The Happiest Baby on the Block and The Happiest Toddler on the Block 2-Book Bundle pdfdrive com

State Control: Your Baby’s Ability to Tune the World
In … or Shut It Out
When doctors talk about your baby’s state, we’re not discussing
whether you live in Ohio or Florida. State describes your baby’s level of
wakefulness or sleep—in other words, his state of alertness. States range
from deep sleep to light sleep to fussiness to full-out screaming. Right in
the middle is perhaps the most magical state of all: quiet alertness. It’s
easy to tell when your baby is quietly alert: his eyes will be open and
bright and his face peacefully relaxed as he surveys the sights around
him.

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Maintaining a state is one of the earliest jobs your baby’s brain must
accomplish. His ability to stop his crying, keep awake, or stay asleep is
called his “state control.” I like to think of state control as your baby’s
TV remote, which allows him to “keep a channel on” when something is
interesting, to “change channels” when he gets bored, and to shut the
“TV” off if it starts upsetting him or it’s time to go to bed.
Many young infants have excellent state control. These “I can do it
myself” babies focus intensely on something for a while then pull away
whenever they want; they easily shift between sleeping, alertness, and
crying. These self-calming babies are especially good at protecting
themselves from getting overstimulated. When the world gets too
chaotic, some stare into space, some rhythmically suck their lower lip,
and others turn their heads as if to say, “You excite me sooo much, I just
have to look away to catch my breath!”
You may also notice your baby settling himself by using an attention
off-switch called “habituation.” It is one of your baby’s best tools for
shielding himself from getting too much stimulation. Like a circuit
breaker that cuts the electrical flow when the wires overload,
habituation allows your baby to shut off his attention when his brain
gets overloaded.
Habituation explains the extraordinary “sleep anywhere-anytime-
despite-the-noise” ability that infants have. (It’s also the tool baby boys

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use to help them sleep despite the pain of circumcision.)
You’ll notice that your newborn follows a simple plan during his first
few weeks of life: eating and sleeping! Then, as he acclimates to being
out of your womb, he’ll spend increasing time in quiet alertness.
Unfortunately, many young babies can’t handle the additional
excitement that comes with this alertness. These babies are poor self-
calmers with immature state control. They have trouble shutting off
their alertness, so their circuits often overload. After a few weeks, as
they begin to wake up to the world, their state control starts to get
overwhelmed and fail.
These babies look exhausted but their eyes keep staring out, unable to
close, as if held open by toothpicks. It’s as if their remote control
malfunctioned, stranding them on a channel showing a loud, upsetting
movie.
One exasperated mom told me her colicky three-month-old, Owen,
cried for several hours every day. He clearly needed to sleep, but he
wouldn’t close his eyes. She said, “I keep trying to get him off The Crying
Channel and help him find the Sleep Station again.”
When your little baby is locked into screaming, please don’t despair.
Much better state control will be coming to rescue you both in a few
months. In the meantime, the second part of this book will teach you
exactly how to soothe him when he’s having a meltdown.