Hello and welcoming to parenting with the pros and cons. I'm Dr. Molly, and I'm Cinzia Filipovski. And today we'll be discussing, can you spoil your infant? First a little bit about us.

I'm Cinzia and I'm a certified positive discipline educator. I work full time, I have twin boys that are five years old, that keep me very busy. And I am just a parent in the trenches like the rest of you. And hopefully we'll be able to give each other some ideas and move along on this road to watching our children become adults.

I'm Dr. Molly. I'm a pediatrician. I've been in practice for about 30 years, and I've helped families raise their kids. For all that time while I was raising my own. I have four kids who are young adults. Now, I've also been involved with the American Academy of Pediatrics. I've been a journal editor and a national speaker for them. I've also written and talked about all sorts of parenting topics. I'm also a parent coach, and a teen coach. So let's get into it. Can you spoil your infant? This is a question I've been asked billions of times over the years. And I thought it would be we both thought it would be a great topic for today. Cinzia, you've got a beautiful scenario to get us started off. So

yeah, let's get I think, one that I think many of us have lived through you, you have a baby, a beautiful new baby who's about one month old, and you've just fed the baby, you've changed their diaper and you've just put them down to sleep, and they're sleeping. So you decide this is a great time to catch a few Z's myself and catch up on some rest. So you're just about to sit down and take a little nap yourself. And when baby is crying, and you just take a deep breath, you get up and you think I'm just gonna go grab my baby. So you walk that way and your mother in law happens to be over? Who stops you and says What are you doing? You can't go every time the baby cries, you're gonna spoil the baby. What do you do? Well, this is a real life scenario. Yes, Been there, I

bet we've all been there in one way or another made out of bet our mother in law made a bet her mother could have been her husband could have her own little little selves in our mind's eye telling us that same asking us that same question. But it's a question every parent asks or wonders about right? Can you spoil your baby? So this is there's a lot of pros and cons on this one. So what do you think, Cinz? What are your thoughts?

I think it depends on the age of the baby. You know, I think that the younger infants, baby, you cannot spoil them too much you those first few months of life, you just want to give them as much love and they need it. And I think that you can't spoil a baby when they're just a newborn. But I do think as a baby gets older, that there is some possibility of creating habits. I'll say that can lead to some issues maybe. And it all depends. I think I in your lifestyle. It depends on how you want to appearance and it also depends on what your schedule is. And I think all of those things play into this. How about you?

Well, I think the word spoil is such a heavily charged word. And it definitely engenders strong feelings, like nobody wants to spoil their child, okay, like, who starts out parenting is like, Oh, I'm gonna be the parent who spoils their child. No one ever right? So whether you go and get that child who's crying at one month of age or not I think looking at it through that lens is the wrong lens to be putting on to look at it. And I'd love the way you started out the conversation. Cinzia because it's a it's really about are you attended to that child to meet their needs, or your needs. Because if that child needs something, if that cry is indicating that they need something, well, you can't possibly spoil that infant then right? They need something they need their diaper change, they need to be fed, they you know, or have they spit up and they they need to be cleaned up. But if you're if you're tending to that child because that cry upsets you. And hearing that cry makes you uncomfortable, but the child really doesn't need anything then you might be getting into a bad habit. Which is exactly the word I love that you used. Because it's really not about spoiling the child, it's about getting into a bad habit. So, you know, that's really how I that's the lens I like to apply is, if you're meeting a child's need no problem, you can't spoil a child. But if you're meeting your need, it could be a problem.

You to take that little pause and ask

right and try to figure it out. Or, you know, are you you know, whose need are you meeting in this transaction here? And, and I think that's true, like throughout that whole throughout life, right.

