Who’s Responsible for and What’s to Be Done About ‘Kids Out of Control’?

I was appalled by the juxtaposition of two articles on the same day, “Kids Out of Control” and “Hush Little Baby,” in the New and Useful column (by Lynn Simross).

On the one hand, we bemoan the alienation of our children from basic traditional values and our loss of control over their behavior; on the other hand, we invent ever more ingenious gadgets and systems to intervene between us, our parenting responsibilities and our children’s needs.

Maryann Waxtell invented her Criboose to “help parents settle their baby to sleep without constantly standing next to him or her, or getting up in the night when the child cries . . .” so that her 1-year-old son “wouldn’t grow dependent on his parents to come and soothe him.” If a 1-year-old can’t depend on his parents to comfort him in the middle of the night, what kind of view of the world will he take with him into adolescence?

Infants develop their basic trust in the world, and in other human beings, by consistently getting their cries answered in the first few years of life. If they don’t build this trust early on, all the remedial programs in the world won’t make up for this early, devastating deprivation.

MARGARET D. HOUTZ

Los Olivos