Kitabı oxu: «The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five»

chapter 1
hayden – our high-need child

Sitting in the high school auditorium one spring evening, we proudly watched our seventeen-year-old daughter, Hayden, take her bows following the school’s production of Oklahoma! She’d played the role of Ado Annie wonderfully, yet it was the Hayden we saw after the curtain call who warmed our hearts the most.

We watched how she cared for her friends – the eye contact, the hugs, the delightfully natural social gestures, and the expressivity that drew people, magnet-like, into her presence. As a tear or two flowed down her dad’s cheeks, we thought back to “Hayden the handful” – the demanding baby, the strong-minded toddler, the challenging preschooler, the full-of-energy grade-schooler, and the exhausting teen. Now we are seeing a dynamic adult beginning to emerge. How the three of us got through those years and to this point in our lives inspired this book. Here’s the story of the baby we got and the lessons we learned.

how she acted

Hayden stretched us as parents and as individuals. Our first three children were relatively “easy” infants. They slept well and had a predictable feeding routine. Their needs were easy to identify – and satisfy. In fact, I began to suspect that parents in my paediatric practice who complained about their fussy babies were exaggerating. “What’s all the fuss about difficult babies?” I wondered.

Then came Hayden, our fourth, whose birth changed our lives. Our first clue that she was going to be different came within a day or two. “I can’t put her down”, became Martha’s recurrent theme. Breast-feeding for Hayden was not only a source of food, but also a constant source of comfort. Martha became a human pacifier.

Hayden would not accept substitutes. She was constantly in arms and at her mother’s breast – and after a while those arms and breasts would get tired. Hayden’s cries were not mere complaints, they were all-out alarms. Well-meaning friends suggested, “Just put her down and let her cry it out.” That didn’t work at all. Her extraordinary persistence kept her crying. Her cries did not fade away. They intensified if we didn’t respond.

Hayden was very good at teaching us what she needed. “As long as we hold her, she’s content” became our baby-care slogan. If we tried letting her fuss, she only fussed harder. We played “pass the baby”. When Martha’s arms gave out, into mine Hayden came. We used a front-pack carrier we had saved from brother Peter’s baby days, but Hayden liked it only when we were out walking.

Nights were not bad in the early months, considering how intense she was by day. But around six months that all changed, and her nights became high-need. She rejected her cot as if it were a cage. After fourteen hours of baby holding, we longed for some nighttime relief. Hayden had other plans. As soon as we put her down in her cot and tried to creep out of the bedroom, she would awaken, howling in protest at having been left alone. Martha would nurse her back to sleep in the rocking chair, then put her back into her cot, and after an hour or less she would awaken again, demanding a repeat of the rocking-chair-and-nursing routine. It soon became evident that Hayden’s need for human contact was as high at night as it was during the day.

how we felt

If Hayden had been our first child, we would have concluded that it was our fault she couldn’t settle herself, since we were inexperienced parents. But she was our fourth child, and by this time we felt we had a handle on caring for children. Nevertheless, Hayden did cause us to doubt our parenting abilities. Our confidence was getting shaky as our energy reserves were nearing empty. Our feelings about Hayden were as erratic as her behaviour. Some days we were empathetic and nurturing; other days we were exhausted, confused, and resentful of her constant demands. Such mixed feelings were foreign to us, especially after parenting three easily managed babies. Soon it became obvious that Hayden was a different kind of baby. She was wired differently from other babies.

lesson

It wasn’t our fault. Hayden fussed because of her temperament, not because of our parenting abilities.

The challenge for us was to figure out how to mother and father this unique little person while also conserving enough energy for our other three children – and ourselves.

Our first obstacle to overcome was our professional past. We were educated in the fifties and sixties, so we were victims of the prevailing parenting mind-set of those times – fear of spoiling. We entered parenthood believing it was mandatory to control our children lest they control us. And there was that horrible fear of being manipulated. Were we losing control? Was Hayden manipulating us? We consulted books, a useless exercise. No baby book contained a chapter on Hayden. And the mostly male authors were either beyond child-rearing age or seemed far removed from the trenches of everyday baby tending. Yet here we were, two experienced adults, whose lives were being taken over by a ten-pound infant.

Hayden opened us up as people. The turning point came when we closed the baby books and opened our hearts to our child. Instead of defensively getting caught up in the fear of spoiling, we started listening to what Hayden had been trying to tell us from the moment she exited the womb. As soon as we discarded our preconceived ideas of how babies are supposed to be and accepted the reality of how Hayden was, we all got along much better.

