Customer Reviews

Tears and Tantrums: What to Do When Babies and Children Cry

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<dd><b><i><font size="+3" color="#990000">T</font>ears and Tantrums</i></b> is Dr. Solter's third book. Subtitled: <b><i>What To Do When Babies and Children Cry,</i></b> it could just as well have been subtitled, Preventing Neurosis in Children and Resolving Birth Trauma.

The Swiss-American developmental psychologist has written what may well be her finest work and which should be widely read and more importantly put into practice by all parents. Her advice about what to do with crying and rageful children is clearly explained and could easily be applied but unfortunately most mothers and fathers raise their children the way they were raised.

But don't necessarily look to primitive cultures for guidance to learn how to raise a child. According to Dr. Solter, some of these primitives have their own cultural taboos which are as detrimental to their children as some our own misunderstandings are to our children.

One theme runs through <b><i>Tears and Tantrums</i></b>. and that is that preventing babies and young children from crying is not something which should be done automatically. If you find out that your infant is not hungry or thirsty, his diapers don't need changing and he is not in physical pain --- then let your baby cry and rage while you lovingly hold him or be attentive to him.

Do not be deceived. It is difficult to not nurse, to not allow use of a pacifier, to not give in to excessive demands for attention, but to lovingly hold your child for as long as it takes for your child to relive and release early repressed feelings and current hurts through crying jags. Common sense and perhaps your need for peace of mind tells you to try to stop the crying! Common sense also tells you when driving a careening car on an ice slick highway, not to steer in the direction the car is traveling. In both cases, following common sense is neither correct nor helpful and may be detrimental. The author believes that the child must go with and through the pain instead of avoiding it.

Too frequent nursing to prevent crying is called a "control pattern" by the author. It is a defense; a way of containing feelings, even traumatic birth feelings which are pressing for release. Besides unneeded nursing and thumb and pacifier sucking, other control patterns are hyperactivity, head banging, and excessive clinging.

Some infants and young children constantly demand attention and entertainment. When this happens, a child is using still another control pattern, Solter believes, and is another way the infant or child keeps his feelings and crying at bay. What the child really needs is to connect to his feelings and not to defend against them.

The parent should remove the pacifier, discontinue giving in to the child's demands for continual entertainment and attention and let the child feel its sadness and misery as completely as possible. But never ignore your baby by leaving him to cry alone. Support the infant's or child's raging grief occasionally with holding but always with loving attention.

Later in life crying is strictly used as a release of tension, but infants and young children use crying in a two-fold manner. It is up to the observant parent to know whether the child has a real physical need or using a defense to keep from feeling earlier hurts. Since babies have only one method of communication, sometimes the message is not that clear. If you can't resolve or remove the hurt without resort to a control mechanism then allow your infant to cry, but always in your attentive presence.

When very minor hurts trigger crying one should remember that the child is not being manipulative, but that its repressed feelings were very close to the surface. Sometimes it only takes a very small stimulus to trigger crying. This is what happens, for example, when someone else's eating of the last cookie provokes a disproportionately responsive crying reaction. Sometimes parents give in to their child's whims to stop the crying. But if this continually happens, the "attentive good parent" may cause their young child to become a demanding older child, adolescent and adult as their defense of choice continues over the years. The result will not be that your child will still be using a pacifier during high school graduation exercises, but its years of using its defense of choice will help to prevent resolution of earlier hurts which would otherwise have been resolved or lessened by the withdrawal of his control mechanism.

Remember, children are not demanding because they have been spoiled, but "because <b><i>they never have had an opportunity to release pent-up feelings by crying and raging</i></b>." (Emphasis in the original text)

As in her other two books, <b><i>The Aware Baby</i></b> and <b><i>Helping Young Children Flourish,</i></b> Dr. Solter recounts interesting examples of what to do taken from interactions with other children and her own children. To be a good parent, you don't need a Ph.D. in developmental psychology like Aletha J. Solter, but you do need to be able to resist the temptation to give-in and have peace at any price and do like your parents did it to you when your child cries. Dr. Solter did not write this but I believe that the price your child may pay for your mistakes in their upbringing may well be lifelong neurosis for them which may be ultimately handed down to your grandchildren.

The author's <b><i>Tears and Tantrums</i> </b>has many interesting sections. Some of them concern dealing with physical hurts, crying during separations, dealing with violence, bedtime crying, helping children heal from specific traumatic events, as well as a practical applications chapter which includes a section on questions which Dr. Solter frequently hears at her workshops given in this country and in Europe. <b><i>Tears and Tantrums </i></b>also contains extensive references, suggestions for further reading as well as letters from happy parents who have successfully used her techniques.

Crying is not just for babies. The author believes that everyone can and should use that mechanism unless they are too shut down. Three books and three successes!

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Our family was blessed with the loan of this book from a teacher we know. We were having a hard time determining how to correctly deal with the "tears and tantrums" of our children (3 years and 18 months at the time).

