The fear of spoiling the baby leaves many new parents questioning their instincts and wondering whether they should really hurry over to pick up their screaming infant. In a survey of 531 parents, the majority of mothers and fathers believed that a baby could be spoiled, even though people had different ideas of just what this spoiling would look like and what the future effects might be. In that study, younger or less-well-educated parents were more likely to have rigid ideas about just what will spoil a baby and about the negative effects that might result. In another study, 129 women were questioned about their social support, their perception of spoiling babies and whether they had any symptoms of depression. Fifty-eight per cent of the mothers believed that infants less than five months old could be spoiled. Those who believed that a baby could be spoiled were more likely to be first-time mothers and more likely to have been depressed during their pregnancy.
Do these parents have it right? There are certainly plenty of demanding kids with poor manners, not to mention self-important adults who seem to think the world revolves around them. Is this because they had someone rushing to meet their every need from the moment they were born? Not necessarily. The expert opinion is that you cannot spoil a young baby. New babies need as much love and care and attention as you can give them, and they are too young to start being independent. In other words, they need a lot of ‘spoiling’. Whereas ‘spoiled children’ might use crying to manipulate you into giving them whatever they want, babies are too young to deliberately manipulate you. Young babies cry to let you know that they need something. It’s the only way they can communicate. And a quick response actually builds their trust. Paying attention to the baby right away can actually help them to feel more secure, less anxious and less likely to cry for no reason at all. Thus, in the long run, responding to the baby right away should help them to be less demanding and clingy.
The problem with believing that you might spoil your baby is that it might lead you to misunderstand your baby’s basic need to be nurtured. When this happens, when there is a mismatch between what the baby needs and what the mother provides, a baby might become less secure and trusting. Furthermore, one of the keys to healthy attachment between a baby and the mother seems to be how quickly the mother responds to the baby, more significant than the time spent comforting the baby.
Once a baby is six to eight months old, however, he or she begins to explore cause and effect and to make connections between what they do and how you respond. They might want to drop a toy over and over again, for example, to see it fall and then to get you to pick it up. This is the time when it is more appropriate to set limits on what you do or don’t do for your baby. While a child should get plenty of hugs and praise for good behaviour (and at other times in between), you might try to hold out a bit when a child is crying for something that is not really needed. Then you can rush back in with the hugs as soon as your child is calming down. In the second half of a child’s first year, children reach a time in their development when they still need to trust their parents, but they also need to learn to trust themselves and to be a little more independent when it comes to things that they want (but don’t need). This is when you might change the limits you set as a parent, helping your child one step further on the road to independence.