If she fussed when we put her down but was content when we held her, we would hold her. If she needed to feed a lot, Martha would feed her. We believed Hayden knew what she needed, and fortunately she had the persistence to keep telling us until we understood.

lesson

Hayden’s persistent personality forced us to keep working at a parenting style until we found what worked.

Hayden taught us that tiny babies don’t manipulate, they communicate. A child psychologist friend who was visiting us was interested in Hayden’s cry. She was impressed that the cry was not an angry, demanding one but rather an expectant one, as if Hayden knew she would be heard.

Hayden caused us to re-evaluate our job description as parents. We had always thought an effective parent needed to be in constant control. Then we realized that mind-set was self-defeating. It assumes that there is an adversarial relationship between parent and child: the baby is “out to get you”, so you better get her first. Hayden made us realize our role was not to control her. It was to manage her, and to help her learn to control herself.

What helped us get over the fear-of-spoiling and the fear-of-being-manipulated mind-set was the realization that it was better to err on the side of being over-reactive and over-responsive. As we worked on developing a balance of appropriate responses, there were times when we responded too slowly and times when we jumped too quickly, but we felt that when in doubt, it was better to be responsive. Children who are perhaps indulged a bit (as many firstborn high-need children are) will at least develop a healthy self-image and trust in their parents. With this foundation it is easier to back off a bit as you try to create a healthy balance between parents’ needs and child’s. The child of parents who respond too little develops a poor self-image, and a distance develops between parent and child. This situation is harder to remedy. I have never heard parents in my paediatric practice say that they wish they hadn’t held their baby so much. In fact, most, if able to rewind their parenting tape, would hold their baby more.

lesson

When in doubt, we listened and responded to her cries. She was trying to tell us something.

We also considered one of the earliest teachings that Martha had learned as a nurse and I had learned as a physician: first, do no harm (primum non nocere). We decided that if we tried to squelch Hayden’s personality, we would be doing her harm and crippling her development. Our job as parents was not to change Hayden into a behavioural clone of every other baby. It would have been wrong to try to change her. (How dull the world would be if all babies acted the same!) It was better to widen our expectations and accept her the way she was, not the way we wished she was. Our parental role was like that of a gardener: we couldn’t change the colour of the flower or the day when it would bloom, but we could pull the weeds and prune the plant so it blossomed more beautifully. Our role was to channel Hayden’s behaviour and nurture her special qualities so that instead of being a liability, these temperament traits would later work to her advantage and serve her well.

lesson

Our job was to accept Hayden’s unique personality, appreciate her special traits, and channel them into behaviour that would work for her, and for the family. It was not to change her for our own convenience.

Sleep, or rather the lack of it, became a major problem. Actually, for the first six months Hayden slept quite well, waking once or twice at night to be fed. She slept in a cradle right next to our bed, and when she stirred, Martha would nudge the cradle into motion or pat her. Unless she was hungry, she’d settle right back to sleep. Then Hayden learned to sit up, and the cradle was no longer safe. We replaced it with a cot up against the wall about twelve feet from our bed. Somehow she knew that was too far away, or maybe it was that the cot couldn’t be nudged to rock. She woke more and more, until one night she was awake every hour. Martha said, “I don’t care what the books say, I’ve got to get some sleep.” Whereupon she nestled Hayden next to her in our bed. Once we discarded the picture of a self-soothing baby sleeping solo in a cot, we slept together happily.

lesson

Hayden was not a standard baby, and standard baby advice wouldn’t work. Once we regarded her not as a behaviour problem to be fixed but as a personality to be nurtured, living with her became easier.

We found we had to be selective in choosing people with whom to commiserate. When we discussed our parenting dilemmas with friends, we came away feeling as if Hayden were the only baby in the whole wide world who couldn’t satisfy herself during the day or settle herself at night. We concluded that no one could understand a baby like Hayden unless they’d had a baby like Hayden. Eventually, Martha found some like-minded mothers and surrounded herself with supportive friends. One of these women was a La Leche League leader who had recently moved to our community. A La Leche League group was started, and the mothers who came to the meetings gave and received valuable support.

