Help for Those who are Seriously Depressed.

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We all heard the sad news this past weekend that Pastor Rick Warren’s (of Purpose-Driven Life fame) youngest son, Matthew (27) committed suicide after a lifelong struggle with mental illness.

Times like this can be very difficult for people with serious depression and those who love them.  The depressed patient can begin to worry, “What if my mind runs away with me?  What if I lose control?”   Likewise the loved ones of a depressed patient can worry, “What if I’m missing some signs that the person I care about is suffering more than I know?”

IF YOU ARE DEPRESSED  here are a few thing that can be very helpful.

1.  Discuss your concerns about your feelings both with a professional and with the person/people you most love and trust.

Even if you aren’t thinking about hurting yourself, if news like the story of Matthew Warren’s suicide is unsettling to you, talk about it both with the people who care for you and are responsible for your care.  Feelings are most dangerous when they are left in the dark.   Get things out in the open where you can keep an eye on them.  If you aren’t working with a professional, please consider contacting someone today.  The vast majority of clients who suffer with depression are very responsive to psychological treatment if they get appropriate help.  Even if you don’t think your depression is “that bad,” getting help when depression is still mild or moderate enables you to get things back on track before depression completely knocks you off your feet.

2.  Avoid Alcohol or Drugs

It is never a good ideas for a person with depression to drink or use medications (or illicit drugs) that have a depressant effect (i.e., any medications that caution you against operating heavy machinery).    Depression already impairs a person’s problem-solving abilities and makes a person higher-risk for engaging in impulsive, or destructive behaviors.  Alcohol or depressant drugs can increase that potential exponentially.  No one thinks they are at risk.   If you are depressed, don’t drink and be sure to discuss your depression with any doctor prescribing meds with a depressant effect.

3.  Maintain your Spiritual Practices

Depression makes us feel like we can’t go it alone and when you feel like you’re in over your head you need as much outside help as you can get.  Staying connected with God’s grace in these challenging time can help you feel like he is multiplying your limited time and emotional resources just like he multiplied the loaves and the fish.  If you can’t keep up your prayer life on your own, find a prayer partner–ideally your spouse or a close and spiritually mature friend–with whom you can pray every day and who can help keep you accountable.

4. Take care of your body.

Depression makes you want to neglect self-care.  Maintain  a schedule for self-care and stick to it whether you feel like it or not.  Have a regular bed time.  Wake up at the same time every day.  Eat at least three square meals a day.  Engage is some kind of physical activity.  You don’t have to exhaust yourself but you have to move somehow.  If you can’t do it alone, find someone to do it with.

5.  Maintain your relationships.

Depression makes you want to isolate.  You don’t really enjoy being around people–in fact its draining–so why bother?   Regardless of how you feel about it, don’t stop being social. The more you withdraw the bigger a companion depression, itself, becomes.  Depression is a very bad friend.  On a day when you’re feeling a little stronger, tell your friends that you don’t ever want them to take “no” for an answer.  You’ll hate them when they force you to go out with them, but when you’re recovered, you’ll be glad to have such caring people in your life.

6.  Stay Connected to Help

I know I started this reflection with a recommendation to reach out for professional help, but it bears repeating.  Treatment works.  Don’t delay.  The sooner you can get help the better.  Contact your local resources or contact us through the Pastoral Solutions Institute to arrange to speak with a faithful Catholic counselor.

For Additional Help…

IF YOU ARE HARBORING THOUGHTS OF HARMING YOURSELF, CLICK HERE

DO YOU HAVE A LOVED ONE WHO IS SUFFERING WITH DEPRESSION?  Click here to discover how you can help.

 

 

Mandated Infertility “Treatment” for Homosexual Couples

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I have to admit that even I didn’t see this coming.  As you read this, try to remember that homosexual couples aren’t infertile.  It is simply physically impossible for them to procreate.  But if gay marriage is, in fact, equal to marriage, then this is the kind of thing that no one will be able to stop.

Should health insurers be legally required to offer infertility treatment for gay couples? Yes, according to a bill (AB 460) filed in the California legislature by assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). In fact, refusing to do so should be a crime.

