Episode 161: Supporting babies who have learnt to feed to suppress their feelings

The Aware Parenting Podcast

In this episode, I share about what you can do if your baby has learnt to suppress their feelings with feeding. If you haven't already, I invite you to listen to the previous episode, where I talked about how babies and children learn to suppress their feelings with food. I said I was going to talk about babies and children in this episode, but I'm separating them into two episodes - so the next episode will be about helping children who have learnt to suppress their feelings with food. I talk about breastfeeding because that's what I'm familiar with, but most of this is also transferrable to a baby having a bottle to suppress feelings. And you're so welcome here if you bottle feed. As with that last episode, I invite you to drop any guilt sticks (a Marion Method term) if you have often fed your baby when they had healing-feelings to express to you. I talk about: Why it's so understandable that we would feed our baby when they have healing-feelings to express; A recap on how we can tell if a baby has learnt to suppress their feelings with feeding; What can happen if a baby continues to suppress their feelings with feeding and food; Why having information is so important; Why having our own feelings heard it so vital too!; How we can observe what's going on for our baby; How to notice patterns and make sense of their cues; How we can offer loving limits; and The power of attachment play. I highly recommend The Aware Baby by Aletha Solter, and reading and re-reading chapter 3 on feeding, where she clearly explains how to differentiate between hunger and healing-feelings, and The Emotional Life of Babies, where I talk a lot about feeding, control patterns and observation. I'm opening up the doors for 6 and 12 months mentoring in 2024 very soon. Doors for the Aware Parenting Virtual Village are also opening soon. Keep an eye out on my socials or sign up for information about the early bird and my new books here: http://eepurl.com/8ifhn You can also find me here: https://www.instagram.com/_marion_rose_/ https://www.instagram.com/awareparenting/ www.facebook.com/MarionRosePhD