Exactly. Sometimes you might, I don't care. I want to do it. Exactly. I might be meeting my needs, but at least I realize that and accept that truth, and that's fine. Sure, brother. But yeah,

I just think as you know, when a when a baby is a newborn, there's so many things going on, and you are trying to just acclimate yourself to the whole idea of being a parent, if you're a first time parent, or even if you're not a first time parent, there's a new being in your home that you are all adjusting to. So I think those first few months, it's just you're trying to survive, quite honestly It's a crap show don't know what you're doing. And it doesn't know what they're doing. Yeah, no baby, and you're figuring each other out. It's a relationship, her. It's like, early dating, like, Oh, no, like, you know, does this guy or this woman that you're dating? Does she really like sports? Or does she really only like them because you mentioned sports? Once? You know what I mean? Like, your still figuringit out. And it's not quite dating. It's dealing with a commitment that you can't go back on. Right kind of life, right? It's marriage. Yes, yeah, yes, I will grow to love this habit, or I won't, I'll deal with it. But I think it's It is, it is important to to, you know, try to think about it in those ways. And I think those first few weeks of your child's life, you can't think about it, it just is what it is. So if you need to grab your kid and calm them down and quiet them. I know, as I mentioned, I have twin boys, I know when my babies were, you know, newborn babies, oftentimes it was they also have a need to just feel close to their mother, sometimes anyone could try to hold them and they would be still, they would still be crying, screaming. And if I just held them up against my chest, and they heard my heartbeat, they stopped. And I think that's just that's a need in those early days. So I think that we need to think about that, too. And we don't always have to judge everything harshly as being important and not important. Again, it's your lifestyle, your habits that you are creating, or your child's habit, and it comes down to what can you live with? And what Won't you be able to live with. And sometimes we can't, we don't have the energy to think too far ahead. And that's okay. But once your baby's a few months old, I think you should be thinking ahead a little bit. Because as your child becomes four or five, six months old, you are going to be creating some habits. And it's going to be a little bit more difficult to change those. And I'm sure Dr. Molly can attest that those habits then become parents that are just sleep deprived, or are just frustrated, because they don't know how to get their child on some sort of sleep schedule or, you know, things of that that nature. And I am sure they come into your office, Dr. Molly, and they're crying and frustrating and frustrated, and they just don't know what to do at that point. So I think those are Think about it. Yeah, no, I agree completely. I do think in the first couple of months of life, it really is just a hot mess. And you're you're as a as a mother, at least, you're still recovering from the experience of giving birth. And even a parent who's adopted a child is still adapting to the huge sea change of having this new baby in the household. So I think you know, the first two months, it's a gimme you, you just do what you need to do to learn that child's cues. Beyond that point, though, and and get yourself adapted to to the routine of having an infant in the house, you can shower again, and you're on some sort of regular meal schedule of your own. And you can start thinking about the other thing . Right think though, what can happen or, and and this is when it gets a little bit tricky, is that by responding to every cry, it can get tricky to discern what do different cries mean? And especially for a parent whose response to most cries with feeding doesn't necessarily have to be nursing, but it could be with bottle feeding, who responds to most cry with food, it really gets tricky. So, you know, because not all cries mean hunger, some cries mean tired, some cries mean, you know, my diapers not right and some cries mean I just want to be held and you know and trying to figure out what all those different cries mean can be challenging. And if you end up creating a pattern of responding to all cries with similar responses, you really dull yourself to listening to learn what the baby's tried to communicate to you. So I do agree with you that by, I don't know two to three months somewhere in there if a natural progression towards sleep patterns isn't happening organically, if the baby isn't naturally moving towards some sort of patterned sleep, that it may be time if you're ready to talk about it to talk about it with your pediatrician or with a with a sleep coach or something in order to help understand better, what is your child communicating? So that getting on some sort of sleep schedule And really, it's getting out of feeding schedule, because that really is what causes the sleep to get in line might be a good idea. Absolutely. I think one of the biggest things that I learned as a parent early on was just that listening to your baby, if you take a moment, and don't jump up, when the baby starts to cry, you'll start to see that baby sometimes just make sounds that sound like they're about to cry, but they're not necessarily about to cry. And that would happen a lot when they're, you know, first adjusting to sleeping or doing different things. You know, I you know, it's kind of