Solter's book provided advice that immediately cut through our indecision and allowed us to understand what our children were trying so desperately to communicate to us and to deal with it in a the most loving way possible.

In retrospect, more traditional approaches to "handling" children's crises such as distracting the child, telling/yelling the child to stop, giving into demands, or the dreaded pacifier, all seem to be incredibly short-sighted, serving only the parent's needs.

This book has shifted my personal feelings when I hear my children cry. I no longer feel annoyed and martyrized by these "interruptions". Loud crying in response to some small little owwie no longer makes me feel fustrated. Instead I just open my arms, offer my shoulder and feel confident being in the moment with my children as they let it all out.

I highly recommend this book.

Crucial to the job of parenting is the necessity to create safety for a child, both emotionally and physically. This book so compassionately-and scientifically-brings that message home.

My husband and I, like many parents, have struggled to overcome decades of child-rearing conditioning that told us in a zillion ways "children are to be seen and not heard." Historically, child rearing practices have advocated punishment, including corporal punishment, humiliation and pain as a way to teach children to learn, among other things, empathy, compassion, respect and responsibility. In addition to such punitive practices, there has been a cultural aversion to children expressing strong emotions, such as sadness and anger or `tears and tantrums.'

In this book, Solter lays the scientific groundwork-no doubt a product of her biology background-for the need to learn to comfort children when they cry or rage, rather than to try to stop the emotional release. Comfort, most likely, is something we would offer an adult friend who had an emotional outburst of sadness or anger, but it is not the common response given to children releasing the same emotions.

In an empathetic voice, Solter explains the need to cry and rage to release stress begins at birth and never really ends. That's because all humans-including babies-have emotions and experience stress, and sometimes trauma, from the womb on. The need to cry and rage serves as a biological stress-reducing process, a necessary component of our nervous system. One profound piece of scientific research she mentions in her book to illustrate this is that researchers have discovered stress hormones, such as ACTH and cortisone, in tear drops released for emotional reasons. The stress hormones were not found in tear drops released because of an irritant, such as cut onions. That's one biological reason why we feel better after a good cry: We are eliminating the chemicals of stress from our body. Just as going to the bathroom several times a day is a necessary process of our species' waste elimination system, so is the need to cry, she contends. Just as our skin has a need to sweat so do our emotions need to be safely released.

Overcoming decades of conditioning isn't easy, though. In the book, Solter also offers insights for us parents on how to deal responsibly with our own strong emotions that tend to rise up when our children cry or rage.

My husband and I read this book when our son was 2 years old. He's 7 now. Putting into practice the skills outlined in this book has helped us to handle our son's emotions so much better. We see on a daily basis the amazing and wonderful results of how treating our son with respect for his emotions, his body and his `being' helps create warm, non-adversarial bonds between us. We are parenting more the way we want to parent, with compassion, understanding and respect, and we are very thankful for that.

We consider this book one of the best-if not the best-books on parenting!

"Tears and Tantrums -- What to Do When Babies and Children Cry" is a book that takes into consideration and advocates *attachment parenting* (ala Sears, Liedloff, McKenna, Thevenin, and others), *non-punitive discipline*, and *understanding and meeting our children's emotional needs*. Babies are not born with repressed feelings, but they are vulnerable to stress from mishandling and trauma from high-tech interventions. Efforts should be made to assure that babies come into the world in the most peaceful and humane way possible. It is quite passe to believe that infants feel no pain, unfortunately many babies do suffer trauma at birth, my firstborn did. What Solter's writings did for me and my husband was to open our minds and hearts to our little boy's crying. Not just the whimpers and cries to signal immediate needs (nursing, warmth, attention, closeness, being comfortable), but also to the cries he had when he was trying to recover from his hurts, or shed any stress that he was feeling. In this process, we became more attached with our son, and subsequently our daughter, too. I learned how to be present and empathetic, and nurture a close connection when my children were upset and no "fix" could be found.

I took it to heart that no baby or child should ever cry alone and that one should always pick up and hold a crying baby. Solter's work gave me the confidence to try co-sleeping. When my son began to wake in the night as he approached the crawling stage, we heard about a method by Ferber but quickly rejected it, and instead we took our child into our bed so that we could better meet his needs. This book challenges some mainstream ideas about children and about the meaning of tears, I think it's an eye-opening and thoughtful book, very much worth a read.

If you've ever been caring for a child who is behaving in what I would call a `fussy' way, and you have not known what to do next, then this book is for you.

As the title suggests, Tears and Tantrums deals with the very delicate and highly loaded subject of why babies and children cry and rage, and what to do when they do. It is an excellent source of straightforward, well-researched information which gives the reader a rich and useable knowledge of the emotional world of not only babies and children, but teenagers and adults too! If you want to understand more about human emotions in general, and in particular how to help young children deal with their own strong emotions, then this book is an absolute must.

