CHILD CARE
Coping With Crying Tips from a parent educator for soothing your baby (and yourself) By Malia Jacobson Caring for a wailing newborn who seems inconsolable is exhausting, frustrating and isolating. That’s been especially true during the pandemic, which has increased fears about exposing infants to disease, squeezed child-care resources, slashed social support and compounded financial insecurities. With fewer opportunities for social and emotional support or for outside help with child care and household chores, frustration may give way to anger and increase the likelihood of shaking a crying baby. Research shows that rates of child abuse and abusive head trauma — the type of brain injury that happens when an infant is shaken — escalate during economic recessions and natural disasters. During the national recession that began in 2008, Seattle Children’s Hospital and Harborview Medical Center saw the number of such cases more than double, mirroring a trend occurring nationwide. In response to the increase in abusive head trauma cases locally and nationally, Seattle Children’s established its Period of PURPLE Crying caregiver education program (purplecrying.info). Christine Baker, coordinator for the Period of PURPLE Crying program, says that when COVID-19 began impacting new parents’ access to social support and child-care resources last year, child abuse researchers feared the worst. “Last year, at the beginning of the pandemic, we were fearing that there would be a similar effect with rates of child abuse, but it was hard to predict,” she notes. “There is research showing these effects after recessions and natural disasters, but there wasn’t data on the effects of a global pandemic like this one.” Now, more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, research has shown a similar spike in cases of child abuse. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of emergency department visits and hospitalizations related to child abuse and ne20
glect for children and adolescents increased significantly from 2019 to 2020. “At this moment, we have a combination of isolation and virtual-connection fatigue, particularly for new parents who may be literally stuck at home with an infant,” says Baker. “People are tired of connecting online and they aren’t leaning into the virtual parties and gatherings the way they were a year ago. The supportive ‘We’re all in this together’ messaging is just not there anymore, because people are just over it.” Reaching caregivers about PURPLE crying Over the past year, COVID-19 has complicated efforts to educate caregivers about the dangers of abusive head trauma (sometimes called shaken baby syndrome). With more families delaying well-child checkups and community events temporarily curtailed, Period of PURPLE Crying program leaders have fewer opportunities to help new parents learn ways to cope with crying. Getting information to caregivers in the early weeks of parenthood is critical, because it only takes one shaking incident to permanently alter a child’s brain function, says Baker. “A shaken brain will never be the same brain again.” Shaking causes injury instantly, with effects that can compound over time with repeated episodes. Shaking any part of a baby, even
