The "Colicky" Baby

Baby Hearts: A Guide to Giving Your Child an Emotional Head Start
by Linda Acredolo, Ph.D., Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D.

(Page 2 of 2)

"Poor Lisa and Jimmy. The baby has colic." So goes the sympathetic lament when we hear about a baby who never seems to stop crying. But what is colic? Is it a disease? Are the children crying because they are in pain? And is a colicky baby simply a Baby Holly (irritable baby) by another name?

The truth is that scientists do not yet understand what causes colic. They can, however, describe it fairly accurately. Colic begins when a baby is about two weeks old, peaks at two months, and generally is gone by four months. Such a simple description, however, doesn't begin to do justice to the misery experienced by baby and parent alike between the two end points.

The major symptom of colic is prolonged crying (and we mean hours!) generally starting in late afternoon and continuing through the evening. And nothing seems to work reliably to get the crying to stop. The baby looks like he's in pain–with clenched fists, back arched, distended abdomen, legs bent over the tummy, and grimacing. However, less than 5 percent of cases are likely to be related to diagnosable organic problems like cow's milk, lactose, or fructose intolerance.

The best guess at the moment is that colic is a "regulatory" problem, meaning that the baby's nervous system just can't stop once it gets set on a negative path. Colicky babies actually don't cry any more often than non-colicky babies. It's just that when a colicky baby starts crying, it's like a freight train out of control going down a hill. There's no braking mechanism strong enough to halt the momentum once it gets going.

It's also important to note that colic is not a temperamental quality. A colicky baby is not simply a Baby Holly. Here's the difference: Although crying episodes are longer than normal in both cases, irritable babies actually cry more often than either non-colicky or colicky babies (with their cries triggered by greater sensitivity to minor events) and don't outgrow these tendencies at four months as colicky babies do.

So what's our advice to poor Lisa and Jimmy? Simply to grin and bear it knowing it won't last forever–and, in the meantime, to find as many folks to help them deal with the baby as they can.

So it is with "Active" children. Especially when they are too young to have developed any self-control, their exuberance makes them very challenging to parent. They are simply busy, busy, busy! They run rather than walk, climb obstacles rather than go around, and never look before they leap. Parents of these children face many challenges, particularly from other people. Strangers often are disturbed by the active child's energy and impulsiveness and come too quickly to the conclusion that it's the parent's fault. "If that were my child . . ." frequently begins the whispered criticism behind the parent's back. The truth is that parents of Baby Dandelions deserve a special award for hanging in there–and more than an occasional pat on the back rather than criticism behind it.

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.

–Erma Bombeck, humorist

Where Do Temperaments Come From?

We've described these four different temperaments as inborn. By this we mean that they are apparent very early in a child's life–at least by four months of age, when the newborn's rhythms start to settle down. Contributing to this description is growing evidence suggesting a genetic base. In other words, at least to some extent, temperament is inherited. How do we know? From looking at twins. Comparisons of identical twins–twins who have identical genes–with each other yield greater similarities in temperament than comparisons of fraternal twins–twins who share no more genes than normal siblings. In other words, if one of your identical twins is a Baby Dandelion, hold on to your horses; the other one is likely to be one too.

There is even speculation that the nervous systems of these various groups have different set points in the oldest part of the brain (the brain stem at the top of the spinal cord) where automatic, unthinking reactions to events are triggered. These ancient systems are designed to react efficiently to sudden danger–producing the famous fight-or-flight responses via higher heart rates, faster respiration, disrupted digestion, increased muscle tension, and heightened perceptual awareness. Such responses enabled our reptilian ancestors, such as the crocodile, to quickly slip into the water with lightning speed if alerted to danger.

What is meant by the term "set point"? According to Washington University psychiatrist Robert Cloninger and his colleagues, if our set point on this continuum is high, it takes a relatively greater danger to trigger a reaction, whereas if our set point is low, it might take only a whisper of a threat to cause us to pull back in fear. Most of us, thankfully, are somewhere in the middle. Some individuals, however, quite likely including Baby Dandelion and Baby Orchid, must learn to deal with set points more toward the extremes.

