Independence

So on the Tales From the Crib blog, one of the mamas was wondering how long is too long to breastfeed your child. One reply said that the big problem was that the mama was still nursing her son to sleep, and that he is too dependent on her, and the replier continued to say that she values independence in children blah blah blah. Now, I didn’t call her opinion ridiculous, but I did think it was a rather narrow view of independence. I’ve read a LOT of research about human and non-human primates, and it quite clearly points to the fact that infants & toddlers need to feel securely attached to their caregiver in order to “blossom” into independent children/youngsters. The idea of infants and toddlers needing to be “independent” is a holdover from the Victorian age, and we all know how much good came from that period of time. Infant needs have been the same for millenia, long before humans were on the scene. Our philosophies about childrearing change at least every decade or so, but such changes usually don’t meet the needs of the children because their needs aren’t “informed” by our snazzy new theories. A baby born today needs the same things that a baby born 10,000 years ago needed. This is why I don’t think crying it out is a healthy approach for children. Guess what happened 10,000 years ago (you don’t really have to go this far back, but just for the sake of example) if a baby was left alone at night? It got eaten by a predator. Babies are biologically conditioned to want to be with their mother, or if not their mother another primary caregiver. I don’t think an infant’s mind is capable of reasoning, “Hey, I’m not in a cave in the wilderness, I’m in a safe house. No need to worry.” Rather, baby wakes up alone and panics.

I digress, I guess, but her comments really got to me. Noodle was a very dependent child who nursed until she was 18 months old, and I honestly don’t know very many kids as independent and confident as her. I think it’s just ridiculous to think that infants/toddlers, who are in every way dependent on us, should somehow be expected to be independent in their sleeping habits. Would I like Spud to sleep a little better? Yes. But at what cost? I’d no sooner make him get himself to sleep than I would expect him to fix his own lunch. The thing that I learned with Noodle, though, is that all these stages are temporary. By about age two she was sleeping through the night, and even now she rarely wakes up during the night. I can’t help but think that it is because she has had nearly 4 years of positive sleep associations. No lingering panics or fears of being left alone to wake her up in the middle of the night.