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Home › Articles › Behavior › Tears Talk!

Tears Talk!

The Communication Behind Crying

By Amy Carey

Pages:  1  2  3  

You may have expected it, even looked forward to hearing it. But now that Baby is here, the months of wondering what her cries will sound like and how you'll respond to them are over. As you pat her back, rock her, even drive her around the block, you're wondering if she'll ever stop crying. What's behind that wail? Is Baby really trying to tell you something?

"Crying is always a distress signal," says Dr. Dan Levy, a Baltimore, Md.-based pediatrician who teaches at the University of Maryland. "Babies have very few ways of getting attention, and crying is essential to obtaining basic needs."

Jean Gardner Cole, an infant development specialist, agrees. "An infant cries for emotional release and to signal his need for caregiving," she says.

But knowing their baby is trying to communicate a need doesn't always help frazzled parents figure out what that need might be. You may have to go through a list of possible comforts and causes before you find the key. Is Baby hungry? How long has it been since his diaper was changed? Does he need a nap?

Decoding His Cries
"In the early days, I was frustrated when my baby cried, and I didn't know why she was crying," recalls Rob Ettinger, a father near Atlanta, Ga. "I think it was this frustration that made it even more difficult to decipher what she was trying to tell me." Ettinger tried everything from a hand-cranked baby swing to television static to calm his crying newborn, knowing that it was important to respond to his baby's attempt at conversation no matter how indecipherable it seemed in those first few weeks. Ettinger eventually discovered that as he responded to his baby's cries time and again, her cries started to make more sense as days turned into weeks.

Tune in to your baby and take note: Does he seem to cry most at a certain time of day, perhaps in the evening? Maybe he is over-stimulated. After a day full of discoveries – from watching the family bustle about to hearing new sounds left and right – any baby might need a little peace and quiet. Or you may notice that he cries most mid-morning. In the rush of getting your family out the door, maybe Baby's feeding time is overdue.

For James Nakatsu, a father of one in Seattle, Wash., timing was everything. "A cry at the tail end of a three-hour alert period usually meant a demand for a meal, and a cry after a meal was a demand for shuteye," he says.

As you listen to your baby and begin to discover the causes of his unrest, you also might learn to decode his cries just by listening to the tone of his "voice." "Learning the meaning of a cry is a matter of experience and careful attention," Dr. Levy says. "Most parents can identify different cries by pitch, tone and urgency. A high-pitched cry that is more urgent and persistent is usually a cry of distress. The other end of the spectrum is a low-pitched, complaining sort of cry, that may simply mean, 'I want to get a little attention.'"

The Right Response

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