Cri de Coeur - The whys and wherefores of wailing

 

Imagine you've just boarded a plane. You settle into your seat, stretch your legs, open a novel or rest your head for a doze. Suddenly from the row behind the piercing cry of a baby which just won't let up. How do you react to that cry? Some block it out with headphones, some offer up a silent prayer that it's not them and their child, some smile sympathetically at the parent behind, a few will offer help, a few will make a cutting remark casting aspersions on the parenting skills of their fellow traveller. A very few will be absolutely seething.

We've all been on a plane with a crying child. Only parents know the intense anxiety of being responsible for a crying child in a place which is both enclosed and yet also public. In our household the benefit of a trip abroad is weighed very carefully against the potential misery that a full in flight meltdown can precipitate when minutes feel like years of merciless public scrutiny and disapproval.

A child's cry is a very provoking thing. It has to be to ensure that its needs are met and met immediately. When the cry is silenced by rattle, bottle or bounce there is the satisfaction of a problem meeting a solution. But when the child is fed, winded, changed, entertained, put down to sleep and still the howling continues then comes the anxiety and where anxiety goes despair can soon follow, especially at 3 in the morning.

It is not nice listening to a child cry and when it is not yours the natural instinct is to remove yourself from the noise, when it is yours you do not have the benefit of that option, something that can come as a nasty surprise to new parents. This is your problem, you provide the solution, unless you can't, whereupon you wonder whether in fact you are the problem.

My children's crying has such a powerful effect on me that if I'm not well rested or am otherwise stressed it actually makes my skin itch. I used to think I was a fairly level headed man, not easily roused, but an inability to quell my offspring's cries is profoundly distressing to me.

The infuriating truth is that babies are the most finely calibrated emotional barometers. If you are calming and soothing they are usually, or at least quickly, calm and soothed. If you're a jangling ball of nerves they become uptight and fractious. I genuinely think one of the most useful things a prospective parent could do would be to listen to a playlist of crying babies on their commute. Getting used to crying, not to learn to ignore it, but to become habituated so that it is not something to be feared.

Most importantly, if a baby's cry renders you enraged you may want to think very hard whether you have what it takes to be a parent.

Not Angry Just Disappointed

'I'm not angry, just disappointed' - Every child knows that there is no more chastening parental admonition. It's one thing to provoke your parent, quite another to let them down. But what about when your parents disappoint you? In the teenage years each day brings new disappointment and in babyhood it could be said that every cry is simply a primal articulation of being let down.

Some parents will never admit that they have ever done or said anything to let their children down. Some of them even become president. For the rest of us there is the uncomfortable knowledge that we certainly have. Sometimes it's discussed and acknowledged, sometimes pride or other shortcomings prevent a clearing of the air and burying of the hatchet.

Something I am really not proud of is having my child play peacemaker. It's invariably a car based scenario, a late departure (almost certainly my fault), some over enthusiastic driving eliciting a few well deserved sharp words from my wife. Everybody has their own way of arguing. I have two and they are both, I realise, infuriating. Coldly forensic or hotly defensive. The latter is especially inflammatory and most likely to end up with the 3 year old making a wholly justified request that apologies be exchanged.

You really haven't known shame until your behaviour has transformed your pre-schooler into the United Nations and you are never more acutely aware that they see and hear everything than when your heated protestations of self-justification have them interjecting like a Friday night shift copper at chucking out time. 

Of course if you're a really terrible parent your child will quickly learn not to do this because it will be to no avail. Then you have failed, your child will have learned, too soon no doubt, that its parents are incapable of parenting. A hell of a lot of advice is spoken and written about parenting but for me it boils down to one simple message: children can be childish only as long as the adults are adult(ish).