Dealing with a Crying Baby
My wife and I had a bit of an emotional situation last night as our ten-month-old son refused to go to sleep in his own crib. We comforted him and lulled him to sleep, but no sooner did we set him in his crib than he woke up crying. The situation wouldn’t have been so bad if my wife’s grandfather hadn’t stepped in and instructed my wife that she had to console him and make him understand what he had to do in a loving way.
I find several things wrong with this. Firstly, it’s difficult if not impossible to make an infant understand anything. My son is turning out to be especially stubborn, and seems to think that the prohibition of the word “no” ends after five seconds. Secondly, I agree with the concept that parents should attend to a crying baby. However, parents also possess a special insight into why their baby is crying. If our son was in pain or scared, that would be different. On the contrary, he was being clingy by not wanting to sleep alone. My wife and I don’t want to spoil him and, as such, initially chose to let him cry it out.
Naturally, the situation left my wife in tears and angry with her grandfather. I was none to happy about the whole thing either, having stepped in to try and get my son to bed without any success. I can’t help but wonder if the age gap had any factor here. Perhaps picking up a baby whenever it cried was common sense fifty years ago. However, I can say with certainty that we aren’t bad parents, and letting our son cry was what we believed to be in his best interests.
It doesn’t really matter, though. Thanks to some comforting, my wife felt fine by the time she went to bed several minutes later and is supposedly still on good terms with her grandfather. I hope the two of them have a good talk about the situation and manage to work out their feelings on the matter.