Leaving babies to cry ‘harms their developing brain’

26th April 2010 - Advice given to new parents that they should let their baby cry so he’ll ‘learn’ to go to sleep at the right time is not only wrong but potentially dangerous, according to a child care expert.

Dr Penelope Leach draws on recent scientific findings which, she claims, proves that allowing young children to cry for prolonged periods damages the developing brain.

The warning comes in Leach’s new book, ‘The Essential First Year’. The author says that crying is stressful, and acute stress sets up a hormonal chain reaction that leads to the stress hormone Cortisol being released.

Babies that are allowed to cry frequently and for long periods produce so much Cortisol that it is toxic to the baby’s brain, says Leach. “It is not an opinion but a fact that it’s potentially damaging to leave babies to cry. Now we know that, why risk it?” the author says in a statement.

Author rivalry

Leach has written a series of hugely popular childcare books spanning four decades, including ‘Baby and Child’ which has sold over three million copies. Her latest venture appears to reignite the rivalry with another bestselling child care author, Gina Ford, whose 1999 book, ‘Contented Little Baby’, spawned a generation of new mums who were encouraged to get their newborns into a strict sleeping routine.

The advice that babies who are left to cry ‘learn’ when they must go to sleep is misguided, according to Leach, who says a baby lacks the mental equipment to do this. “A baby who is left crying for long enough will eventually stop, but not because he has learnt to go to sleep happily alone, but because he’s exhausted and has despaired of getting help.”

Leach says that crying is the only way that a baby can express that he or she is uncomfortable or distressed and, because a baby can’t do anything about it, it’s up to an adult to put things right.

‘No monopoly of the truth’

Another parenting guru believes neither the ‘liberal’ Leach nor the ‘authoritarian’ Ford has a monopoly of the truth when it comes to caring for infants.

Dr Martin Ward-Platt, author of ‘The Wonder Years, the essential guide to child development for ages 0-5’, thinks each can be placed against the prevailing culture of the times. “Gina Ford represents a bit of a backlash against the liberal 1960s,” Ward-Platt tells us, referring to the decade when Leach was a young woman.

‘Naive’

Where Ward-Platt takes issue with Leach is over her assumption that there is no dialogue between mother and baby, with the parent simply fulfilling the demands of the young infant. “In fact there’s a huge literature in developmental psychology that goes flat against that notion,” says Ward-Platt, who is Consultant Paediatrician and Reader in Neonatal and Paediatric Medicine in Newcastle upon Tyne.

“I cannot believe that Penelope [Leach] is as scientifically naive as she comes across when she makes her public utterances,” he adds.

“Mothers are exquisitely sensitive to the needs of their babies, but they also have to balance out their own needs,” says Ward-Platt.