like comparing to a new puppy. You know, that does that, that whining that that cry, that whining sound, if you just let them be for a minute, they stop. And sometimes the babies are doing the same thing. And they're sleeping and making the sound. So they're not even consciously doing it. And if we just let them be, they kind of go right back to sleep, they're already still sleeping sometimes. So I can see how if we run and try to grab them or do different things, we do start to create habits. So I think that that's the first step is just sometimes counting to 10, before you actually approach your child might be a good strategy, because then you can see is this going to be a real cry? Or is this just they just passed gas? I mean, quite honestly, you don't even know. Right? So I think that those are the types of things. And I know that the schedule, I do think that parents have been done a disservice with baby monitors, because every single sound is amplified. And the assumption is that babies, and parents are an edge, you know, and the assumption sort of is, is that bait that it's not safe to not use the monitor. And so there, the assumption is that something bad could happen at any time. So I need to use the monitor. So anytime a sound occurs, that needs to be attended to look at it, and right something or listen to it, whatever, like the looking either. I don't even get me started on all that. So I almost really wish, you know, in my perfect world, we would go back to the age unless you live in some giant mansion. And if you do, I'd like to get to know you better. But, you know, I wish we could go back to an age of no monitor. Because I'm not sure tdhat monitors are doing parents any favors. Or mind's eye on right? It undermines confidence, it decreases a sense of independence. And you know, like, Oh, yeah, my baby's fine. It really gives them this anxious sense about their babies. And babies aren't quiet, you know, they're just not quiet. I think that, you know, they're, they're trying to regulate their own bodies there. All kinds of things are happening. Imagine coming out into this new world. What a harsh reality. They're coming to terms with, you know, so the idea that they're just they're supposed to be quiet is some false idea. That's for sure. So I you know, and as far as the schedule, I think that that's, that's a topic that we'll talk about and in a different time, because it can take its own own whole, you know, time period to go over. But I think that as new parents, you should be thinking about what is your lifestyle going to be? What are your expectations for your child? Because I do think as well that we have kind of been guilted into this idea that Children that we need to adjust our lives totally and completely to adjust to a new baby, versus also helping that baby adjust to their new world in our lives as they are, obviously, we have to make adjustments, but not to have some sort of compromising schedule or adjustment is just not necessarily realistic. Because I think that we then lose ourselves as people, as mothers, you know, and it is a detriment later on, you know, if we could go backwards, we could see all the little steps we took, that led us to a very frustrating, 10 month old baby that's not sleeping through the night or, you know, different scenarios. So I do think that just kind of being aware of that at the beginning, after those, like we talked about first few weeks. I think some working mothers, I know, I was one of them, and you are one of them, as well, you know, have this this kind of mountain of I don't know, if it's, if it's all guilt, but it's there are a lot of feelings, you know, like a lot of feelings. And I think what can happen is that you're you're disconnected from your child throughout the day, whether you're at home working, or whether you're at at an office working, and you come home, and you know, you you don't want to, you know, set limits in the same way, you don't necessarily want to, if your child cries, oh, in the early months, you know, I see, you know, up until six months of age, and maybe even beyond that, for some working mothers, they feel like if their child cries or is upset, or you know, gives any sort of noisy noise, they feel very strongly that they want to attend to that. period. all night long, no matter what, because they feel so strongly that they are either kind of missing out or they you know, they feel like I'm not sure exactly what the feelings are. But it isn't necessarily a healthy engagement with their child. And as you point out, Cinzia I think beautifully, that the baby isn't, that's not necessarily a good thing for anybody. Right? It Again, it's, it gets into that question of whose needs are we meeting. And that puts that lens of spoiling, which I hate that word, because it's not a good word. But if you are getting up in the middle of the night to meet your need, because you feel like I've been away from my child all day if blah, blah, blah, well, that's not quite right. Because your six month old, for example, doesn't really need to eat during the night anymore, you know, and you've created a habit of it that is actually not as healthy. So we will talk about scheduling, we will talk about, you know, sleeping through the night in future podcast episodes. But I really do think Cinzia, you've really touched on a couple of things today, which will, we'll talk about more, which is how your parenting style affects your decisions around all kinds of things. And you have to be comfortable in your own skin as a parent. Right. And also, we'll talk more