style="font-size:15px;"> It’s fine to hold and carry your baby if you want to and can manage it; research seems to suggest that the more you meet your baby’s needs at this age, the more independent she will be when she’s older.3 Often a quick cuddle, though, will soothe her. Her reasons for crying might be more obvious at this age, although of course this is the time when teeth erupt, which most babies seem to find pretty uncomfortable, and many want to increase milk feeds when teeth are bothering them.
Step Three: Sleep
Your baby should by now have a settled sleep pattern, day and night. Her sleep cycle is now similar to yours, she is capable of sleeping deeply, and most sleep positions are safe now, although she should still not have a duvet or pillows. Now is a good time, therefore, to move her into her own room if that is what you want to do. She should have a good bedtime and night-time routine, as well as a good routine of daytime naps.
• The three steps are really only a way of thinking about your day at this stage, in that she should have regular daytime naps, a good bedtime routine, and should be able to sleep through the night without disturbing you. You can move her into her own room if you want. Comforting at this stage should be relatively easy, and feeding will start to tune in to your own meal times, although of course there will still be lots of between-meal milk feeds.
Samuel seemed to be a very ‘suckly’ baby, so the first few weeks were extremely taxing and challenging, trying to work out if the cry was for feed or comfort. After about four weeks I decided to try a dummy, despite being so opposed to them pre-baby. The result was amazing and I was able to eat a meal without constantly having to pick him up. Fantastic! I only used it when I felt sure the cry was for comfort, and I didn’t use it at night to begin with, but after a couple of months I decided to use it after his bath and feed just to get him off to sleep. It worked, as he would spit it out once off to sleep.
At six months I decided to dispose of the dummy, as I was paranoid that he would come to rely on it and had visions of him walking around at the age of four with it stuck in his mouth – my worst nightmare. I wanted to lose it while he wasn’t too aware of it. Not a problem. A few crying instances, which at the worst lasted 15 minutes, and after that he had no trouble falling off to sleep.
– Andrea, mother to Samuel
~ Times Change ~ Answer – 1954 ~
From Babies and Young Children by Ronald and Cynthia Illingworth, as quoted in Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies: Child-care from Locke to Spock (Jonathan Cape, 1983)
5 The Need for Boundaries: You and Your Toddler
~ Times change – does the advice stay the same? ~
Western civilizations are unique in the amount of physical separateness which they impose on infants, inventing innumerable gadgets – prams, cots, babychairs and bouncers … In other times and other parts of the world it would be dangerous to put them down for more than a moment.
It comes as a bit of a shock when that deliciously amenable baby, who smiles whenever he sees you, turns into a raging, bad-tempered toddler, who throws tantrums, refuses to go to bed and turns his nose up at everything you offer him to eat, or refuses to sit still long enough to get any food inside him! Unfortunately, none of the experts agrees about how to handle a toddler; as with all childcare, you need to pick and choose your own solution, depending on the situation and your child.
Times Change – Opinions Change
As you might have noticed from the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, opinions about raising children change from generation to generation. At the turn of the last century, it was very clear how children should behave – they were to be seen and not heard; and it was equally clear what to do if they misbehaved: ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ Victorian children, it would seem, needed taming by force and fear. By the time our parents were born, post-war but pre-flower power, physical violence had eased, but children were still treated roughly – spanking and leaving them to cry were seen as ‘character building’.
By the 1970s and 1980s, ideas had changed completely, and children were brought up in a culture where feelings were beginning to be seen as paramount. Parents were to be child-centred, and smacking was no longer seen as acceptable. Tantrums, food fads, bedtime terrors – all behaviour was examined sympathetically, from the child’s point of view.
The child’s point of view is still important, but most people would also now agree that toddlers need firm boundaries.
This, I think, is one of the hardest things about parenting: the rules change all the time! It is hard to adjust to a life of limit-setting after a year of responding to your baby’s needs, especially if, for instance, you picked him up whenever he cried, or fed him whenever he seemed hungry. But current thinking is that children flourish under a well-regulated, consistent regime, which is firm but fair.1 After all, adults have to follow rules; if laws changed every day, you would feel confused, too.
However, many parents still worry about disciplining their children because they don’t want to suppress natural exuberance, or resort to smacking – it can be hard to know where the middle line is. What you need to think about is where your boundaries or limits are, and whether these are reasonable and enforceable. Then you can agree them with your partner, and try to stick to them. If you can agree together what is acceptable and what isn’t, then in the long run your child will feel secure within your firm boundaries and will not need to ‘test the limits’ continually with challenging behaviour.
Step One: Feeding
By the time your child is toddling, he will be eating, like you – three meals a day – but as his stomach is still small and as his energy needs are great, you will also be providing healthy snacks between meals. Toddlers still need milk drinks – and it is perfectly normal, if not common in our society, to breastfeed a toddler if you and he are happy to continue.
Food fads may start to emerge at this age; again, this is normal. Consider what nature intended: babies who can’t move will have food chosen for them by a dependable adult, and they are therefore quite happy to eat whatever they are given. However, once they can move independently, they are at risk of eating harmful foods they pick up themselves, and so it makes sense for them to narrow their tastes, restricting their palates to what is already familiar; and this is what seems to happen.
That is why it is worth trying to get your child used to a varied diet before he is toddling.
If your toddler is a faddy eater, try not to let it bother you too much. As he is at the stage where he likes to push at boundaries, if food appears to be a big deal, he may well become choosy just for the sense of control. A few simple rules are worth thinking about, like no pudding until he has finished his vegetables, or no coming back to the table once he has got down – whatever suits you and your family. But don’t force him to eat more than he seems to want – even if he has only eaten a tiny amount. A good principle in life is not to eat past the point of repletion – after all, there are far more tubby people out there than skinny ones!
