Cuddling the Cry Baby: SouthFlorida.com

One of the most frequent questions parents ask me is, "What do I do if my baby wants to be held all the time?" Somehow this problem area has become intertwined with the notion of "spoiling" the child.
Being held is part of the need a baby has for physical cuddling, which is one of the main ways she knows she is loved. It is my feeling that you cannot hold or cuddle an infant too much and that you cannot truly "spoil" a baby just by picking him or her up when he or she cries to be held.
When you pick up your crying baby, you are satisfying a basic need for the baby to be held. Would you deny your child her need to be changed or fed? Of course not. So, why think about denying her need to sometimes be held and comforted? You must try to put yourself in the baby's place. You're hungry, lonely, wet or frustrated -- or all of the above. Wouldn't you want someone to pick you up and comfort you? This is exactly how a baby feels.
Children cry to be held for any number of reasons, and one of the challenges of parenthood is trying to figure out why the baby is crying at that particular moment. Very young babies want to be held for basic needs or even if they have been happily playing for a while but want a change of activity. We can usually identify pretty easily when the baby is crying because of hunger, but if she has been recently fed, burped and changed, should you still pick her up when she cries? I might venture a guess that the old wives tale (or is it "old husbands tale"?) that picking up a child whenever she cries will spoil her, has led to more disagreements between parents, between generations and among professionals than most other child-raising questions.
A baby's first year of life is a time that he is developing a sense of trust that mommy or daddy will be there when he needs them. When you respond to your child's cry, she soon comes to know that she can trust people. If you let a baby cry until she stops, and you keep letting her cry in this manner several times a day, she begins to learn that she cannot rely on others for help, and if this frustration continues, a baby, in time, does "give up." She hasn't learned independence through being allowed to "cry it out." Independence will only be learned after a child has become comfortable with and experienced dependency on his trusted caretakers -- in most cases, his parents. And, most importantly, no one can truly learn to be independent unless one learns on whom he or she can be dependent.
If you have heeded some of the advice of the "don't pick up the baby" school of thought, don't burden yourself with guilt. If and any harm as a result can be undone. Easily. Quickly. Just start holding your baby more, following your own instinct. Most parents have a good supply of common sense when it comes to responding to and raising their children. It has been demonstrated through the ages that parents generally know what to do with their children just as well as -- and sometimes even better than -- the child care experts. If you have laundry to wash, dinner to cook and other children to tent to, of course you can't spend half the day cuddling the infant. But when you find someone saying, "Don't pick up the baby; you'll spoil him," take it with a grain of salt, and do what you think is best. A baby simply cannot be held -- or loved -- "too much."

Dr. Tom Bellino is a pediatric neuropsychologist who served on the American Red Cross Mental Health Disaster Team that responded to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He has been on the faculty at The American University and The University of Hawaii. E-mail him at NeuropsychCtr@aol.com.