Is Biology Destiny?

We just spoke about Baby Dandelion and Baby Orchid learning "to deal with" their more extreme set points. This is a critical statement that can be restated this way: Biology is not destiny! The advantage that humans have over our reptilian ancestors is that we can, in fact, learn to control our behaviors, if not our fundamental emotions. With careful and consistent support from caregivers, both Baby Dandelion (the "Active" child) and Baby Orchid (the "Slow-to-Warm" child) can learn to control their reactions to the wonders and worries of the world around them. Because such control depends a great deal on development of the highest and most sophisticated layer of the brain, the cerebral cortex, the development of the necessary self-control takes time. But, in keeping with the theme of nature and nurture as a partnership, without appropriate guidance from loving and patient adults, it's not likely to develop at all.

Nature Meets Nurture: Learning to Manage Emotions

All this talk of self-control brings us to a third topic we want to address before jumping into the individual issues that form the heart of Baby Hearts, something researchers these days refer to as emotional self-regulation. That's a very formal term for the simple idea that healthy emotional development involves gradually learning to manage (control) one's own emotions. It's just not a good idea, no matter what your age, to be so overcome with fear that you hide yourself away, or even so overcome with joy that you forget to look both ways before you cross the street. Like the discussions of biological regulation and temperament, the subject of emotional self-regulation is so fundamental to emotional development in general that at least a brief description is appropriate in this introductory chapter. Also like the discussion of biological regulation and infant temperament, it provides a great example of how nature and nurture interact to nudge children along their developmental journey.

How to Help Your Baby? "Know Thyself"

How can you, as a parent, prepare yourself to provide the kind of support your own particular "flower" child needs? One way is to assess what researchers call the goodness of fit between the two of you. What this boils down to is an assessment of your own temperamental qualities to see if they mesh easily with those of your child. For example, if you are a high-energy person with the emotional intensity and love of novelty characteristic of the "Active" child, then you and Baby Dandelion are likely to have an easier time relating to each other than you and Baby Orchid. The reverse is true too. A quiet, contemplative parent is likely to find a highly active or difficult baby a major challenge. Unless a parent is aware of his or her biases, temperamental mismatches can be challenging to the parent-child relationship. In such cases negative interactions and frustrations are likely to start the ball rolling in the wrong direction from very early on, making course corrections increasingly difficult as time goes by.

Here are a few questions to get you started thinking about your own temperament:

• Do you enjoy meeting new people (like Baby Sunflower and Baby Dandelion), or does the prospect make you nervous (like Baby Orchid)?

• Do you prefer to explore new places (like Baby Sunflower and Baby Dandelion), or do you return to the tried and true (like Baby Orchid and Baby Holly)?

• Do you worry when your day isn't planned in advance (like Baby Orchid and Baby Holly), or do you welcome the unexpected (like Baby Dandelion)?

• Do you find it easy to sit still (like Baby Orchid and Baby Sunflower), or do you prefer to be on the go (like Baby Dandelion)?

That's the idea. And don't forget to consider the possibility of temperamental mismatches between your baby and other important caregivers too.

Step 1: From Biological Regulation to Emotional Regulation

Let's start with "nature," a reasonable choice given that's where every baby starts. As we described, newborn babies are even more helpless than they look. Although they seem to be compact little units with a life unto themselves, in reality they depend on being "plugged into" good caregiving ("nurture") in order to keep their biological systems functioning properly. What's more, this outside support (remember the gelatin mold?) gradually enables them to take over the job themselves as their brains and bodies mature–a push toward greater sophistication fueled by "nature" but shaped by "nurture."

At the very beginning, the helplessness of the child is so all-pervasive– involving everything from learning when to suck, to controlling body temperature, to being able to keep breathing regularly–that the issue is really total biological regulation. However, as the early months proceed and these vital biological systems gradually settle in, babies' job of learning to regulate themselves starts to narrow down to the devilishly sticky problem of specifically keeping emotions under some kind of control.

