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
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