Well knock me over with a feather. Who could have known that fearful, fussy, sensitive babies need their mothers?
NEW YORK — Day care may prevent certain children from establishing a healthy relationship with their parents, a new study suggests.Daycare workers are hirelings who neither love nor know their charges. That's not their fault; they aren't their parents. Some daycare employees like kids a lot, which helps, and others aren't crazy about dealing with kids all day, but prefer it to the alternative: manning the fry machine at MacDonald's.
The results show the more time fussy, irritable infants spend in day care, the less likely they are to develop a so-called secure attachment with their mothers. A secure attachment means babies are at ease exploring their surroundings, but can still seek comfort from their mom when they need to — they are not clingy or aloof.
From a glass half-full perspective, the findings also mean irritable infants do better when they're mostly cared for by their parents or other family members.
"People have always thought of irritable, difficult babies as being more likely to have poor outcomes if they have stresses," said study researcher Beth Troutman, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa.
"But the other side of that is that they're more likely to have good outcomes if they have more positive supportive environments," Troutman told LiveScience.
"So it's not just that having them in day care is a risk, but also that irritable babies really benefit from spending time with family members.
In cases when children do form a bond of affection and trust with their keepers, it can't be counted on to last. Turnover is high. Too bad for the eighteen-month old who goes to "school" on Monday and finds that Miss Laurie is gone and is never coming back. Kids can experience grief, too, when they "graduate" into an older room and lose that special person. This happens routinely in a KinderCare-style institution and those losses accumulate over the years. No one really pretends this is the best way to raise children.
Daycare workers will tell you that Mondays and the first days back after several days' absence are frustrating for them because the kids are extra whiny and tearful. Home is where their hearts are.
Strep, influenza, pink-eye, norovirus, rotavirus, hand-foot-mouth disease, impetigo, and more spread rapidly in the daycare setting. Some centers are better than others at cleaning and practicing disease-preventive measures, but it's a losing battle. Sick workers can't always afford to take a day off without pay. And anyway, they're needed by the center to keep the ratios within legal limits.
Sensitive, irritable, rough, or otherwise difficult kids get the worst treatment because they need the most patience and care from their "teachers," not all of whom are able to do so with a smile. Quiet, compliant kids also lose in this situation, getting whatever scraps of time and attention aren't consumed by their more demanding peers.
Oh well, parents and caregivers say; kids are so resilient!
Turns out some of them aren't.
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Great reporting, Jill! This is nice to see after recent news that SAHMs are being told to "cut it out" by femisogynists.I stayed home to raise my babies, because with my skill-set, I'd only be able to make enough money to pay for daycare or preschool, why work to only make enough to pay strangers to do what God created me to do for my kids? It made no sense. I got a lot of crap for that choice too; people telling my kids wouldn't be "socialized" or academically prepared for elementary school. Turns out it was all bunk! My little girl is doing fine in school, making friends, no behavioral issues, and is actually ahead of her peers in academics because I spent her formative years teaching her everything at home, where she belonged!
ReplyDeleteI have nothing against working moms, I mean if their job pays them well enough that they'd actually have a reasonable amount leftover after paying for childcare, I would not begrudge them the choice to not be poor like me, but there has been an institutionalized attack on traditional moms for far too long and the above article exemplifies how important our jobs as moms who care for our babies ourselves really are!
Mommy's love is not something that can be replaced at any price.
Funny that you speak of this now. I just finished talking with a specialist in child psychology. She dealt with the same kids I did and knew what I meant when I said I had interviewed a number of sociopaths over the years. We were talking in a group and I was explaining out a sociopath is able to act normal because it is just that, acting. They can't really connect with how people really feel, because they don't have the feelings.
ReplyDelete(I said Clinton was one, she said clinically he is considered a malignant narcissist. The difference, as she puts it is that one commits a crime, the other didn't.)
As we spoke she revealed that back in the seventies, when feminism was taking off and the push for daycare grew, many child psychologists feared that the lack of bonding to the same person would damage children and we wouldn't know how badly until they grew up. The point she was making was an explanation as to why we seem to see more sociopaths today than in past generations.
She went on to say that back then the PC police were in full strength at universities and if you stated your fears you could get fired, loss funding or tenure. So most just shut up (think Climate change).