Before reading Tears and Tantrums I had a particularly difficult (fussy) child of three. Using the information in this book, I was able to help my daughter release her strong emotions in a safe and practical way. She is now a more relaxed, happier, and more confident and lively child. She is no longer fussy and difficult to live with, but rather able to express her full array of emotions, and therefore not weighed down with pent-up feelings. All of this was achieved by following Dr Solter's advice in this book and her other two books (The Aware Baby and Helping Young Children Flourish). These books offer a comprehensive approach to parenting which avoids the usual approach of punishment and/or reward. The books are packed full of practical, useful examples, and they are well referenced and laid out. They will serve for years as an excellent point of reference for parents and caretakers. I cannot recommend Dr Solter's books highly enough, and I haven't looked back since the day I discovered these gems.

The reviewers that gave this book one star, obviously did not read this book closely enough. You are suposed to respond to ALL your babies needs. Yes, even nursing for comfort! In fact the author states she got up in the middle of the night to nurse her children until they were at least two! Parental closeness is a need children have, that is why she advocates nursing, and co-sleeping, and baby wearing. On top of all of this, some children still get stressed out (I would bet all children), and frustrated, and the only way to express themsleves is to cry. If I need to have a good cry, they last thing I want is someone telling me to be quiet, yet this is exactly what we do to children. Solter helps us avoid causing pent up emotions by allowing our children to cry as they need to. Yes, before children can talk, crying is one of the only ways a child expresses needs. You figure out what cries mean. You try to meet the need, and if your child is still crying, most likely there is a NEED to cry.

I give this book four stars, because I think you do have to read it very closely, think about what you are reading, and practice it to truly understand how to apply these principles in your life. I feel a quick read could give you wrong ideas (it is obvious to me that one reviewer did not understand the overnursing concpet, and another reviewer missed the whole concept). This book really is common sense. It is loving and respectful. Children and families would be happier from living by its ideas.

Aletha Solter deserves an award for this book! Ever since I read this book I feel like a whole new world of parenting has been opened up to me -I no longer get stressed about my baby's crying now that I understand the 'why' and putting him to bed never takes more than 10 minutes and is effortless. This is a book for everyone -not only for parents -it will help you to understand your children better and put parenting into proper perspective. This book should be mandatory for every new mom!

I wish that I had read this book before my first child was born. Solter's ideas would have saved us so much guilt and heartache. As the other reviewers have already stated, this book explains that sometimes babies and young children have a very strong need to release stress and emotions through crying. As a parent, I had always believed that crying was something to be avoided at all costs. I nursed on demand, carried my son everywhere, and kept him close by at night. He was always so fussy! Then as a two year old he was very aggressive toward other children even though we have always been gentle with him and modeled kindness and respect. Solter explains very clearly how fussiness and aggression can be avoided. She explains how to help your child sleep better by allowing them to work through their emotions instead of stifling them. I strongly dissagree with the reviewer that called this method cruel. Solter says again and again that we are not ever supposed to ignore our child's cries. But if, after making sure that all of the child's needs have been met, the child is still crying, we can be assured that crying is a ligitimate need as well. After working with this method and observing my son, who is now three, I have seen how much better he feels after crying. Sometimes he even seems to look for reasons to cry. When he's done he is happier for days. The Aware Baby is also a very important book. I have been recommending it to everyone who is having trouble with their baby because the message is so helpful. If you are a skeptic, check your local library first. But if you're like me, you'll be here buying your own copy soon.

...to think some parents might actually believe and use this approach.
As a breastfeeding mom to a 19 month old I found it appalling how she approaches the subject. She considers comfort nursing to be a control pattern, right up there with pacifiers. My son was an avid nurser from birth and I found that her generalized statement that older infants (by her definition 3 months old) should go 3-4 hours between sessions to be completely false. And although it is biologically proven that breastfed infants naturally wake more at night she falls back on the old standard "after 6 months they should be sleeping all night long". She states, as an aside, that there are situations where they will nurse more often, and lists them all, the problem is most of them are really common. Like growth spurts, teething etc. Again and again she contradicts herself this way.
It turns the breastfeeding mother/child relationship into a very emotionless exchange, as if it's only for food and nothing else.
In general I was appalled over and over with how she states it's not a "cry it out" method. Well, it is a cry it out method. If your child is allowed to get increasingly more distraught (which she says is proof that it's working) until they just give up from sheer exhaustion after 2 hours or so), then I don't care if you are holding them calmly the whole time. What is the difference between holding them and not listening to their wants and putting them in a crib and not listening to their wants? Is it so bad if they want love, and comfort, and human closeness? This book will tell you it is.

I took it out from the library so I didn't waste my money, I'd recommend the same if you are still remotely curious.

This book was very helpful to me in understanding the very important physiological and emotional function of crying, as well as how to respond in a healthy way when my son cries. It has helped me parent my child better, and the knowledge it provides has helped my patience level as a parent.