Literacy news
Can crying cause brain damage?
3 Jun 2010
Penelope Leach’s new book, The Essential First Year, challenges the use of "controlled crying", the idea of which is to allow your child to cry themselves to sleep and therefore teach themselves to go to sleep on their own at night.
Leach claims that leaving babies to cry regularly could be damaging to their developing brains. Leach sites a study in which scientists measured high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in saliva samples of distraught babies whose cries elicit no response from parents or cares. Long and continued "hard’ crying" can bathe the baby’s brain in damaging amounts of cortisol and if this happens often the baby’s brain my become hardwired to be hypersensitive to stress, resulting in minor stress causing major anxiety for the rest of their lives.
Leach goes on to argue that responding to the crying can counteract the cortisol by causing endorphins, comfort hormones, to be released, meaning the babies whose cries are responded to will have a brain which is hardwired to cope with stress and soothe themselves.
Penelope Leach's The Essential First Year is available from Dorling Kindersley press.
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