about about scheduling and and who what sort of schedule fits your parenting style. And you don't have to lose yourself in the process, I think as a part of it. I do think that as you know, as you've touched upon Dr. Molly, I think as women especially, I don't think men feel it as much. The working father doesn't feel it as much as the working mother. I think it's just because it's just how we're wired. But I know that that that feeling of you're not 100% in any one part of your life. So you're not giving your kid 100% of yourself, you're not giving your work on a percent of yourself. So there is this, it's it's more than just guilt, as you pointed out. It's it's a it's just not a good feeling at all. And I think that we have to start allowing each other as women as mothers, we have to allow each other to not have to meet a certain expectation, who's setting that expectation. You know, we've been, we've been existing for 1000s of years, and moms have done it for 1000s of years were there. Maybe they weren't working in the sense that we're working today. But moms worked on farms, they did all kinds of things and that that baby came along with the mom, and that baby adjusted to what was needed by that family. And I think that we have lost that in our today's standards. We've you know, we're not good parents if we're not making changes to adjust to our children. And, you know, I think that children are the center of our lives, but I think that we do a disservice to them. If they we make them feel like they're the center of the world, and that lot that I don't that's a beautiful statement. Yeah, thank you. I just I just think that that's something that I have thought a lot about as a parent, I don't want them to grow up that way, because that is a disservice to them. So I think it all starts from infancy. Yeah, I agree with you. And I also think that what we've replaced, you know, and having children integrated, I think that there have been a lot of advances in parenting that have been favorable for the relationship between parents and children. So it's not like either one of us wants to go back to the whatever, agw. No, no, not at all, not. But I think there are things from the old days that are valuable for us to reflect on and not just throw away. Because in today's world of parenting, every parent is burdened with the sense of perfection, there's a lot of anxiety around parenting. And as a result, there is also this sense of, you know, doing everything just right, in order to have somehow I feel like that, that the goal or the the outcome, it's an outcomes oriented parenting so that if I do all these things exactly right, I'm going to have this specific outcome, when really, parenting is about a relationship with the child, the child is is is ultimately going to be whoever they're going to be. And frankly, no offense parents, you have very little to say about your child's long term out the you know, their outcome in the sense of who are they going to be having raised four kids to adulthood, I can guarantee you that truth. But what you can do is you can you can either create a good relationship with your child, you can enjoy that process or not. Right? That's really what we're talking about. So the topic of can you spoil your infant? The answer is, we'd rather not talk about it in the sense of spoiling, but you can create habits that are put in place because you're meeting your own needs, rather than your infant's needs. And meeting your own needs is not going to be the most healthy way to begin developing that relationship with your child. So in any relationship, especially one that is going to be lifelong, and it's going to be as enriching as your parent child relationship, especially since you're the parent, building that relationship initially, on meeting your child's needs primarily, is the most important thing. So as you explore, you know, how you're responding to your infant, I think it is important to think about, whose needs Am I meeting, and whose needs am I, you know, thinking about in this moment, and it absolutely doesn't mean that you never put your needs first in that relationship, because you do in all your relationships at times. But on balance, you should be looking to meet your child's needs first. And when those needs are in conflict, your child's needs should win more often than yours. And that's I think, how we feel the the question of Can I spoil my child is best resolved. Absolutely wrapping it up today. You know, I think we've we've tried to give you a framework for thinking about, can you spoil your infant, and I hope you found it valuable.

And if you do, it's okay. To a certain extent. That's

right, sometimes. Yeah, that's right. Y'all do that right times for sure. Yeah. And so Cinzia where can folks learn more about about our parenting with you can go to our website, it's parenting with the pros and cons.com and you can check out our other podcasts. And you can contact us and Dr. Molly, to I've got a website, Dr. Molly OShea. Calm and you can also follow me on Instagram. It's dr. D, o c t o r all spelled out. DoctorMollyOShea is my handle on Instagram. So we really do enjoy you know, sharing with you please let us know if there are topics you'd like to hear about things you want us to address, we would love to hear from you. And we will,

whatever feedback you have, we'd love to hear what you guys like or don't like and you know, if you tried some of our tips and how you did with them, you know, right we want to hear about it all

the details. Alright, until next time, this is Molly an Cinzia