Leaving babies to cry ‘can stunt brain development’
Veteran parenting expert, Penelope Leach, makes the claim in her latest book which will have devotees of newer authorities such as Gina Ford chewing their security blankets in anxiety.
Ford has made her name over the past decade with her Contented Little Baby guides, which promote rigid routines for infants, including the controversial technique of controlled crying that involves leaving babies to cry for set lengths of time in order to teach them to fall asleep by themselves.
Ford’s argument — that healthy sleeping habits must be firmly enforced while babies are very young — has found favour with a generation of working couples unable to function properly at work while suffering sleep deprivation at night.
A study published last month by the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, seemed to counter concerns about the approach, concluding that six-year-olds reared with the technique as babies had not been left with damage to their emotional welfare, behaviour or relationship with their parents.
However, Leach, who began writing in the 1970s and promotes a fully flexible response to babies’ cries, has produced evidence from a study of crying babies ignored by their parents which shows large amounts of the stress hormone, cortisol, in their saliva.
In her new book, The Essential First Year: What Babies Need Parents to Know, Leach quotes scientists as warning that high levels of cortisol can damage a developing brain and may cause learning difficulties.
In what is being read as a direct challenge to Ford, she writes: “A baby who is left crying for long enough will eventually stop, but not because he has learnt to go to sleep happily alone, but because he’s exhausted and has despaired of getting help.”
Parenting coach Sheila O’Malley of practicalparenting.ie sees merit in both Leach’s and Ford’s approaches.
“I would say to parents, as far as possible respond to each and every one of your child’s emotional needs but that’s not practical if it means being up 12 times a night.”
She says ultimately parents must be allowed choose what suits their own parenting style and lifestyle.
“What’s important is that, whatever choice they make, they look after themselves and get the support they need to go down that route.
“If you absolutely need a routine and a child who goes down at 7pm each night, then the rest of the family must respect that.
“Equally if you are a person who does not want their child crying and wants to respond every time, it’s important that you have a partner who is going to share the load so that you support each other and take turns to get up at night.
“Where difficulties arise is if you are a parent who takes the whole thing on yourself and doesn’t seek support and ends up running on empty.
“My mantra is ‘happy parent, happy child’. It’s also important to remember that from Dr Spock to Penelope Leach to Gina Ford, nobody is 100% right.”