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We stopped complaining to people who didn’t have a child like Hayden. Instead, we looked for support from people who truly understood our child and our parenting style.

what to call her

Hayden didn’t fit any of the usual labels. She really wasn’t a “fussy” baby, as long as we held her and attended to her needs. “Demanding”, was just another way of saying, “spoiled”. She wasn’t “colicky”, since she didn’t seem to be in pain. Nor did the tag “difficult” ring true; some may beg to differ, but we were finding that holding and being near a baby to whom we were becoming so attached was not all that difficult. Besides, these labels were too negative for this little person who seemed to know so positively what she needed and how to get it. It wasn’t until five years later, after talking with other parents of babies who also needed to feed so often, needed to be held a lot, needed human contact at night, that the term “high-need child” came to us. It best describes the kind of baby Hayden was and the level of parenting she needed.

In my paediatric practice, I discovered that the term “high-need child” was P.C. – psychologically correct. By the time drained parents came to me for counselling about their demanding baby, they had already been on the receiving end of a barrage of negatives: “You hold her too much.” “It must be your milk.” “She’s controlling you.” All this advice left parents with the underlying message of “bad baby because of bad parenting”. They felt it was somehow their fault their baby acted this way. As soon as I offered the description “high-need child”, I could see a look of relief on the faces of the parents. Finally, someone had something nice to say about their baby. “High-need” sounds special, intelligent, unique, and it shifts the focus to the baby’s personality, relieving parents from the guilt of believing that their baby acts this way because of their parenting. Further, “high-need” suggests that there is something parents can do to help this baby. It underscores the idea that these babies simply need more: more touch, more understanding, more sensitivity, more creative parenting.

lesson

Redefining our baby in more positive terms helped us focus on her exciting qualities rather than her inconvenient ones.

our high-need child grew and changed

Needs change, but with Hayden her need level remained high. Hayden became a high-need toddler, then a high-need child, and we now tease her about being a “high-cost” teen. Her needs did not decrease as she grew; they merely changed (and so did our responses!)

Since as a baby Hayden did not willingly accept substitute care, we started something new in our town – we took our baby with us. With three older children, we had a lot of school meetings and events to attend, plus social gatherings with friends and hospital colleagues, sailing outings, church services, and so on. Everyone got used to seeing the three of us there.

Because she was breast-feeding, Martha could easily keep Hayden quiet when it was necessary. Usually, because her needs were satisfied, she was a joy to have around. No one objected to her presence. If it was obviously a “no kids” thing, we just didn’t go.

We thought things would change when Hayden became a toddler, but we were definitely still in attachment-parenting training. We discovered that Hayden could sometimes be left with our thirteen-year-old, Jim, for short times, because she was attached to him. But it didn’t always work. We’d sometimes get called home when Jim’s magic wore off too quickly. Hayden knew her level of tolerance for separation, and we learned not to exceed it.

One of our more vivid memories is that of frantic two-year-old Hayden running after us as we drove away. We stopped, even though we could see that Jim was right behind her, and reassessed our plans to go out alone. As we comforted her, listening carefully to her words and her expressions, we saw that her need to stay with us this time was much greater than our need to leave her behind. It was not hard for us to switch gears. Because of the way Hayden was able to communicate, we did not feel manipulated. The three of us set out together, feeling good about the way that we listened and were heard.

Yes, we occasionally felt a touch of doubt. “Are we creating an eternally dependent child who will never wean from us?” It’s easy to feel that way, because you can see only a short distance into the future. Yet deep down we knew that what we were doing was right. We understood why at age two she couldn’t stay in the nursery at church without one of us with her. When she still wouldn’t at age three, we were embarrassed. Then, lo and behold, at three and a half she happily waved good-bye and didn’t look back as she hurried off to her Sunday school class. What a relief to see her find her wings and experience church as a secure place to be because we had not forced her to be independent before she was ready. Hayden weaned from the breast at four years and from our bed at four and a half, when baby sister Erin arrived. (Of course, we shared these milestones with only a few, select friends. Most assumed Hayden had crossed those bridges long ago.)

attachment parenting

Throughout this book you will read the term “attachment parenting”. This is the parenting style that we began to learn with our first high-need baby and one that has proven to be a valuable management tool for high-need babies whose parents we have counselled. Attachment parenting is a high-touch, highly responsive way of caring for your baby that helps you feel close to your baby and your baby feel close to you. Consequently, your baby is able to cue his needs better and you are more intuitively able to read his cues and needs. It helps you and your baby get connected and helps you enjoy one another more. Actually, attachment parenting is not just for high-need babies. All babies need a higher level of attachment than our culture generally recognizes.

