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Living and coping with excessive infantile crying.
Journal of Advanced Nursing
|June 30, 2001
Summary
Parents coping with excessive infant crying need effective support. Health visitors play a vital role in providing this support, offering practical help and sincere communication to ease the challenges of infant crying.
Area of Science:
- Parenting and Child Health
- Infant Care
- Family Support
Background:
- Excessive infant crying is a significant challenge for parents, often leading to distress and relationship strain.
- Existing research on causes and treatments for excessive crying lacks conclusive evidence and agreement.
- Effective parental coping strategies are crucial until infant crying subsides.
Purpose of the Study:
- To understand parents' lived experiences coping with excessively crying infants.
- To identify factors complicating parental coping with infant crying.
- To determine interventions parents perceive as effective for managing infant crying.
Main Methods:
- Pragmatic ethnography with an adapted grounded theory approach.
- Data collection via questionnaires and in-depth interviews with 25 adults from 14 families.
- Participant observation in family homes with infants experiencing excessive crying.
Main Results:
- Infant crying severely disrupted family life, causing relationship issues, guilt, and loss of control.
- Repeated, unsuccessful attempts to diagnose and cure the crying led to cycles of hope and disappointment.
- Health visitors offering frequent, prolonged, engaged support with sincere communication were most impactful.
Conclusions:
- Health visitors are essential in supporting parents with excessively crying infants.
- Specific aspects of the health visitor role require further investigation to optimize support.