The consensus now is that kids raised with rotating caregivers fail to bond properly. That learned experience prevents them from developing the ability to connect to people or know how to react properly to stimuli. They are distant, aggressive, and often can be just shy of being a sociopath.
Once again, our political correctness has gotten innocent people killed. It may have taken two generations to pull the trigger, but the hammer as most definitely been dropped.
One could argue our President is another example of the failure to bond properly. Lord knows what his young life was like, being dragged around by a half-crazed liberal female more interested in making a point than loving her child.
A child needs that attachment to an adult who loves him unconditionally. That means parent or grandparents in most cases, not people working for an hourly wage. When the attachment to the parent is weakened the peer culture is there to take up the slack, with poor results. It's a magnet for the weakly attached. Peer-attached kids tune out their parents and spend all their time trying to connect to each other. Hence the constant, content-free texting. Unfortunately, kids are intrinsically unable to raise other kids. Their commitment to each other is very conditional and their own attachment needs haven't been met. It's the blind leading the blind.
ReplyDeleteRecommended reading: Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parent Need to Matter More than Peers, by Gordon Neufeld (see left sidebar), and an excellent book about the history of child psychology and especially attachment theory, Becoming Attached by Robert Karen:
http://astore.amazon.com/punpun-20/detail/0195115015
Yesterday I wrote about my son, who was a late talker in one of my blogs:
ReplyDeletehttp://mjstevensonblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/speak-it-into-being.html
The reason why I relate this to what you're talking about, Jill, is because the "experts' in addition to trying to tell me that my son was autistic or retarded (he's NOT), they also wanted me to put him in a daycare/preschool with other non-communicative children where the child/adult ratio was 3-1, this was supposed to help get him talking. Since I knew they were wrong about my son already and because he'd have no way of telling me if something bad happened to him there, and also because he'd only get 1/3 of a stranger's attention when at home he could have 100% of mine, I declined. Let me tell you, the "experts" pushed HARD for me to give them my boy but thankfully my husband had my back and encouraged me not to back down. Thank God for that, because my son talks now and he is really well adjusted ad happy, I don't know that handing him over to strangers who had already labeled him as "not normal" (he IS normal) would not have been damaging to him. The evidence in the above article & posts suggests that I did the right thing. Oh, and because he had a communication delay, he would have been considered "fussy" by some, when really he was just frustrated. Regardless, he needed to be with me, and that's what he got which I think is why he's doing so well. he's three now and can even do some math and read already!
Bravo to you and your husband for sticking up for your child.
ReplyDeleteHow in the world would spending his day with other kids who weren't talking have fostered his own communication skills?
Parents know their kids best and are their best advocates.
I wondered the same thing! Add that to the revelations about "fussy" kids not getting as much attention in those settings and then think about a whole room full of "fussy" kids who don't yet talk and a 3-1 ratio of kids to adults... geez!
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many "delayed special needs" kids would have been better off if the "experts" left them alone and just let the kids develop at their own pace at HOME? My son learns more from his 5 year old sister (who was an early talker) than he ever learned in therapy.
MJ points out a real issue in child behavior. The constant misdiagnosing of conditions. I read that something like 90% of all ADHD diagnoses were in America. That is statistically impossible unless the "disease" isn't really a disease but a socially acceptable way of dealing with the end issues of children being raised incorrectly.
ReplyDeleteIf a child fails to bond because of daycare and becomes difficult as they grow, are they suffering from ADHD? Or are they suffering from conditions thrust upon them by a society unable and unwilling to admit it screwed up? The real question here is this- Can we, as a people, ever admit we were wrong and reverse course? If we can, what is the threshold that we must reach before we swallow our pride and say that feminism, not letting a woman stay home with her kids (either because of societal pressure or economic pressure), was a gross mistake and must be corrected?
Think about what the government has to lose here. If one of two parents decide to stay home, it will cut income (thus taxes and spending) by a third or a half. Imagine the impact that would have! The government alone as a huge vested interest in never pushing the theory that better children are raised by stay at home parents.
Not to mention the professors and doctors and "specialists" that would all have to say "oops" and then hang their head in shame. No, you'll get no confessions from them. Nor will you get help.