When
I was pregnant with my first child, I was obsessed with articles on
difficult babies. It would be just my luck to get a screamer, I thought,
so I vowed to be prepared. When Matilda was born, she did the usual
amount of fussing and crying, but she quickly became quite congenial; at
5 months, she was sleeping through the night.
Two
years later, about to give birth again, I worried even more. I couldn't
be lucky twice, and it would be worse to have a cranky baby plus a
toddler. Well, Anthony made his sister look like a handful. Baby number
three, Charlie, was fussy for a month, then turned into a clone of his
siblings.
Certainly
genetics has some role here, yet I can't help but think maybe I've been
doing something right. And experts would agree: "While temperament is
important, parents can learn to recognize their baby's needs before they
get upset," says pediatrician Norbert Herschkowitz, M.D., coauthor with
his wife, Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz, of A Good Start in Life.
So
even if your baby is more prone to crankiness than cooing, the better
you get to know each other, the easier it will be to make him feel
secure -- and content. Here's how to help make your child's first 12
months a more pleasant experience for everyone:
1. Keep your cool. Studies
show that when parents grow frustrated with their baby's behavior, the
infant picks up on that tension and reacts. Then it becomes a cycle that
can be really hard to break.
Keeping
your wits about you -- though not always as easy as it sounds -- also
helps you recognize what your child needs. Mornings in my house became
highly stressful last year when I had to get Matilda, 7, and Anthony, 5,
out the door and on the school bus. The more I began to sweat, the more
7-month-old Charlie would whine and demand to be held. I couldn't
figure out what it was -- he'd just had a bottle -- until one day I
put him in the high chair and gave him a few bites of his brother's
pancakes. Eating with his siblings delighted him. Now it's our regular
routine.
There's
definitely a learning curve when it comes to raising kids, but it's
easier to keep perspective if you know what you want. "I always tell
parents, 'If you're unhappy about a specific situation with your child,
you can change it,'" says Amy Flynn, director of the Bank Street Family
Center in New York City and mom of a 2-year-old. You can also sidestep
certain things before they become issues, says Flynn. "I knew I wanted
my daughter to sleep in her own crib and not in my bed, so I avoided
that situation from the beginning."
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