Current California law requires group health plans to offer coverage for infertility treatments with the exception of in vitro fertilization (IVF). If such coverage is purchased, benefits must be paid whenever “a demonstrated condition recognized by a licensed physician and surgeon as a cause for infertility” has been diagnosed—or upon “the inability to conceive a pregnancy or to carry a pregnancy to a live birth after a year of regular sexual relations without contraception.” Thus, under current law, diagnosis of a physical reason for the inability to conceive or sire a child is not required. It is enough that a couple tried to get pregnant for a year and failed.

According to the fact sheet supporting AB 460, the trouble is that some insurance companies “are not complying with current law that prohibits discrimination” based on sexual orientation. Instead, they are denying infertility treatment benefits “based on [the policy holder’s] not having an opposite sex married partner in which to have one year of regular sexual relations without conception.” AB 460 would amend the law to add the following language:

Coverage for the treatment of infertility shall be offered and provided without discrimination on the basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, domestic partner status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.    MORE

So, the next time someone asks you how gay marriage will actually change anything, show them this.

You’re not fat. You’re Happily Married.

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(H/T PsychCentral) “It’s pretty well-established that marriage is associated with weight gain, and divorce is associated with weight loss,” said Dr. Andrea Meltzer, assistant professor of psychology. “But the extent to which satisfaction plays a role hasn’t been examined until now.”

The outcome of the study, found in the journal Health Psychology, was uncertain from the start.

Prior research has found that satisfying relationships are actually helpful in promoting good health practices. But Meltzer notes that those studies focused more on behaviors — such as taking medication on time or getting an annual physical — than weight.

Literature on mating, meanwhile, has shown that weight-maintenance is motivated primarily by a desire to attract a partner.

From this perspective, it makes sense that keeping svelte could be a function of dissatisfaction, and a desire to get back on the market.

To test which of these models held true, Meltzer and her co-authors tracked 169 newlyweds (married within the previous six months) for four years, checking in biannually to assess such measures as height, weight, marital satisfaction, stress, steps toward divorce and so on.

Upon analyzing the results, they found that more satisfied couples gained more weight — even controlling for confounding factors such as pregnancy.

“It was a relatively small amount of weight,” said Meltzer, who used changes in body mass index to assess this. “But we only looked at a snapshot of the first four years; if you take one of those happy marriages that go on for 20, 30, 40 years, it could potentially become unhealthy.”

In fact, a 2007 study of nearly 8,000 people found that over a five-year period, married men gained six more pounds than their same-aged bachelor buddies, while wedded women gained nine more pounds than their single counterparts.

As for why a happy marriage is correlated with a heavier physique, researchers can only speculate.

“What I think is happening is that people are thinking about weight maintenance in terms of appearance as opposed to health,” said Meltzer.

“The individuals who were buffered from weight-gain were the ones who were considering going back into the mating market and having to find a new partner, which suggests it has something to do with looks.”

The sheer stress of a breakup is also known to make the pounds melt off. And in a recent study out of Rutgers University, it was found that women in low-quality relationships were more likely to crash diet.

Meltzer suggests that happy couples who consider weight in terms of health, as opposed to appearance, may be able to avoid the costs at the scale.

 

 

I Totally Did Not Plan This…

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But here you go.  Do you remember this and this?

Now there’s this…

Provocative new animal research suggests that the ability to manage stress is not genetically hardwired into our brain. Rather the brain learns from early experiences and develops pathways that prepare the brain for future challenges.

Using a number of cutting-edge approaches, including optogenetics, researchers at Canada’s University of Calgary discovered that stress circuits in the brain undergo profound learning early in life.

Stress circuits consist of the interaction between the nervous system and stress hormones—specifically, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

In the study, Jaideep Bains, Ph.D., and colleagues learned that stress circuits are capable of self-tuning following a single stress.

These findings demonstrate that the brain uses stress experience during early life to prepare and optimize for subsequent challenges.

The team was able to show the existence of unique time windows following brief stress challenges during which learning is either increased or decreased. By manipulating specific cellular pathways, they uncovered the key players responsible for learning in stress circuits in an animal model.

