by Danette M. Scott

Created on: January 21, 2008   Last Updated: November 12, 2011

Parents and infants develop attachments or emotional bonds when the parents respond to their infant's crying by picking them up, feeding them and/or changing them. These attachments that are developed between parents and infants affect a baby's emotional, mental and physical health as they grow into adulthood. When a parent fails to respond with caring and compassion toward their infant when it cries, then that infant is more likely to have psychological problems as an adult. Parents should respond to their infants when they cry.

The ability to trust is developed during the first year of life. This ability can be underdeveloped or nonexistent in children who did not have parents who appropriately responded to their emotional needs (crying). Trust is an important part of our socialization as human beings.

Parents who respond to and nurture their infant's emotional and physical needs by picking them up, talking to them and rocking them are helping their infant's develop trust in people and the environments that surround them. Parents who frequently fail to respond to their infant's crying can predispose an infant to a condition called reactive attachment disorder.

Reactive attachment disorder is a psychiatric disorder that can be developed during the first year of life or through early childhood. Infants and children who show symptoms of this disorder display withdrawal and a failure to respond to interaction from other people. This disorder is thought to be caused by the frequent ignoring of an infant's emotional and physical needs by parents.

Parents should never consistently ignore their infant's or children's crying. Responding to a child's physical and emotional needs is important in preventing emotional disorders that could plague a child's life on into adulthood. A human infant needs social interaction and nurturing by a parent or caregiver in the first year of life in order to develop intellectually, emotionally and physically.

It is understandable that a parent cannot respond to a child each and every time it cries. But failure to respond to their crying (emotional needs) with love, caring and compassion can be a form of emotional neglect. The emotional bonds that develop between parents and children begin with the love and concern shown by parents when their children are infants under 1 year of age.

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