Why is emotional regulation important for babies? If emotions were only a psychological phenomenon, the task would be significant enough. But emotions, especially for young children still limping along without the help of sophisticated brain centers (see the next section), are very much physical issues too. For example, if left unchecked, the emotion of distress that leads to crying will eventually unwind a baby's whole body–causing symptoms as minor as hiccups, to catastrophes as serious as disruptions in breathing. And, even more critically, prolonged and frequent experiencing of highly stressful situations–and here we mean more than the frequent crying of the colicky baby–can permanently alter the chemistry of the brain through the release of large amounts of stress hormones like cortisol, resulting in problematic emotional patterns that become more and more difficult to change. Emotionally adverse environments can affect the brain even to the point of producing very substandard physical development (psychosocial dwarfism) and health (failure-to-thrive syndrome). (For more detail on the topic of the impact of severe stress on the developing brain, see Liu et al., 1997, and Perry et al., 1995.)

In other words, helping babies keep their emotions–especially the negative ones–within reasonable bounds is one of the most important responsibilities of a parent. Soothing a crying baby may seem like a good idea just from a noise perspective, but it's even more important for the baby!

Step 2: From Emotional Regulation to Emotional Self-Regulation

As babies grow more complex and begin moving around the world on their own, relying on their parents to monitor and modulate their emotions becomes less and less practical. Fortunately, "nature" has thought of this and has managed to build in to human babies the desire to gradually take over the task of managing their own emotions. It's this passing of the buck back to the child that scientists refer to as emotional self-regulation.

What does emotional self-regulation actually look like? We will be talking a good deal about the various forms it takes as we introduce specific topics in later chapters, but here are a few examples.

• When feeling bombarded by stimulation, babies learn to turn their heads away and may even start playing with their fingers to calm themselves down.

• When feeling anxious or upset, babies learn to comfort themselves by sucking on their thumb.

• When toddlers are in unfamiliar settings or with unfamiliar people, they learn the value of holding on tight to a favorite toy.

• When toddlers become anxious about new events or people, they learn to check out their parents' faces for cues about what's happening.

• When toddlers are required to wait, they learn to distract themselves by doing other things.

Finally, once children can talk about emotions, they learn that doing so helps diffuse the intensity of their feelings.

Clearly, there's a lot for babies to learn. And who will your own baby need to learn all this from? There's no doubt that her teachers will include grandparents, siblings, babysitters, and peers–but Mom and Dad are definitely the most influential teachers of them all. Don't worry, though; we plan to provide lots of lesson plans throughout the rest of the book.

The Brains Behind It All

No introduction to the biology of emotions would be complete without at least some discussion of the role played behind the scenes by the greatest of all evolutionary inventions: the human brain. "Behind the scenes" is an apt description, because we are rarely (if ever) aware of how much is going on up there when we experience even a fleeting emotion such as mild surprise, let alone a complex emotion such as love.

The love we feel for our children is magical, not mechanical. It seems to well up from deep inside of us, melting our hearts, making us smile, sometimes even bringing tears to our eyes. And when our children return this love, the magic is doubled. Love does indeed make our hearts sing.

But how does all this happen? What exactly is going on when we cuddle with our children, body to body and heart to heart? It may surprise you to learn that a large part of what is going on is actually brain to brain. What's more, it's not just two brains in sync with each other; it's more like three brains each, for a total of six.

The Triple-Decker Brain

Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, three psychiatry professors at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, provide a wonderful description of the relation between our multiple brains and our experiences of love in their fascinating book A General Theory of Love. In it they explain how human emotions are really the result of incredibly rapid and complex cross-talk among three separate "mini-brains," each one a separate product of evolution. Presented in the order in which they appeared over the eons, these three include the reptilian brain (the brain stem), the limbic or "emotional" brain (deep within our skulls), and the cerebral cortex or "thinking" brain (the wrinkled sheet of tightly packed nerve cells that covers it all).

Excerpted from Baby Hearts by Linda Acredolo, Ph.D., and Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D. Copyright © 2005 by Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and has served as associate editor of Child Development, the leading professional research journal, and as secretary of the prestigious Society for Research in Child Development.

Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and child development at California State University, Stanislaus, and holds an associate researcher position at the University of California, Davis.