The findings are discussed in two studies published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

“These new findings demonstrate that systems thought to be ‘hard-wired’ in the brain, are in fact flexible, particularly early in life,” says Bains.

“Using this information, researchers can now ask questions about the precise cellular and molecular links between early life stress and stress vulnerability or resilience later in life.”

Stress vulnerability, or increased sensitivity to stress, has been implicated in numerous health conditions including cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and depression.

Although these studies used animal models, similar mechanisms mediate disease progression in humans.

“Our observations provide an important foundation for designing more effective preventative and therapeutic strategies that mitigate the effects of stress and meet society’s health challenges,” he says.

Source: University of Calgary

 

The Mission of the Catholic Parent: Just Do Your Best?

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When it comes to parenting, I see a lot of Catholic moms and dads falling back on, “Everybody has to do what works for them.  We all just have to do what works best for us.”

Of course this is true on a certain level.  All we can do is our best.  But that begs the question, “What does doing our best as Catholic parents really require?  What does ‘doing our best’ mean?”   Does it mean, “do what comes naturally?”  Does it mean, “do what’s easiest or most familiar?”  Does it mean, “Do what my parents did?”  How do we know what doing our best as Catholic parents really entails, and how do we know if we’re really doing it?

EMBRACE LOVE:  LEAVE GUILT BEHIND

Here’s the thing.  I don’t ever want any parent to feel guilty about the choices they make in good conscience.  But I do want parents to make choices in light of their mission to bear witness to the Catholic vision of love.    We should all want that.  As Catholic parents, we can’t just settle for getting through the day. The Church counts on us to show the world that there is more to family life than mere survival.  The Church counts on us to show the world that life is made joyful through heroic acts of self-donative love.    Granted, some days,  all we can do is survive, and we should be proud of what we’ve managed to accomplish even on those days–because, sometimes, that can be a powerful witness too–but we can never forget that, for the Catholic, the goal isn’t just getting through the day however we can.  The goal is getting through the day in the way that allows us to be the best example of responsible, self-donative love to our spouse, our kids, and yes, the world.

Again, the point is not to flog yourself because you didn’t do this and you didn’t do that.  If that’s you’re approach to personal growth and walking the path to spiritual perfection, then you’re looking at it entirely the wrong way.  The truth is, God loves you just the way you are–but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.   There’s nothing to feel guilty about in that.   Likewise, God may be grateful for the parent that you are, but he loves you too much to want you to settle for that.  However good a parent you are, God wants to give your family even more  love.  As parents we’re going to have to stretch our arms wide to even begin to receive it all.  Asking your self if you can do better as a parent isn’t about guilt.  It’s about opening our arms wide to receive the love God wants to transform our homes with.

PARENTS: MORE INSECURE THAN EVER

 Leslie, a commenter in the Mommy Wars thread, wrote, “we are more insecure about parenting these days because most of us have so little experience with children. We grow up in smaller families, where olders aren’t often expected to care for youngers.  No self respecting teenager spends much time babysitting. They have social, sport, and academic pursuits to fill their ore college resume. In college, we train to become professionals, doctors and lawyers and such.  On the whole, we don’t think about children until we are pregnant–and then, as you note our thinking of ourselves, a significant part of our worry is our own bodies. In the end, when our first child won’t sleep or throws her first tantrum, we have little perspective to figure out if this is a typical tantrum or something of deeper significance.  So we fret and are susceptible to every expert theory. We have to figure everything out from scratch.”

That’s a terrific point.  But here’s the good news.  Catholic parents don’t have to figure everything out from scratch.   The Church gives us a beautiful vision of family life rooted in a radical example of self-donative love.  All we have to do is keep that vision in the forefront of our minds and strive for that.  Some days we’ll hit it, some days we won’t but we can never take our eyes off the vision.

