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When a baby cries, you pick her up

It's a simple idea, but life -- and parenting -- is anything but simple in a First Nations community wounded by a painful past. A new program is helping parents heal those hurts and build stronger bonds with their babies

By
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Originally published in Today's Parent November 2010

Photo Credit: Thomas Fricke

Left: Diana Keewatin and one-year-old Isaiah.

A little girl is wandering through the hallways of the health centre on Shoal Lake 39, a First Nations reserve in northwestern Ontario. She is about three years old. Her nose is runny, her eyes are damp, and the muscles in her face seem to be on their mark for a big, heartbreaking sob. But she doesn’t cry. She follows her grandmother in and out of an office, then another woman behind the reception desk. She is not in their way, but neither does she solicit their sympathy. They continue about their business, seldom looking at, speaking to or touching her.

Watching her, I think of something I’ve heard several times since arriving at Shoal Lake: When a baby cries, you pick her up. It’s an idea that is slowly gaining ground on the reserve, and it goes against one that seems to have a strong hold here — the old belief that tending to a crying baby will spoil her. The new thinking — that a crying baby needs attention — is partly coming out of a program called Supporting Security, a parenting group that works at strengthening the bonds, or “security,” between parents and infants. It was introduced in Shoal Lake a year ago and is now in its second 12-week cycle. I am here at the health centre on this muggy May morning to observe a session of the group.

This little girl I’m watching is not a baby, but I keep hoping someone will pick her up. Finally, she approaches a woman who is sitting on the floor — her aunt, who is here for the group — and settles into her lap. I feel better and, finally, it seems, the little girl does too.

Five pairs of moms and babies arrive. Patric Lehnhoff, a community nurse and a trained Supporting Security facilitator, gets things going. He asks the women about their take-home assignments: They were supposed to observe the different ways babies express themselves. At first, no one speaks up, but eventually someone says her daughter didn’t seem to want a bottle last night.

“How could you tell?” asks Patric.

The baby pushed the bottle away, says the mom, and she squished her face. But she was happy when she was given solid food.

“How did you know?” Patric asks.

The baby kicked her feet, the mom says, and she made cooing sounds. She ate the food.

It all strikes me as utterly obvious and I think: Do the moms really not know this stuff?

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