Most insects, reptiles and fish have hundreds of children, hoping that some will survive. Birds and mammals, on the other hand, tend to have few children, but take care of them so that the majority survive.
Mammals, by definition, need breastfeeding, and therefore no newborn can survive without their mother. But, depending on the species, they also need their mother for many other things.
In some species, the newborn is able to walk in a few minutes and follow his mother (who does not remember that lovely scene in Bambi?). That happens especially in large herbivores, such as sheep, cows or deer. These animals live in groups that quickly devour the grass of an area, and have to move every day to a new meadow. It is necessary that the offspring can follow their mother in these movements.
Small herbivores, like rabbits, can hide their young in a burrow, go out to eat and come back several times a day to breastfeed. Their young do not walk as soon as they are born, but they are helpless during the first days. The same goes for most carnivores, such as cats, dogs or lions. The mother goes out to hunt leaving her defenseless babies hidden.
The young are not born knowing, but they learn, and this is important, because it allows them greater flexibility .
Innate behavior is always the same, learned behavior can be better adapted to the surrounding conditions, and be perfected with practice.
The first time a deer sees a wolf, he must run away. If he does not do it well, he will die, and therefore cannot learn to do it better. That is why it is logical that deer know how to run as soon as they are born. The wolves can learn: the first time the deer escapes them, but with practice they manage to catch it. The games of his childhood constitute an apprenticeship for his adult life.
The primates (the monkeys) seem to be descending from animals that walked as soon as they were born. But, living in the trees, we had to make changes. Bambi slips several times before standing up; and that does not matter on the ground. But, climbed on a branch, a slip can be fatal. So the monkeys are hanging all day from their mother, until they are able to go alone perfectly, without the slightest error. But it is the monkey who actively hangs on his mother, clutching his hair with hands and feet, and the nipple with his mouth (five anchor points). The mother can run from branch to branch, without worrying about holding the child.
Would you dare to go from branch to branch, or just walking down the street, with your baby in tow but without holding it, or with your arms or with any cloth or leash? Of course not. In order for a child to be able to hang on his mother and hold himself alone for a long time, he should probably be at least two years old. Already our closest cousins, chimpanzees, are unable to hold themselves alone at first, and their mother has to hug them, but only during the first two weeks.
The difference with our children is abysmal. And to walk (not to take four steps around us, as they do a year, but to really walk, to follow us when we go shopping, without crying and without having to turn our heads every second to see if they come or not), Our children take at least three or four years. Until 12 or 14, it is virtually impossible for children to survive alone; and in practice, we try not to leave them alone until they are 18 or 28 years old.
Humans are mammals that need their parents for longer, and leave the second classified far behind. This is probably due in part to our great intelligence. As we said about wolves, behavior must be learned to be intelligent, because innate behavior is purely automatic. Our children have to learn more than any other mammal, and therefore they have to be born knowing less.
And what does all this have to do with children waking up? It arrives, it arrives. Right now we will see what all of the above has to do with your own child's behavior. We started by saying that there are young that need to be with their mother all the time, on top of her or following her at a short distance, and others that remain hidden, in a nest or burrow, waiting for her mother to return. To know what type an animal belongs to, just observe how a baby behaves when her mother leaves. Those who have to always be together immediately start crying, and cry and cry (or make the equivalent noise in their kind) until their mother returns.
A young goose, for example, even if it has water and food nearby, does not eat or drink, but only cries until its parents return, or until death. Without his parents, it would not take long to die anyway, so he must use up all his energy in crying so that they return. And he must begin to cry immediately, as soon as he separates, because the longer it takes to do so, the farther he will be, and therefore the harder it will be for him to hear him. Instead, a bunny or kitten, when his mother leaves, they remain very still and quiet. That separation is normal in their species, and if they started crying they could attract other animals, which is always dangerous.
How does your child react when you leave him in the crib and walk away? If, as mine did, he starts to cry as if they killed him, it means that, in our species, it is normal for children to be continuously, 24 hours, in contact with his mother. And it is not difficult to imagine that 50, 000 years ago, when we had no houses, no clothes, no furniture, separating from his mother meant death.