CLING TO THE CATHOLIC VISION OF LOVE

We especially need to keep that vision in mind when we choose what expert theory to follow.  As Lisa and I point out in Parenting with Grace, there’s a reason  every parenting expert says that their way is the “one, right way” to parent and then goes on to contradict every other parenting expert who says that their way is also the “one right way to parent.”  The reason they do this is that each parenting author is spelling out the methods that have been shown–through research and just good old fashioned, life experience–to be most likely to raise a kid that matches that parenting author’s value system and worldview.  Dobson teaches parents to raise kids with an Evangelical Protestant worldview.  Brazelton teaches you how to rasie kids who have a typical suburban, middle class American worldview, and so and and so on.  They’re all “correct” ways of parenting because they are all catechetical programs for passing on the author’s unique views about life, morality, relationship, and values.  In Parenting with Grace, Lisa and I spend the entire first chapter presenting what the Catholic vision of family life is and why we think our methods have been shown to serve that vision.  You don’t have to agree with us, but at least you know where we’re coming from.  Other parenting authors aren’t so honest.  They’ll tell you theirs is the “right way” to parent, but they won’t tell you what value system they think is the right one to parent toward.

PARENTING STYLE IS CATECHESIS FOR LIVING–WHETHER OR NOT YOU MEAN IT TO BE.

In choosing the experts you listen to, as a Catholic parent, you can’t just settle for asking, “How will this expert help me solve the immediate problem in front of my face right now.”  You have to ask. “How does this expert’s views of family life mesh with the Catholic vision of self-donative love I am called to be an example of?”  Why?  Because, presumably, you want to raise a kid who will grow up to be a faithful Catholic.  If that’s your goal, it makes no sense to teach your kid Catholic prayers and Catholic catechism but raise them to exhibit the values and worldview of a Evangelical Protestant or secular American capitalist.

Cardinal George once made the observation that Catholics in America are “Catholic in piety but Calvinist in worldview.”  Why?  Primarily because families are the crucibles of culture and Catholic parents keep turning to Protestant and secular parenting experts to learn how to create their family culture.  Then we wonder why our kids–who were taken to Mass, and served at the Altar, and went to Catholic school, and said the rosary, and did all those other pious, Catholic things–grow up and toddle off to the First Evangelical Church of the Big Box or don’t go to church at all.   It’s largely because Catholic parents teach our kids Catholic piety, but raise our kids according to the values and worldviews espoused by protestant and secular parenting “experts.”

LOVE GOD AND THE CHIRCH FIRST THEN DO WHAT YOU WILL.

The point is, Catholic parents are certainly free to parent however they want.  But by buying into the “we all have to do what works best for us” line, too many Catholic parents raise kids with a vision of family life that is almost completely antithetical to the Catholic vision of self-donative love we are all called to be examples of.  Doing so, we pay the price by creating families that don’t look any different than our neighbors’ families and by raising kids who wonder what all the Catholic fuss is about when our home doesn’t actually function differently than the neighbors’–except for how many more rules we have.

So yes, by all means, choose those parenting methods that “work best for you.’  But be sure that what you mean by “works best” is “helps me create a family that does the best job possible living out the Catholic vision of self-donative love” and not, “helps me get through the day with the least effort possible.”

 

The Mother of All Battles: How to End the Mommy Wars

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As I mentioned below, my post on sleep training netted some deeply anguished and angry responses, most of which I didn’t post because while I’m happy to permit critical comments, I tend not to publish comments I think you’ll regret when you calm down.

One commenter welcomed me, tongue-in-cheek,  to the Mommy Wars.  Of course, I’ve reluctantly been on the front lines of the Mommy Wars for over a decade now, since Parenting with Grace (the first and only book to apply the theology of the body to family life and parenting) came out.

Since we’re talking about anger today on More2Life, I thought I’d reflect a bit on the mommy wars and what’s behind the anger that drives them. I want to say, up front, that although I am very publicly alligned with certain factions in the battle, I have never intentionally tried to antagonize or shame any parent for the way they parent and, at any rate, everything I’m about to say applies equally to every combatant in the mommy wars no matter what side you find yourself on.  If you have ever felt caught in the mommy war crossfire or ever borne a banner in battle, this post is for you.

MOMMY WARS:  MISSING THE POINT

The more I read about these parenting battles the more I’ve come to see that they entirely miss the point.

