While the most pleasurable feeling for an infant or child, is the contact with his family, and of course breastfeeding, the most painful experience is to be left alone, ignored, not tended to and not given the breast milk or other attention he needs.
1. Prior to feeling any pain, your infant feels pure need. Feeling needy is pleasurable.
2. When the need is not met, it quickly turns into pain. The infant feels sadness, and a longing for touch and nurturance.
3. Being left alone, and not tended too, quickly becomes unbearably painful. The infant screams, he feels like if his needs are not met, he will die. His life is at stake, he will scream and cry.
4. If screaming is futile, and the mother is not there, or if nobody holds him and feeds him, he begins to withdraw. Life on earth is too painful. Many parents believe that they should let a child “cry it out.” While we need to hold a place to honor hurt feelings of our child, this method means the child feels utterly abandoned by the universe. For them, it is as if their life has ended. They will never be the same.