This style of parenting gets you and your baby off to the right start. By breast-feeding, carrying your baby a lot in a sling, and giving a nurturant response to your baby’s cries, you gradually feel more comfortable and competent at baby care and more open to refining your style of parenting until you find what works best for you and your baby, without the fear of spoiling or being manipulated.

Attachment parenting is not an indulgent, unstructured, permissive style of childcare. On the contrary, it teaches parents how to respond appropriately to their child’s needs, which includes knowing when to say no to the child and helping the child learn to manage her own needs. Attachment parenting begins with giving the infant roots, then helps her develop the wings to become independent, and ultimately gives her the tools to become a solid and secure person.

lesson

Hayden not only had higher needs, but they lasted longer.

her discipline needs were higher

We had been used to three compliant kids. When we held their hands, they turned in the direction we wished. With Hayden, we knew compliance would not come easily. Our earliest clue was her body language. Whenever we tried to redirect her impulse, her whole body would stiffen in resistance. We tried to turn her toward a safer activity; she turned toward the street. She was trying on her power. Back to the drawing board for discipline. As Hayden grew, it remained clear that we couldn’t force our control over her – and should not try to. We needed to consider Hayden’s sensitivity in disciplining her. This became more obvious as she got older, and she indicated to us that she needed to be given an active part in her own discipline. Any time we operated solely from our point of view, discipline was a dismal failure.

Hayden as a toddler was a determined explorer, and many times we would have to match her persistence with our own calm determination to stay in charge. When she reached for the knobs on the stereo, for example, we would matter-of-factly remove her to another place in the room and distract her with another activity. We had to repeat this redirection at least fifty times before she got the point. But even when she was only one year old, we felt it was important for us to command her respect.

Hayden’s impulsiveness, we feared, would get her into trouble. She climbed up on furniture or counters only to realize she couldn’t get down. Our knee-jerk reaction, rushing in to interrupt her climbing, only fed her determination, and hovering over her anxiously in these predicaments was enough to make her worry and be less surefooted. So, instead of letting our faces reflect our anxiety, we showed confidence in her ability to climb. Hayden picked up on our confidence in her; she realized that we, too, felt that she could handle the situation. We structured the environment so it was safe to climb, and then assumed the role of spotters, being on standby to catch her if needed. The rest was up to her.

Sometimes it seemed wiser to under-react when Hayden was frustrated. As the first daughter, she was often being aggravated by her three older brothers. Yet we couldn’t be rescuing her each time, nor would we have wanted to, since a certain amount of frustration is necessary for healthy development. So she developed “spunk” very early. If Hayden came running to her in distress, Martha would calmly say to her, “Do you need my help?” Usually Hayden managed on her own, knowing Martha would intervene if the aggravation developed into teasing or harassment.

The older Hayden got and the more experienced we became, the more confident we were in saying no to her. We believed that because she was a solid and secure child she could handle being thwarted at times and not having her needs instantly gratified. After all, the persistent personality of a high-need child sets her up for frustration, so she’d better learn how to handle setbacks.

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Our job was not to prevent frustrations in Hayden’s life, but rather to help her learn how to manage them.

Continuing to command Hayden’s respect was one of our most difficult challenges at every stage of her development, and especially important when it came to the issue of talking back. When she became disrespectful toward Martha, I would quickly intervene, “Hayden, I will not tolerate you talking like that, especially to someone I love.”

It’s easy for a child with a dominating personality to overpower the parents. Out of sheer exhaustion you give up, give in, and take the path of least resistance. Early on, we feared that because of her persistent personality Hayden would have difficulty accepting authority figures. (Our fears were later confirmed.) Dealing with Hayden was a constant contest of wits and wills. Sometimes we simply had to put on our parent-in-charge hat and say, “I’m the parent, you’re the child, that’s that!” Other times we had to walk with her for a while on her path before gradually rerouting her onto ours. This forced us to divide our conflicts into “biggies” (non-negotiable situations that required her compliance) and “smallies” (trivial, yet annoying, situations that threatened neither Hayden’s respect for us nor her emerging self-image).