He imagines a naked baby in the field, outdoors, exposed to the sun, rain, wind and food, only for eight hours, while his mother works. Picking fruits and roots? Not even an hour could survive in those circumstances. In the time of our ancestors, the babies were 24 hours in their arms, and they only separated from their mother to be in their father, grandmother or sibling's arms for a few moments. And when they began to walk they did it around their mother, and both the mother and the child looked at each other continuously, and they warned each other when they saw that the other was clueless.
Today, when you leave your child in the crib, you know that you are in no danger. It will not be cold, nor hot, nor will it get wet, nor will a wolf eat it. He knows that you are a few meters away, and he will hear you if something happens and will come immediately (or, if you have left home, he knows that another person has been on duty, listening a few meters away). But his son doesn't know all that. Our children, when they are born, are exactly the same as those born 50, 000 years ago. Just in case, at the slightest separation, they cry as if you were gone forever. Later, when I begin to understand where you are, when you will return and who will take care of you in the meantime, you will begin to tolerate the separations with more peace of mind. But there are still a few years left.
Almost all of the baby's behavior, which has not yet learned anything, is instinctive, identical to that of our remote ancestors. And the mother's instinctive behavior also tends to appear, here and there, standing out between our thick layers of culture and education. Therefore, when you go to the park with your three-year-old son, both will behave very similarly to their ancestors. You will look at your child almost all the time, and will let you know when you say goodbye ("come here" "don't go that far"). Your child will also look at you often, and if you see her clueless or talking with other people she will become nervous, even angry, and try to get her attention ("look, Mom, look" "see what I do" "see what I found" ...)
We arrive at night. It is a particularly delicate period, because if the child sleeps eight hours, and the mother has left during this time, when she wakes up she can be seven hours away, and no matter how much she cries she will not hear her. You have to ride the guard. During the first weeks, our children are so completely helpless that it is their mother who is responsible for maintaining contact.
In those rare cultures (like ours) in which mother and son do not sleep together, the separation makes the mother very restless, and feels the urgent need to go see her son every so often. What mother has not approached the crib " to see if she breathes "? Of course she knows she is breathing, of course she knows that nothing is wrong, of course she knows that her husband will laugh at her for having gone ... but she can't help it, she has to go.
As the child grows, he becomes more independent. That does not mean that I spend more time alone, or that I do things without help, because the human being is a social animal, and it is not normal for him to be alone. For a human being, loneliness is not independence, but abandonment. Independence consists in being able to live in community, expressing our needs to get the help of others, and offering our help to meet the needs of others. Now you don't need to check if your child is breathing or not; He will tell her! As he is becoming independent, it will be he who stands guard. He will wake up more or less every hour and a half or two hours, and look for his mother. If her mother is next to her, she will smell her, touch her, feel her warmth, maybe she sucks a little, and will go back to sleep right away. If your mother is not there, she will cry until she comes. If mom comes right away, she will calm down quickly. If it takes time to come, it will cost a lot to reassure you; He will try to stay awake, as a security measure, lest Mom be lost again.
It is here that real life does not coincide with books, because mothers have been told that, as their child grows, they will sleep more and more hours in a row. And many are surprised that it is the opposite. It is not " child insomnia ", they are not "bad habits", it is simply normal behavior of children during the first years. A behavior that will disappear by itself, not with " education " or "training", but because the child will grow older and will no longer need the continued presence of his mother.
If every time your child cries you go, you are being encouraged to be independent, that is, to express your needs to other people and to consider that "normal" is to be treated. That will help you to be a self-confident and integrated adult in society. If when your child cries you let him cry, he is teaching you that his needs are not really important, and that other people "wiser and more powerful" that he can decide better than himself what suits him and what does not. He becomes more dependent, because it depends on the whims of others and is not believed important enough to deserve to be heeded. A happy childhood in a treasure that lasts forever, that no one can ever take away.
Your child's childhood is now in your hands.
Source: http://mamasgallina.blogspot.com.es