You see, parenting is supposed to be about children. Period.  We wouldn’t be parents without them , therefore it makes sense it should be about them.  Regardless of the approach you take, the parenting style we choose should reflect our belief that this the best approach to take, not in general, but with this particular child.  God gives us the children we need.  We accept that gift by responding to the unique needs that child brings to the family and responding generously to those needs.  If we do this, we create a “community of love” wherein we grow into more loving, responsible, people, and our children are challenged to be more loving and responsible people–first by our example, and later by the requirements we place on them through good discipline.

Unfortunately, for many parents, and especially those parents who are most vocal in the parenting wars, parenting is not about children.  It is about them. It is too tempting to choose a parenting style that is going to make me feel good about me.  To pick on my own crowd for a moment, I know too many parents who choose attachment parenting not out of a real desire to get to know their child better but because they have friends who do it at church and they want to fit in.  Or because they feel like if they don’t do it they’ll be “bad moms” or bad Catholics.  I also know plenty of moms (and dads) who choose Guarendi, or Dobson, or Ezzo, or Brazelton, or whomever for the same reason.   The wars between the people who think this way about parenting are so intense because their parenting choices do not reflect a desire to be present to their children as much as they reflect a desire to find validation through their children.

MOMMY WARS:  WHY SO INTENSE?

Look, everyone is insecure about their parenting choices.  I get that.  That’s normal.  Everyone wants to do right by our kids and we’re all afraid, deep down, that we’re going to screw them up.  Again, that’s normal.   But people who exhibit this normal degree of parenting insecurity can look at other parents who are doing things differently, engage those parents in respectful discussions, and learn from each other.  They evaluate what other parents are doing by how responsive those parents seem to be to their children and how they imagine behaving similarly might make them more responsive to their own children.

By contrast, parents looking to find validation through their children tend to act as if kids are secondary to other goals.   They tend to ask questions like, “How can I parent in a way that allows me to have the life I want?”  Or, “How can I parent in a way that allows me to have the family I imagine I’d like to have  (as opposed to dealing with the family I actually have)?”  Now, there’s nothing wrong with parents getting their own needs and wishes met…too, but these parents tend to buy into the idea that “as long as I’m happy the kids will be too” and they parent that way–whether its good for their kids or not.  And if it’s not good for their kids, then its their kids’ fault for not getting with the program.

And then, they get online and fight with each other, because, “How dare you tell me that what I want for my life is wrong.”    The Mommy Wars are so vicious because there is a subtext that no one is willing to admit.  The Mommy Wars are really not fighting over the best way to take care of kids or being a good parent.  The Mommy Wars are really about fighting over  best way to get what parents really want (e.g., validation, a sense of accomplishment, psychological healing,  etc.) while they also take care of their kids.

THE SOLUTION:  SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM

I would like to make a respectful suggestion.   I fully acknowledge that parents have needs and, furthermore, that parents have a right to have those needs met.  But we can only find true happiness when the means we employ to meet our needs are respectful of the people we are in community with, including our children. When we try to do something else, inevitably it all falls apart.  Whatever parenting style you choose should respect the best interests of your unique and unrepeatable child first.  Then pray about the rest of the desires of your heart.  Scripture tells us that if we seek first the Kingdom of God then the other things we desire will be given to us (Matt 6:33).  Scripture likewise tells us that we seek the Kingdom of God in our lives by fully attending to the least (our children) first (Matt 25:40).  When we do that, if we have other desires remaining (and most of us will) then we can bring them to God and let him teach us how to meet those desires in a manner that is respectful of our call to be fully present to the least first.  And if we do that, the Mommy (and Daddy) Wars will cease because we will all stop trying to seek fulfillment through our kids, or in spite of our kids, and find fulfillment in meeting our needs while being present to our kids.

—Dr. Gregory Popcak is the founder of the Pastoral Solutions Institute which provides Catholic tele-counseling services for couples, families and individuals around the world.  Call 740-266-6461 to make an appointment with a professional, Catholic counselor.

Theology of the Body & Sleep Training–Part Deux (Or, every time you sleep-train, does a puppy really die?)

