We have talked about the biological reasons that, for the hominization process which entails the increase of the cranial perimeter and the bipedal position, our young are born completely defenseless and will depend absolutely on their mother to survive.
In addition, to allow birth under these conditions, our young are soon born comparatively, as if Nature finds that solution to get those big heads out of that biped pelvis. This determines that human babies are born prematurely compared to other similar species, that is, less developed in many aspects, developing heterochrony, as I will explain below.
We will see in more detail some circumstances linked to this and that make us apply paleontology and what we know of human evolution to the understanding of our children in their childhood.
Heterochrony in the baby sapiens sapiens
This is known as heterochrony and it is about this biological process described in many species: it implies a change in development times. Heterochrony can only be described in comparison to other species belonging to the same branch or, more clearly, to what is determined as their basic ancestral development.
Human babies are made to go in arms
The ancestral human baby cannot walk or crawl. If his mother does not support him, he falls to the ground. If she does not take it to her chest and does not heat it with her skin, she will starve and cold. There is no fur in the human female to even hold on to. Either the mother takes him in his arms or is dead. In short, that human females carry their children in their arms is necessary and we would be extinct if they had not done so.
Human babies are made to go in arms and, consequently, wanting to go in arms is as natural as wanting to live. It does not make more independent, nor do they ask for arms to annoy the mother: babies who were not in arms did not survive for thousands and thousands of years. We are here because human moms carried their babies.
That doesn't mean we should demonize strollers, hammocks or other objects intended to carry the baby. They may be useful to us momentarily, but always being aware that they are not the natural place of our babies and above all, attend them if they complain or do not want to be there.
Baby moves
It does not favor them at all to get used to going in the stroller, which if it can be interesting to us is to use it in the situations in which it is really essential and, on the other hand, to favor porting and let the child freely move as much as possible.
In her mother's arms they are in visual contact with her and see the world at her height, feel her movement and observe everything she does. Moving freely when they can crawl, always, of course, in a safe environment, is what they need to exercise.
All the preoccupation with early stimulation or offering possibilities of developing fine and gross motor skills would be simplified if we let babies develop normally, in arms and on the floor, instead of trying to spend most of their time in chairs or in strollers.
Human babies have never slept alone
We can say the same about him night sleep accompanied. Humba babies have always slept with their mothers, surrounded by their warmth, their protection and receiving food (I can not imagine any pre-hysterical woman determined to count the hours at night). These characteristics have guaranteed the survival of human babies since we stepped on Earth, even from the first hominids.
A couple of millions of years of the Homo genre contradict all the pseudo-ideas about the evils of colecho. Human babies are scheduled to sleep accompanied, all we have to "modernize" is to practice a safe pigtail. If sleeping with a mother is natural, she cannot create children with emotional disorders, because that is what nature indicates to us.
We have all slept accompanied, but above all, only the genetic lines that became extinct would occur to put the baby to sleep without protection and human warmth. Our children, when we leave them alone and cry, make them scared and claiming the attention they are naturally scheduled to have. They don't want to manipulate us, they need us by their side.
That does not mean that we should demonize the cribs or that the child can sleep in another room, but if doing so when the child is ready, ask for it and of course, attend immediately if our company claims. You don't earn anything by getting used to sleeping alone. How many adults who spent nights in their crib now sleep accompanied by their partners as if that were the most normal thing in the world?
In a next post we will return to paleontology, anthropology and zoology as auxiliary sciences to parenting, letting us explain the learning process, human neotenia and natural socialization from the point of view of our hominid and human ancestors, of which we have many immutable and natural features.
