After explaining the personal experiences of Dr. Sears with his daughter Hayden and through them the origin of the term "high demand baby“Today we enter to define this type of babies.
It is necessary to say, before starting, that all babies are demanding. Everyone has their needs and everyone tries to get them met. This means that, for some parents, their children could be considered in high demand if they do not meet previous expectations.
I remember parents who complained that their four-month-old baby was still waking up at night and they had to work. They were waiting for a solution to their problem and "the disgust" took him when they received the message that his son was well, he had no problem and his behavior at night was perfectly normal. In this case, for these parents, their son demanded too much, when the reality was that they expected their four-month-old baby to behave like a five-year-old child.
In any case, based on the average baby (the conclusion reached when a mother talks to many other mothers about her babies), parents of high-demand children often claim that their child is different from others. , who wakes up very often and who may be hungry, who does not want to be alone at any time and who has had to get used to the arms, who asks for the chest every so often and may use it as a pacifier, etc.
That sum of needs and demands and the fact that parents realize that their child is different from the rest make a baby can be considered high demand.
We will define some of the characteristics that may have:
Intense
They are babies that they put energy into everything they do: they cry insistently, feed voraciously, laugh with pleasure and protest with more perseverance and strength if they don't get what they ask for.
They seem to be always tense, prepared for action and, when they are able to start exploring the environment, they act, many of them, before thinking about the consequences. That is to say, instead of carefully assessing the risks of doing something, they head for it, with the danger that this entails for their safety.
Hyperactive
They are almost hypertonic children (with often tense muscles, as ready for anything) and their mind tends to be in a similar state.
Many babies, most, enjoy when they are wrapped in a blanket or a backpack in contact with their mother, these babies instead reject measures that make them feel immobile or too subject. They do accept arms and hugs, but as long as they can have freedom of movement.
My first child, for example, only accepted the arms. The stroller was for him another way of restraint and a place away from mom and dad (two reasons to hate him) and the backpacks overwhelmed him greatly, was to try to put it and not end before his refusal.
People say that they are hyperactive because they are intense children, who sleep little, looking for new things to do, touch and with which to explore, but not because it is a diagnosis of something that will always last, that is, we say that they are hyperactive children, because compared to other children, they seem more moved and active. This is relative to the feeling of caregivers, since some may think that their child is extremely active when he is a child who plays simply because he is a child and is his normal behavior and there are other parents who can see normal as a child. spend several hours with the batteries fully.
Once they grow they do not have to be considered, much less, as psychologically hyperactive that we all know (child diagnosed with hyperactivity that requires medication or not).
Absorbent
Due to the characteristics that these children have, they are considered authentic “energy absorber”. They demand contact, love, arms, games and, when it seems that they are already served and that they have finished with all the energies of their parents, they return to the load to ask for a little more.
The parents of these children need to arm themselves with patience and a positive attitude and think that everything they sow today will pay off tomorrow.
It is a hard time, when parents feel they are tired all day. They are sleepy, the forces falter and the day that dawns every morning seems a difficult slope to overcome. As in everything, there are always better days, so it can be logical and advisable to demand less oneself those days when you can not give much of yourself.
They feed often
They are children for whom eating is not just an act of nutrition. The suction generated by the act of eating reassures and comforts them and therefore they often request food.
The fact of feeding them on demand causes them to cry less (in fact there are studies that show that babies who feed on schedules established by parents cry more than those who drink milk on demand).
In cultures in which babies barely cry, up to twenty daily breastfeeding have been counted, which sounds impossible in the West, but normal if we think that they are babies that are attached to their mother's body and that they can access at any time the chest.
By this I mean that The fact of feeding is often necessary for them, because it is what makes them feel good.
This may make some mothers think that they will overfeed it and that they will gain too much weight if they do so.
In the case of artificial milk, the same child will refuse more food when he can no longer and the need for suction will have to be mitigated with a pacifier. In case of being breastfed there is no danger because the milk is changing its composition continuously and, before a baby who often breastfeeds, adjust the caloric level avoiding overfeeding and overweight. In these children, a pacifier could also be used, although some do not accept it knowing that they can suck directly from the mother's breast.
In a few days we continue explaining The characteristics of high demand babies.