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My post on sleep training, learned helplessness and the TOB predictably netted a lot of comments.  Many of those comments were not posted because they did not reflect well on the correspondent and I feel strongly that it is my job to protect people’s dignity.  I’m happy to publish criticisms, but  I won’t post something that I think you’ll regret when you calm down.

But some comments were stellar.  One exchange I had with Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann was, I felt, worthy of it’s own post.  While, as you can see, I disagreed with her comments, I appreciated her points.  I hope you enjoy the exchange.

Dear Dr. Popcak,

I want to personally thank you for all your excellent writing.  I’ve been a fan of yours from a distance for some time.  I promote your work on my blog under “Parenting Resources” at: http://www.catholicpediatrics.com/resources/parenting

In general I am a supporter of most aspects of attachment parenting.  I would, however, like to bring to your attention a September, 2012 article from the journal Pediatrics.  In case you don’t have access to their full-text articles, here is a popular press summary of the study: http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/10/its-o-k-to-let-babies-cry-it-out-at-bedtime/

I am assuming the study you refer to in your post is the August 2011 study from Early Human Development, “Asynchrony of mother–infant hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity following extinction of infant crying responses induced during the transition to sleep.”  It’s a very interesting study.  I agree that persistently elevated cortisol levels show that there isn’t a lot of “self-soothing” taking place.  But I think, as parents and health care professionals, we have to ask ourselves the larger question, “What are the negative consequences of this physiologic sign of persistent stress?” 

I feel it is a big jump to equate this persistent rise in cortisol of a baby who cries him or herself to sleep with the learned helplessness of the studies you cite above.  The stressors in each case were different.  They are not equivalent experiments.  There is no data to suggest that babies who “cry it out” have an increase risk of depression or anxiety disorders as you suggest in your second to last paragraph.  The Pediatrics study I cite above actually showed the opposite– that babies who “cried it out” did not have increased risk of emotional, psychological, or behavioral disorders at age 6.  In fact, babies who were in the control group (not left to “cry it out”) actually had a higher risk of behavior disorders. 

Dr. Popcak, I also love Theology of the Body, and as a pediatrician I have found TOB an invaluable tool for teaching healthy sexuality to children and adolescents.  Please see my project, Text4RealSex, http://www.Text4RealSex.com.   To the best of my knowledge, however, Blessed John Paul II never mentions baby’s crying and sleep patterns in his development of Theology of the Body.  When we elaborate on TOB themes and apply them to new situations, as I often do, I think it is important to indicate that these are our thoughts, not JPII’s. 

There are many tired parents out there struggling to deal with crying babies.  I think we have to be very careful before we lead parents to think that they are causing irreparable harm to their infants or violating the teachings of the Catholic Church. 

Thank you for your faithfulness and your beautiful commitment to Catholic parenting and mental health. 

Warmest Regards,

Kathleen M. Berchelmann, MD Pediatrician Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital

 

Dr. Berchelmann,

Thank you for your excellent comments. I appreciate your wisdom and your expertise.

As you know, good vagal tone  (note:  the vagus nerve resets the stress-out body to a normal unstressed state.  “Vagal tone”  refers to the efficiency with which the vagus nerve rests the body’s stress signs) is associated with healthy emotional regulation and greater resistance to both depression and anxiety. I’m sure you are also aware that long term cortisol exposure is antithetical to developing good vagal tone.

I want to be clear that I am not saying–as some have accused me in an attempt to exaggerate my point to make it easier to dismiss me–that sleep training causes “brain damage.” (Or, for that matter, as some have accused me of saying, that parents who sleep train are “abusers”  or “bad Catholics”  or for that mater, that every time a parent sleep-trains a baby, a puppy dies.)  What I am saying is that the idea of self-soothing in infancy is a convenient fiction.  What is the mechanism or process infants use to self-soothe?  How does this magic happen?  Everything I know about developmental psychology says that it isn’t possible.  Unless someone can show me the process of self-soothing, I have to assume that the idea that babies can self-soothe is wishful thinking at best and junk science at worst.  There is just no evidence that it can be done.  So, if the baby isn’t self-soothing, what IS happening?  Well, the evidence would appear to show that what is happening is learned helplessness.  When cortisol levels are elevated for a long-enough period that help seeking behavior is extinguished in the presence sustained stress, that is learned helplessness.

