be done? It is astonishing to me that any one who has studied the
behaviour of only a few of these nervous and restless infants should
uphold the teaching that the crying of the young infant is a bad
habit, and that the mother who is truly wise must neglect the cry and
leave him to learn the uselessness of his appeals. It is true that the
youngest child readily contracts habits good or bad. Either he will
learn the habit of sleep or the habit of crying. Mercifully the
inclination of the majority is towards sleep. But to encourage habits
of restlessness and crying there is no surer way than to follow this
bad advice and to permit the child to cry till he is utterly exhausted
in body and in mind. It is unwise _always_ to rock a baby to sleep; it
is also unwise to allow him to scream himself into a state of
hysteria. A quiet, darkened room, the steady pressure of the mother's
hand in some rhythmical movement, will often quiet an incipient
storm. The longer he cries, the more trouble it is to soothe him.
Sleep provokes sleep, so that often we find restlessness and sound
sleep alternating in a sort of cycle, a good week perhaps following a
bad one. The nurse who is quick to cut short a storm of crying and to
soothe the child again to sleep is helping him to form habits of
sleep. The nurse who leaves him to cry, believing that in time he will
of his own accord recognise the futility of his behaviour, is making
him form habits of crying. A rigid routine in sleep is a good thing,
but the routine belongs to the baby, not to the nurse. The child must
be educated to sleep, not taught to cry. A baby has but little power
of altering his position when it becomes strained or uncomfortable. He
cannot turn over and nestle down into a new posture. If we watch him
wake, the first stirring may be very gradual, and in a moment he may
fall again to sleep. A few minutes later he stirs again more strongly,
and is wider awake and for longer. It may only be after a third
waking, by a summation of stimuli, that he is finally roused and