Listening to Your Kids is Not an Indulgence

And Indulging Them Does Not Count as Listening

Photo by kyle smith on Unsplash

Being heard by those who love us is an important human need.

This need does not suddenly strike us when we are old enough to become articulate and argue our case. No, it is something we are born with and if nature did not think it important I doubt it would have given newborn babes such a healthy set of screaming lungs. I mean, they are so tiny, how do they make that much noise?

In fact, being heard is an important part of survival for the infant. And the cry of the infant grates like sandpaper against the mother's heart. Indeed one of the hardest things about parenting during the tiny baby stage is that if you cannot figure out why they are crying and fix it, your heart starts bleeding.

Because that screaming baby sounds scrapes against your heart until it is raw.

This too, is a wise bit of survival, after all, for the species to carry-on, the mother must have an overriding instinct to care for the new life she has birthed at all costs.

Overriding this heart-bleed is a struggle. Anyone who has ever had a colicky baby knows what I mean. You have taken care of every cause, read all the books, and tried all the tricks. But the baby will scream, from 5 pm to 8 pm…