Now, it is a fair question to ask just how damaging this degree of learned helplessness really is, but I don’t think there is a question that it is, indeed, damaging to at least some degree. I don’t know of a single study that suggests learned helplessness is a good thing.  How helpless should anyone want to feel?

I appreciate the study you cite, and I have read it before, but to my eyes all it is saying is that sleep training gets babies to sleep and when babies sleep moms and dads are happy.  But to go from that to say that sleep training is safe begs the question of how sleep training actually works.  What is the mechanism?  If the mechanism is self-soothing, then how does that actually happen?  If the mechanism is learned helplessness, well then, let’s admit that and deal with the reality of the situation.  Maybe a little learned helplessness is a good thing maybe its not, but let’s not be too cowardly to ask the question.  Any pharmacologist will tell you that one really can’t say something is safe if one is unwilling to look at the mechanism of action.  That is where the study you cite over-reaches.  You cannot say something is “safe” if you don’t know how it works.

Likewise, the study indicates that sleep-trained children were easier than children who were not sleep-trained, but if the mechanism of action of sleep-training is learned helplessness, this makes perfect sense.  Parents typically report quiet children as better behaved. Children who have learned the pointlessness of crying through sleep-training will be quieter and seen as better behaved by parents.  But is a quieter baby really a healthier baby?  Or is a quieter baby a depressed baby?  We don’t know because the study you cite refuses to look at the mechanism of action behind the efficacy of sleep-training.

Finally, regarding TOB. I don’t believe I claimed JPII wrote anything on sleep training or crying-it-out but don’t make the mistake of thinking that TOB is just about sex.  JPII is the father of the theology of the body, but the theology of the body is it’s own theological discipline, like Christology or ecclesiology.  Just because JPII didn’t write about it doesn’t mean it isn’t consistent with the principles of the TOB. I am happy to take full credit for being among the first people to apply the principles of TOB to parent-child relationships and family dynamics.   That said, in my response to Terri, I referenced the work of Dan Seigel, author of Parenting from the Inside Out and Editor-in-Chief of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology.  It might interest you to know that JPII was an admirer of Daniel Seigel’s work, and that he brought Dr. Seigel to the Vatican to present on Mother-Infant bonding and the developing brain.   There is a great deal of evidence showing that JPII was very interested in understanding the process of attachment and bonding and his interest is reflected in his work on the feminine genius–which is foundational concept of TOB.

In conclusion, I thank you for taking the time to write.  I do appreciate and respect both your expertise and your tone and I hope you will be a regular reader/commenter.  But until someone can show me how, exactly, an infant self-soothes, I cannot in good conscience do anything but remind people that the idea of self-soothing is a myth and that the mechanism behind sleep-training is, by all indications,  learned helplessness.  I believe parents should have the right to use it as long as they can give informed consent and they can’t do that if they aren’t told the truth.

May God Bless you abundantly,

Dr. Greg

Coming Thurs on More2Life Radio: The Grapes of Wrath

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Thurs on More2Life–The Grapes of Wrath: In light of the recent firing of a Rutgers coach for abusive behavior toward his players, we’re reflecting on anger. We’ll look at those times anger goes too far and how to respond more effectively both to your own anger and the angry outbursts of others. Call in from Noon-1pm Eastern (11-Noon C) at 877-573-7825 and we’ll explore more effective ways to deal with anger, and the angry people in your life.

Don’t forget to answer the More2Life FB Q of the D: 1. What situations are most likely to provoke you to anger? 2. How do you tend to respond when other people start yelling at you?
Listen to More2Life live weekdays from Noon-1pm E (11am-Noon C). Can’t get M2L on a Catholic radio station near you? Tune in live online at www.avemariaradio.net, listen via our FREE AveMariaRadio IPhone or Android App (Check your app store!), or catch the M2L Podcast!

