This is one of parenting's best kept secrets.
Your baby is crying. You've done everything you
know to get him/her to stop. You've changed the
diaper, offered food, checked the temperature of the
forehead, and triple-checked for open safety pins,
and your baby still cries. Shushing, walking,
rocking, and lullabies haven't worked either.
The next time this happens remember this tip:
Intend that your baby cry until he/she no longer
needs to.
"Intend" is totally different than simply
putting-up-with or trying your best to accept it.
Notice above that I used the words, "get him/her to
stop." This is what most compassionate parents do,
they try to stop the baby from crying, to "fix"
him/her. Usually what a parent does, so he/she (the
parent) doesn't have to experience the pain the baby
is experiencing, is to whisper repeatedly, "Shush,
shush, it's OK." "Everything's OK." "Mommy's here."¯
"Mommy loves you."¯ even, verging on anger, "For
God's sake, please stop." etc.*
What this does is make the baby wrong for
crying. The baby gets (if only
non-verbally) that the parent doesn't want it to do
what it's doing yet the baby has no choice (more
about this below). All the shushing further upsets
the baby—
Baby: "What do you mean
"shush? You're not getting it, I'm having an
upset and I'm not having any success getting you
to get what it's about. Work with me on this.
What do you think it might be about?"
Later in life the child spends a fortune in
therapy trying to figure out why they are stuck in
anger and addicted to trying to change the behavior
of their loved one.
Intend means that it must be your
idea that your baby cries when he/she is crying. You
must support your child in communicating what he/she
is communicating. Once you "get" his/her
communication the child will be complete. If you go
unconscious and refuse to look within to see what
it's about you leave the child no choice but to
continue crying.
Crying is the way a baby completes hundreds, if
not thousands, of experiences of fear, confusion,
upset, hurt, and pain from as far back as
conception. Most all of these
incompletes
happened while in the womb. Babies hear, feel, and
experience all the arguments, all the times the
mother felt hurt, upset, worried, or invalidated. It
heard all the TV shows, all the news reports (the
condition of the planet), not that it understood the
content but that it picked up the vibes of concern,
doubt, and fear. Possibly he/she experienced an
intuition, "Whatever it is that that's going on out
there it sure is scary." Few mothers have the
thought that a prolonged painful birth delivery
could possibly be her integrity at work, supporting
her in acknowledging life's perpetrations. Most
arrogantly refuse to believe that out-integrities
such as cheating on a high school test, no car
insurance, bills past due, lies on applications such
as for food stamps; outstanding unacknowledged
deceits, incomplete relationships, have an effect on
desired outcomes. Arrogance always begs to be
humbled. No child would willingly choose to enter
into a world in which his/her mother is still
blaming an ex, still treating him/her abusively.
Babies are integrity meters: A
baby can immediately tell when the integrity is out
between his/her parents. When parents resort to
their imitation of communication the vibrations are
different. When one parent is hiding a thought from
the other the space is different. A baby does what
it can to draw attention to the fact that
something's wrong. If crying didn't complete the
issue then later in life the child starts to
misbehave. If that doesn't work they do poorly in
school or get sick, anything to bring in outside
help so as to restore the experience of integrity,
of love. It's not that parents don't love each other
any more, it's that the love has become
conceptualized. They have lost their ability to
create joy and happiness at will. There's something
warm and fuzzy when parents giggle, when they don't,
something's wrong.
When parents are in integrity, when they are
whole and complete, all withholds delivered, all
perpetrations verbally acknowledged, all abuses and
deceits acknowledged, then everyone is whole and
complete. The vibrations are soothing and quieting.
It's the experience of love, of parents being in
communication with each other.
Here's two examples of incompletes a baby might
have:
Example #1 If during pregnancy
the father yelled at his wife in upset, "Jesus! I
told you . . . " The communication being, "that was
stupid of you" (a condescending communication to his
wife), the baby experienced an upset. Things were
harmonious and all of a sudden the baby experienced
the shock the mother felt (not upset as in angry but
upset as in the game board being turned upside down,
as in someone getting in the way of a great
surfboard ride). The baby felt what the mother felt
for the father to say such a disrespectful thing to
the wife he loves, and, what it felt like to be on
the receiving end of the abusive communication. If
the father immediately followed up the outburst with
an acknowledgment—that he knew it was
abusive—thereby completing the experience to the
mother's satisfaction, (including a warm hug) then
the baby also felt the harmonious vibration of
humble atonement and completion. If the father
is/was so unconscious that it didn't occur to him
that he was abusive, if he does it (yells and
communicates condescendingly without cleaning it up
through to the experience of love) all the time, and
if the mother is so addicted to abuse (to be spoken
to condescendingly) that she creates
(allows/supports) such abuse, then both parents are
unconscious and the baby simply feels confused and
incomplete. That specific yelling incident, that
abuse, will be an experience that will need to be
completed when it (the baby) has time, when it has
the means, the tools (crying/behaviors) to express
the sadness and pain of witnessing such an
interaction. Life is never ever quite the same after
an unacknowledged abuse.
Read:
Womb-emails—emails for
expectant parents.
Example #2 If during pregnancy
the mother ate foods that were unhealthy then the
baby also experienced the vibrations of remorse,
guilt, grief, shame, and disgust, perhaps a
shuddering reaction to the toxicity. Each bite of
something that was supposed to be wholesome,
nutritional, and nurturing produced a
nerve-tingling-bio-chemical shudder for the baby
triggered by the mother's own unconscious thoughts
of disgust. The thoughts of feeling helpless and not
in control were shared with the baby. If the mother
doesn't know how to clear, to disappear such
thoughts, then she is still dragging around remnants
of those incomplete experiences (read about
The Clearing Process, it's free. Do five
clearings, one per day for five days in a row). It
could be said the baby will have to keep crying
until the mother completes her experience of guilt
(an acknowledgment process supports one in
completing life's incompletes, all life's
perpetrations). During a
free three-hour consultation a
communication-skills coach can support you in
locating the incomplete, the incident, that's
triggering the baby's hurt and pain.
Crying is a baby's way of supporting parents in
acknowledging (completing) abuses, of getting back
into loving communication with each other.
Misbehaving teenagers are stuck as babies who
have not completed their experience of crying.
Integrity can be created or restored though
clearing. I say "created" because most parents
brought their condition of being out-integrity into
the relationship and therefore there never has been
an experience of integrity; that's what their child
has been trying to communicate its entire life (this
is the case in 95% of all families).
For more about this topic read:
The Aware Baby by Aletha Jauch Solter.
* Examples of
what works: Use your own words. Parent:
"Yes, tell me all about it." "Good. Tell me some
more."¯ "Yes, I know. Tell me more."¯"Thank you." "Good boy (/girl)." "Tell me some more." "I love you
so much." "That's it. Get it all out."¯ "Yes, I know
it hurts." "Tell me all about it." "That's good. Get
it out." "What else?"¯ etc. All the while keep
looking to see what thoughts you are withholding from your
spouse. Look and see what thoughts, perpetrations,
judgments, you have withheld (stuffed) in the name
of harmony. If you have thoughts that you're not
willing to share then you are unconsciously
masterminding a divorce. And, you're teaching your
child to not communicate openly, honestly, and
spontaneously.
Here's more about
communication breakdowns
and their causes.