183Birth to Five Months
At this stage, the newborn needs to establish an attachment
with Mother, Dad, or the primary caregiver. A sense of belong-
ing, of being safe and welcome are the tasks the child needs to
accomplish. Setting limits is not as much an issue here as pro-
viding security for the infant.
The only real boundary here is the soothing presence of the
mother. She protects the infant. Mom’s job is to help her new-
born contain intense, frightening, and conflicting feelings. Left
by themselves, infants are terrorized by their aloneness and lack
of internal structure.
For centuries mothers—including Mary, Jesus’ mother—
have swaddled their babies, or wrapped cloths tightly around
them. While swaddling keeps the baby’s body heat regulated,
the tight wrappings also help the infant feel safe—a sort of
external boundary. The baby knows where he or she begins and
ends. When newborns are undressed, they often panic about the
loss of structure around them.
Some well-meaning Christian teachers call for infant train-
ing theories that schedule the feeding and holding of infants.
These techniques try to teach an infant not to cry or demand
comfort because “the child is in control instead of the parent,”
or because “that demand is evidence of the child’s selfish, sinful
nature.” These theories can be horribly destructive when not
understood biblically or developmentally.
The screaming four-month-old child is trying to find out
whether the world is a reasonably safe place or not. She is in a
state of deep terror and isolation. She hasn’t learned to feel com-
fort when no one is around. To put her on the parents’ schedule
instead of her own for holding and feeding is to “condemn the
innocent,” as Jesus said (Matt. 12:7).
These teachers say their programs are biblical because they
work. “When I stopped picking her up from her crib at night,
my four-month-old stopped crying,” they’ll say. That may be
true. But another explanation for the cessation of crying is infant
depression, a condition in which the child gives up hope and
withdraws. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12).
Boundaries and Your Children