Who hasn’t heard that well-meaning criticism, “You are spoiling that baby!”. Ok, well *I* have heard it more times than I can count. There is a whole generation of adults who believe that there is a direct correlation between spoiled, demanding bratty children and parental love and affection. I’m not really sure how this got started but I wish it would go away, already!
For the last time, let’s lay this myth to rest!
Babies are not milk, they can not spoil. Their wants ARE their needs. They have one method of communication – crying. If we don’t answer their cries, we are not teaching them resilience or independence. We are teaching our children loneliness, fear, panic, hunger, abandonment and isolation. We have enough scientific evidence now, based on decades of research, to understand how bonding happens and how well-adjusted children are nurtured and we KNOW that leaving them to cry, ignoring their needs and “teaching” them to rely on themselves for comfort is damaging.
Of course maybe our parents or grandparents didn’t have that scientific or medically-supported information to base their parenting decisions on. As so we cried. And if it was good enough for us and we survived….certainly it must be good enough for our children, right?
Wrong. We can both love and parent and nurture our children AND respect that our parents and grandparents did the very best they could with the information THEY had at the time. We are one and the same, in that way.
So the next time someone tells you to “Stop spoiling that baby!” try out one of these lines to lay the myth to rest:
- “Babies, like food, only get spoiled if left unattended for too long”
- “Milk spoils, kids don’t!”
- “Love is like sunshine in the garden of independence…the more you give, the more they grow!”
- “All Children Behave as Well as They Are Treated”