Parenting and the Theology of the Body– Can Babies “Self-Soothe”?—(UPDATED 4/4)

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The Theology of the Body teaches us that the body has an innate self-donative meaning.  That is;  we are, literally, wired for love and connection, and that God’s plan for relationships can be discerned by prayerfully contemplating the bodies God gave us.  Science is actually backing this claim up, and is giving us some important insights into what–given this mindset–is God’s intention not only for adult pair bonding (i.e., marriage and sex) but parent-child  bonding as well.  This line of thought has significant ramifications for important parenting questions like, “How do we get our babies to sleep!”

It is conventional wisdom that infant “sleep training” teaches babies to “self-soothe.”  These are comforting ideas to tired moms and dads who are eager to be great parents and get a decent night’s sleep but what does it mean for a baby to “self-soothe” and is it even possible for infants to exhibit this skill

 

Proponents of self-soothing point to the fact that after several days of sleep training–which involves parents incrementally delaying their response to an infant’s night-time crying–the baby decreases the time crying and, eventually stops and goes back to sleep.  This is what happens, and it has been assumed that the baby is able to return to sleep because of “self-soothing.”  The problem is, until fairly recently, researcher never had a way to test the “self-soothing” hypothesis and that’s an important problem.

While, again, its a nice idea that would be lovely if true, infant self-soothing makes no sense from a developmental psych perspective.  For anyone–you, me, any human being–to self-soothe, two skills are required; self-talk and intentional, conscious redirection.  When you are upset, to get yourself back under control, you need to be able to 1) Talk yourself down (“Calm down, Greg.  You can handle this.  It’s going to be OK.”)  and 2) You need to be able to intentionally direct yourself to engage in some self-soothing activity (e.g, make a plan to solve the problem, do something that reduces your stress, etc).  The problem is that babies don’t have either of these skills.  Children don’t develop any self-talk capacity until at least 4yo (usually later) and although babies do have some soothing rituals like thumb-sucking, it is not known how effective these strategies are.   New research is showing that the answer is, “not very.”

Learned Helplessness and Physiological Stress

It turns out that after several days of sleep training the baby’s behavior and biology become un-hooked.  The sleep-trained child does stop crying, but research shows that the child’s stress homone level remain as high as when he was crying.  If the baby was actually self-soothing, the cortisol levels would decrease as the crying behavior decreased.  But that isn’t what happens. Instead, the sleep-trained infant’s cortisol level remains high, but the help-seeking behavior stops.  There is a disconnect between what the baby feels and how the baby acts.   In animals, we call this disconnect between the physiological stress response (i.e., high cortisol levels) and behavior, “learned helplessness.”

Learned helplessness is a well-established psychological fact. The classic learned helplessness experiments were done years ago and over 3000 studies later, learned helplessness is a foundational concept in the study of depression and anxiety disorders.  In the first experiments in learned helplessness, a dog was placed in a box that had a metal plate at the bottom.  A lid was placed on top of the box and a mildly painful electical shock went through the metal plate.  The dog would try to jump out of the box, but be thwarted by the lid.  After several repetitions the dog stopped trying to escape the shock. He just lay there helplessly.  This continued even after the lid was removed.  The shock would be delivered but even though the dog could escape, he learned not to try to help himself–he, literally, learned to be helpless.  Superficially, you could theoreically claim that the dog learned some mysterious way to “self-soothe” and ignore the shock, but you would be wrong.  Physiologically, the dog’s cortisol levels were elevated with the shock, but the help-seeking behavior stopped.  This is the exact same dynamic seen in sleep-trained infants and that should alarm us.

Learned helplessness actually damages the human and animal brain’s ability to process stress and is an established risk factor for depression and anxiety disorders in later childhood and adulthood.

If we take the Theology of the Body’s claims seriously,  that God’s intention for relationships is written into God’s design of our body, we need to listen to research that shows that sleep-training is antithetical to the donative meaning of the body.  Genesis tells us that “it is not good for man to be alone.”  Science confirms that this is true.  Especially for infants.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out the comments, especially the exchanges I’ve had with “Terri” and Dr. Berchelmann, a pediatrician and instructor of pediatrics at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

–For more information on how the principles of the Theology of the Body apply to parenting, check out Parenting with Grace:  The Catholic Parent Guide to Raising (almost) Perfect Kids.