The thesis of the book is enticing: ‘Can the caregiver tell from the sound of the infant’s cry, the precise meaning of that cry’. In other words, are there specific cries depicting hunger, pain, startle or fatigue? The book’s thesis is that crying may be a sign (an objective indicator of the state of the infant); a symptom (crying as a clinical concern), or a signal ( indicating crying as having a function which may have specific meaning to the caregiver attempting to interpret it’s meaning ). This book summarizes seven decades of research and its findings ultimately are equivocal.
The editors are a paediatrician now based in Vancouver (Ron Barr) and 2 psychologists from England and the USA. The book is a worthwhile summary of extensive basic and clinical research. The authors explore the meaning of crying as an indicator of pain and its association with problems in attachment.
The book’s chapters cover the normal developmental course of crying in infants, understanding infantile colic, crying as an indicator of pain, differential diagnosis of colic and other important causes of crying in infants, crying in children with disabilities and crying in non- human infant primates. The bottom line is as follows: The first 3 – 4 months of life are characterized by increased crying, even in the face of optimal care-giving. Even after language emerges in toddlers, crying continues as part of the human condition in the early months of life and does not necessarily have a specific communicative function. In other words, almost all infants have fretful periods that cannot be precisely explained.
There are important observations regarding the interactive nature of crying and care giving and how mothers become more adept at discriminating between cry stimuli with time. Interpretation of the cry signal may depend as much on the emotional state and social conditions of the mother, as on the characteristics of the cry itself. Infants with neurological disabilities are more prone to high-pitched cries, prolonged cries and are more irritable and difficult to console. This has major implications for the development of attachment and the level of support required for parents of kids with disabilities.
The book is somewhat technical for practicing clinicians when discussing acoustic cry analysis for example, but has useful clinical information not generally available in the child psychiatry literature. It is definitely worth having in the department library.