children are seldom relaxed or still. “Even when he was a newborn, I could feel the wiry in him”, one mother related. “She hated being swaddled”, another mother volunteered. Most infants, even high-need ones, welcome being wrapped in a blanket, worn in a sling, or draped over your shoulder to mould into the contour of your body, but there are some high-need babies who seem to shun containment and physical restraint. They stiffen their limbs and arch their backs when you try to hold them, and they are frequently seen doing back dives in your lap, turning even breast-feeding into a gymnastic event.

Parents, remember that, like all the words used to describe high-need children, the term “hyperactive” is not a negative tag. At what point a normally active child becomes a hyperactive child is a judgment call. Calling your busy toddler hyperactive does not mean he will be burdened with this label forever, or that a school psychologist will someday tag him “hyperactive”. This term just describes how your child acts, without making any judgment about whether it’s good or bad. Hyperactive in an infant or toddler is not a disorder, it’s a description.

“Hyper” is often in the eye of the child-watcher. Activity level is relative to the company the child keeps. Place an intense, creative, enthusiastic child in the midst of a group of more reserved children, and the doer gets tagged “hyper”. Also, the activity level of the child depends on the setting. A child may play quietly in the comfortable, known environment of his own home, yet be frantic and undirected in a playgroup full of strangers.

“There’s no such thing as a still shot”, said one photographer-father of a high-need baby. “His motor seems stuck in fast idle”, another father commented. These motor traits are part of the baby’s personality. They may be hard to live with at times, but this restlessness is not necessarily a negative trait. Many highly creative, world-changing people were labelled hyperactive as children.

draining (#ulink_bcbc187a-42e1-5e3f-a9bb-8f789a423abf)

High-need babies extract every bit of energy from tired parents – and then want more. Though parents use the term “draining”, it’s not an apt description. What you give your baby doesn’t go down the drain. Perhaps “siphoning” is a more accurate term, because what you are really doing is transferring much of your energy into your baby’s tank to help her thrive. You will need to muster up as positive an attitude as you can; try to think of these draining days as giving days. This will help get you through those high-maintenance early months.

Babies take the fuel they need from you without considering whether they leave anything behind in mother’s gas tank. The seemingly constant holding, feeding, and comforting leave little energy for your needs. Experienced mothers learn to operate in what one woman calls “the mother zone” (like the Twilight Zone); you feel a bit fuzzy, somewhat sleep-deprived; you simply function in low gear for a stretch of time. It’s a season that passes; and while you’re in it, try not to fight it or resent it.

communication, not control

One of the most difficult mental adjustments for parents to make is overcoming the fear of “being manipulated” and “losing control”. Once you make the switch in mind-set to believing that your baby is communicating her needs, not controlling your lives, thriving and surviving with a high-need baby will be much easier.

Instead of feeling sorry for yourself that you didn’t get enough sleep, just don’t expect as much from yourself that day. Of course you’re not completely rested – you are the mother of a baby who needs you. Time spent in the mother zone is good for you and for baby. Ease up on yourself and you’ll be easier to be around. You’ll be happier getting less done. Other tasks can wait, but baby can’t.

Many mothers seem to have an internal energy gauge that magically brings in more fuel just as the tank nears empty. There will be days of incessant holding with no breaks. But just when you feel you can’t cope with another day of giving, you get a second wind, and suddenly you can relax and enjoy your baby’s unique personality blooming. Perhaps baby even senses mother’s breaking point and backs off a bit. There probably won’t be any days off, but some days will be less difficult than others.

feeds frequently (#ulink_308cf227-1d95-556f-973f-3f68dc7f2cd2)

You will soon learn that feeding is not only a source of nutrition, but also an easy tool for comforting, not only because the skin-to-skin contact makes the breast a nice place to nestle, but also because the baby can easily regulate the flow of milk. Studies show that babies who are fed frequently, as needed, cry less than infants who are fed on a more rigid, parent-controlled schedule. In cultures in which babies rarely cry, as documented, for example, in Liedloff’s The Continuum Concept, infants usually breast-feed twenty or so times a day. Researchers have attributed the mellowness of the babies in these “higher” cultures to the effect frequent feeding has on the overall organizing of the baby’s biological systems. This number of feedings sounds incredible to us in our Western culture, but it’s really not so strange when you consider that in these cultures baby is worn on the mother’s body in such a way that he has easy access to the breast. A feeding in this case may last only five minutes, rather than the thirty to forty-five minutes a baby takes to fill his tummy when fed only six or eight times a day in a more controlled feeding arrangement.

the “velcro” mother and baby

Tracy and her baby, Michael, seemed to be constantly attached. In fact, when Michael was one month of age, Tracy tagged him “the Velcro baby”. You never saw one without the other. When Michael wasn’t nursing at Tracy’s breasts, he was in her arms or in her sling. When Tracy worked about the house, she wore Michael in her sling, a scene she called “work and wear”. On particularly high-need days, Tracy said, “I seem to put him on in the morning and take him off at night.” When Michael wasn’t on some part of Tracy’s body, he was glued to Daddy. This baby was put down only for a long nap, when Tracy needed to attend to her personal needs, or when he grew up enough to demand some “floor time”. At night, baby and mother did not go their separate ways either. The pair slept face-to-face, tummy to tummy, nursing several times at night without either member of the pair fully awakening. Not all babies need this much intensive care, and not all mothers are comfortable providing it, but for many high-need families, this level of attachment works smoothly, especially when they realize that this high-maintenance stage does not last forever.

As a parent, you’ll put your hours in at one end or the other of the time your child lives with you. We personally would much rather put that time in when they are infants and toddlers than when they are teens. Our teens have not given us the chance to find out what it would be like to sit up all night wondering where they are or whom they’re with. But we can imagine this would be far more nerve-racking than being there for our infants and toddlers when they need us so much.

We live in a culture that is definitely at odds with this “primitive” style of mothering. And our babies cry a lot! It is a challenge to a Western mother of a high-need baby to find a lifestyle that both she and her baby can live with. And there must be a balance in feeding. Overfed formula-feeders can get fat, so using a formula-filled bottle as a constant pacifier is certainly not healthy or appropriate. The good news is, you don’t have to worry about over-breast-feeding, because the caloric content of breast milk self-adjusts to frequent feeding; when baby has just a brief “comfort-feed”, she gets only the lower-calorie foremilk. Besides, frequent breast-feeders rarely remain overweight, even if for a while some look like miniature sumo wrestlers. Studies show that the fat cells laid down by breast-feeding babies are quite different from those of babies fed manufactured baby milk. The fat melts away once baby becomes mobile. So how often should you breast-feed your high-need baby? As frequently as baby needs, yet not to the extent that it wears you out. There are other ways to comfort high-need babies, and it’s important to learn some of these alternatives.