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Introduction: Dr. William A.H. Sammons' The Self-Calmed Baby
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16749 |
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BOOK WORLD
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9 / 1989 |
402 Words |
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Any parent who has struggled in vain with a screaming infant at four in the morning knows how difficult it is to understand the needs of the newborn baby. At times, nothing seems to work. In his book, The Self-Calmed Baby, pediatrician William Sammons offers a new approach to infant care that has been producing dramatic results for his clients.
During his work in an intensive care unit, Sammons began to notice that there was some difference among babies in their abilities to tolerate stress. He began to think about newborns' capabilities to cope with their circumstances. His theory of the infant's self-calming capabilities began to take shape, and was put to use in his pediatric practice.
Dr. Sammons discovered that in their sincere desire to be good parents, most people unwittingly overwhelm a baby with too much stimulation. Distraught parents' usual responses to prolonged crying include rocking, singing to, and walking the baby. Dr. Sammons' approach differs in that it teaches parents about their babies' innate abilities to calm themselves. This is accomplished through parents' helping their baby develop self-calming skills, which may include sucking on a hand or wrist, and using vision, body position, or rhythmic body movement. Our excerpt includes an explanation of these skills.
Sammons' book has implications that go beyond the infant stage. He contends that the parent-infant relationship usually begins a pattern that continues through life into adulthood. The degree of an individual's dependence or independence can be influenced by his feelings of competency to improve his own circumstances, and those feelings begin in infancy.
Sammons developed his theory during residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. He worked under renowned pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton at Children's Hospital in Boston. Sammons has been refining his observations during the past fifteen years of private practice.
Following the excerpt from The Self-Calmed Baby are commentaries on Sammons' theories. William Sears, M.D., author of The Fussy Baby and other books, analyzes the self-calming theory in light of his own knowledge and gives some constructive advice. Psychologist Lewis Lipsitt compares contemporary thinking with older views on infant capability. Lipsitt is excited about Sammons' self-calming theory because he feels that one of the most important ideas we can teach our children is that what they do makes a
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