The risks and c a m of persistent crying in early infancy are discussed on the basis of a study of 61 infants referred to the Munich Interdisciplinary Research and Intervention Program for Fussy Babies for persistent crying between 1 and 6 months of age, and of a community sample of 51 infants of the same age. Particular attention was paid to pre-verbal parent-infant communication, the development of which was interpreted in terms of a dynamic interactional system including both regulatory and communicative predispositions in infants and intuitive competence for supporting infant predispositions in parents. Neither a gut problem nor any other single causal factor was identified for persistent crying in the majority of cases. In contrast, persistent crying was significantly slesociated with multiple biological and psychosocial risk factors for both parents and infants. Neurological immaturity, difficult temperament and sleep problems in infants, and impaired psychological conditions, limited resources and failures of intuitive competences in mothers were found to threaten the developmental process in infants and give rise to 'vicious circles' which were destabilizing the interactional systems. Increased attention to intuitive parental competences is recommended as one effective model for therapeutic interventions. Keywords: persistent crying infant colic; intuitive parenting preverbal communication; paren-infant interaction; interactional failures Persistent crying has remained an unresolved puzzle and a major challenge for developmental researchers in spite of numerous attempts to study its risk factors and causes. h e to its acoustic qualities, infant crying has a peremptory impact on parents such that 'one can. . . appreciate why a parent must interfere with the baby's crying: this sound is too annoying to be tolerated beyond a short period of time, particularly at close range.. . . a cry cries to be turned off' (Ostwald, 1963, p.46). However, a substantial minority of otherwise normal infants spend the first months of life suffering from a condition described as 'paroxysms of irritability, fussing, or crying lasting for a total of more than three hours a day and occurring on more than three days in any oneweek ' (Wessel ef al., 1954, p.425). This condition, usually termed 'colic' or, more appropriately, 'persistent crying' (St James-Roberts, 1993), refers to prolonged periods of unexplained and inconsolable crying and fussiness.In the first part of the present article, we review current research on crying in context from various

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Clinicians may profit from conducting structured interviews. Strategies for dealing with conflicting information from children and parents should be tested empirically and described in detail.