Early on we realized that learning to live with Hayden meant channelling her unique personality traits to work not only to her advantage but also to our advantage. Her keen awareness made her more sensitive to our moods, so we learned that when Hayden was being childish we had to be “adultish”. Hayden taught us the concept of mirroring: children, especially hypersensitive ones, easily pick up their parents’ moods. If a tantrum was about to erupt and we reflected an “it’s okay, no problem” attitude, she would often mirror our peace and settle down. If we let ourselves get angry or worried about the tantrum, our anxiety just added fuel to her fire. When Hayden protested our instructions and flew into a rage, we needed to stay calm. When she lost her self-control, we had to hang on to ours. If we lost our composure – and many times we did – it took twice as long for her to settle down. Acting like the adult in charge set a calmer mood that helped put a crumbling child back together.

lesson

As difficult as it was to do when Hayden became irritable to irritating, we had to maintain a peaceful presence.

We learned that with Hayden there were certain places that were not suitable for confrontations. (The problem with this insight was that we were often not disciplined enough ourselves to wait for a better time and place.) One of these times, as every parent knows, was mealtime. One of these places was the car. If Hayden felt pushed into a corner, she would typically lash out physically and hit or kick something. One memorable occasion was when she was in the front passenger seat. She was reacting strongly to something I was telling her. Knowing she tended to get physical, I should have backed off until we were in a less confined space, but I didn’t. We still have the broken door on the glove compartment to remind us of that mistake.

Because Hayden was a challenge to our discipline skills, we were forced to get to know her in a way we had not experienced with our sons. The endless hours spent parenting Hayden produced a deep knowledge of who she was as a person, and this in turn helped her understand herself as a person. Rather than muzzling her, by responding to Hayden we rewarded her for being an expressive person. She became a master at expressing her needs and engaging the resources of adult caregivers at a very early age. She was a very resourceful three-year-old. The ability to express herself is an asset that will serve Hayden well as an adult.

As we watched Hayden dominate her peers in playgroups, we saw why she had earned the label “bossy”. Like a quarterback addressing a huddle, she commanded all the kids’ attention, and they lined up to listen as she told them how they were going to play the game. Now, we watch her dominate student council meetings in our living room, and we marvel at how she works on the members until they agree with her point of view.

Hayden early on caused us to re-evaluate the issue of control. We gradually figured out that the child shouldn’t control the parents, or the parents control the child. Yet parents must control situations; when there is no limit-setting, family life is a disaster. We needed to be in charge of Hayden, to give her “house rules” and then control her environment so that it was not difficult for her to comply with these rules.

We were unprepared for the strong-mindedness we encountered in Hayden as a toddler. The older children had responded well to verbal cues. Hayden seemed not to hear us. So, rather than be constantly yelling “no, don’t touch” (which was futile), we taught her that throughout the house there were “yes-touches” and “no-touches”. Our job included making the “yes-touches” more accessible to her than the forbidden things. Hayden could operate from her own inner controls in a setting that communicated order and structure of some sort. (Every family will do this differently.) When she had the opportunity to behave properly, independent of endless no’s from us, she would start to get a sense of her own inner controls. When she’s older and on her own, this set of inner rules will help her operate responsibly and confidently on her own. She’ll feel right when she follows the rules and won’t feel right when she doesn’t. And we learned that in order to set limits and model desirable behaviour, we ourselves had to be disciplined.

lesson

Everything we did with and for Hayden from day one was discipline. We were teaching her the tools to succeed in life.

our needs versus her needs

Toward the middle of Hayden’s first year, we realized that parenting a high-need child could have a better or worse effect on our relationship as husband and wife. Such a child can easily dominate the home. There were times when Martha risked burning out from over-giving. A warning sign of impending burnout was Martha saying: “I don’t even have time to take a shower, Hayden needs me so much.” For Martha’s sake, and ultimately for the sanity of the whole family, I had to remind her, “What Hayden needs most is a happy, rested mother.” It wasn’t enough just to preach. Besides pitching in more around the house and with the older children, I took over with Hayden whenever I could. I would take her for a walk or car ride so that she would be out of Martha’s sight and earshot.

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As a mother, I realized I had to take good care of myself so I could take better care of my baby.

Having a high-need child helped us communicate more maturely with each other. There was always the “our needs versus her needs” dilemma. We had to steal time for ourselves, realizing that even the best parenting can be undermined if the marriage falls apart. I saw how important it was to Martha for me to validate her mothering. I frequently offered not only a reassuring “you know best”, but when I saw that her drive to give was outpacing her energy reserves, I realized I needed to intervene and help. I sometimes wondered when I would ever have my wife back, but then realized we couldn’t rewind this parenting tape. I was an adult, and Hayden would go through this stage only once.

From Martha’s perspective, this balancing act was more easily said than done. There were plenty of times when I managed to let my own neediness send Martha double messages (“I’ve got needs, too, you know”). She would feel this pressure even when I thought I was doing a good job putting Martha’s and Hayden’s needs ahead of my own. And we both quickly found out that it is difficult for some women to accept help with the responsibility of baby care even when they need it a lot. They often can’t see that they need nurturing for themselves. Nor do they know how to make their own needs a high priority. We discovered that Martha was very good at taking care of everyone else but really did not know how to take care of herself. (We are still working on this seventeen years later.)

how we grew – the payoff

As Hayden grew, her neediness remained but her personality blossomed. One of the earliest qualities we noticed was her sensitivity, her ability to care and comfort when playmates were hurt or upset. As a preschooler, she had already developed a keen sense of justice and social values. Often she would say, “That’s not right” or “How sad.” Her love of people and her ability to connect with them was another payoff we witnessed. She would be aware of other children who needed mothering, and she would do what she could to help. Her sense of intimacy was appropriate, giving eye contact or a touch on the arm during a conversation. She had a confident way of being in the presence of adults. A child psychiatrist who was at our home one evening remarked, “Hayden knows where her body is in space.” We knew what that meant. Because she had been held and nursed and responded to appropriately, Hayden already had a good sense of herself as a unique physical presence and she responded to others in their uniqueness. She was able even then to affirm each person she met. Since Hayden was used to being understood and responded to, she could express herself comfortably. This ability, combined with her high energy, caused us to joke about our “Sarah Bernhardt”. It’s no wonder that through her grade school and high school years, she enjoyed and excelled at being onstage. Her chosen course of study in college, if you haven’t already guessed, is psychology and drama.

As Hayden matured as a person, we were maturing as parents. Gradually and subtly our parenting style, besides being nurturing to Hayden, became a source of growth for us. Hayden’s high needs caused us to stretch ourselves to higher levels of giving with the ever-present challenge of balancing Hayden’s needs with the rest of the family’s. Hayden opened us up to be more flexible, more patient, and more disciplined. We came to realize that, although there are a few basic principles of good parenting that apply to every child and every temperament, how parents apply these principles is affected, for better or for worse, by the need level of the child. Compliant babies who can be put down in a cot while awake and who fall asleep on their own will accept a less intensive style of nighttime parenting. Compliant children will often switch gears from their agenda to their parents’ at the slightest suggestion and come immediately when called to dinner from a distance. High-need children, on the other hand, need an eye-to-eye summons before switching from their agenda to yours.

Parenting high-need children has matured us as individuals, too. High-need children push buttons that reveal pleasant and unpleasant scenes from our childhoods. Parenting Hayden led us to make personal discoveries about how we ourselves were parented, and how this was affecting us as adults. When these flashbacks surfaced, we soon learned which ones we could use to our parenting advantage and which ones to discard, for example, the impulse to smack. Some people would have considered Hayden’s behaviour cause for smacking, but we realized that she needed a different kind of “hands-on” discipline.

Hayden also caused our marriage to mature. We became very different partners as a result of our experience with parenting a high-need child. We knew that the best parenting requires two parents in the home. As tempting as it was for Martha to throw herself totally into mothering, she wisely directed some energy toward me. We have become much more sensitive to each other’s temperaments and better at anticipating each other’s needs. We have continued to avail ourselves of marriage-enrichment opportunities and plain old “enjoying time” together often.

Now that Hayden is about to leave the nest and enter college, we look back at our parenting with few regrets. We cannot take all the credit or blame for the person she becomes, yet it’s comforting to know we gave her a good start. The rest is up to Hayden.

Hayden has gone from being a high-need child to a high-energy teen. Her life as a baby is chronicled in our earlier book The Fussy Baby. She sometimes opens that book and shows her friends, “That’s me.” One prom night, as she stood posed for her picture, she looked so grown up in her formal gown. I whispered to Martha, “Fussy baby fills out”, and this mature teen-woman gave her daddy a wink. As she was escorted out the door, our minds and hearts filled with flashbacks of those countless energy-draining scenes of babyhood, toddlerhood, and childhood. Martha and I looked at each other and thought, “It’s been a long and bumpy road, yet all that time in arms, at breast, and in our bed, the many discipline confrontations, and the years of high-touch parenting have produced a confident, compassionate, caring person. It has all been worthwhile.”