At eighteen months old, my granddaughter is a joy to be around, but when she wants something, she wants it right now! She acts like she has absolutely no sense of time. She has worn many necklaces and in fact loves to wear and play with jewelry. One day I put a pearl necklace on her to wear when she got her pictures made. This necklace was not tight on her what- so- ever, but she decided she wanted it off! So I start to undo the necklace – it has a tiny clasp, so it was taking me longer than what she wanted to wait. She starts screaming like I was beating her up. It upset me so much that I start looking on the Internet, to check symptoms of different mental illnesses. Is she obsessive compulsive? Does she have a touch of autism? Is someone being abusive toward her? I check all of these illnesses and more. Thank goodness she didn’t seem to have any of the symptoms for anything I checked. So then what could be going on with her? I know from her actions, something is definitely going on. Could it be the little boys at the Baby Sitters are picking on her? She also seems to be way over- sensitive. Most babies cry when they want something, but she screams! She is also very empathetic. If she is around people who are upset, she too will become very upset.

So I continue to search the ‘net, and I find that many, many parents are going through the same thing. Many are at the end of their ropes, and my heart goes out to them. I’d like to be able to help them, but we’re in the same position. I finally find something that resembles what she is going through. The experts call it a High Needs Baby. The advice varies widely, from CIO, “Crying It Out,” which is by the way what my granddaughter’s doctor told my daughter to let her do. We didn’t care too much for that piece of advice, and it definitely didn’t help us. The advice goes from one extreme to the other, with the other being “Attachment Therapy,” actually attaching the baby to you and carrying her around at all times, to letting her sleep in-between you and your spouse at night. Most of the parents were trying just about everything, and we weren’t far behind them. We have ran the gambit of maybe she’s in pain, maybe she’s hungry, maybe she needs more one-on-one attention, etc … I am going to share with you the things I’ve learned from my many hours of searching. I hope you get some comfort out of knowing that there is a name to this kind of behavior, and you’re not alone.

You may find that your baby is a high needs baby as well. Newborns may protest group care with their high intensity cries demanding attention immediately. The cry from a high needs baby is not a request, but a demand. They cry loudly, feed voraciously, laugh with gusto, and protest more forcefully if their needs are not met to their satisfaction. Because they feel so deeply, they react more powerfully if their feelings are disturbed.

One mother says, “If I don’t feed him as soon as he fusses, he falls apart.” This seems to be a common statement among parents of high needs children.

You can read the intensity of the baby’s feelings in her body language. The fists are clenched, back arched, muscles tensed, as if ready for action. They scream when they cry as if something is urgently wrong.

As toddlers they have the drive to explore and experiment with everything and anything! No household item is safe. They’re hyperactive and hyper- tonic. Hyper- tonic refers to muscles that are frequently tensed and ready to go, tight and waiting to explode into action. The muscles and mind of a high needs child are seldom relaxed or still. They may stiffen their limbs and arch their backs when you hold them and are frequently seen doing back dives off your lap.

High needs babies can extract every ounce of energy from tired parents and then want more. The seemingly constant holding, nursing, and comforting leave little energy left for parent’s needs. High need babies seem to feed more frequently; most parents feel like they cannot feed their baby fast enough or meet their demands fast enough. They do not like waiting and do not readily accept alternatives.

The positive side is that parents who respond to and wisely channel the high needs child, will raise a person with determination, one who will fight for her rights and become a leader, instead of a follower.

Read Part 2 for more information of what you can do, and information about the high need child’s sleep pattern.

By: Tracey Wilson

When you have a baby or child with severe eczema, you know that it can sometimes be a challenge to find eczema treatments and cures that work well enough to calm down his itching and inflammation. This article will talk to you about a well respected treatment that can be used when your baby or child has a sever flare up that you need to bring under control right away.

The treatment we are looking at is the wet wrap treatment. You can rely upon it to rehydrate skin that is dry, it will calm any itching that the baby or child has from eczema; it will strengthen his skin so that it does not break and become infected easily, and it will reduce the chances that any of his open sores or blisters will become infected.

The wet wrap treatment is a favorite among people who have trouble finding other eczema treatments that work. However, you should consider making this treatment a treatment that you use only when other treatments have failed. The reason why I say this is because if you have not experienced it yet, you will find that sometimes a reliable treatment for eczema will stop working after a while of working well for you. Now watch this, wet wraps are a strong treatment. If your baby or child’s skin gets use to the treatment you may find that milder treatments do not work for him any longer. You would have made your baby’s skin super resistant to milder treatments and you do not want for that to happen.

A huge mistake that people make when using the wet wrap is to bathe in hot water before applying the wrap. Now the procedures for using the wet wrap does call for you to wash first, but you never want to use hot water in your baby’s bath if he has eczema. Even when you are preparing the wrap you should not use hot water. The procedures for using wet wraps are not covered in this article but the instructions for using them are yours for the asking.

Lastly, make sure that you do not use wet wraps with steroid or prescription medicine. Doing so can easily raise the effects of medicines into side effect proportions. Be careful, the only time you should ignore this last bit of advice is if you have instructions from your doctor who is looking at your case telling you to do otherwise.

By: Broyde McDonald

The killing and effective cleanup of dust mites will greatly enhance your baby eczema prevention efforts. The form of eczema that most often affects babies are most often affected more adversely by dust mites than by other allergens. Dust mites are even more damaging than the number one cause of irritation which is hay fever in the lives of babies that have eczema.

You want to know if bleach is able to kill dust mites. This article will answer that question.

Dust mites can be cleaned out with air filters. This will not be the best way of getting rid of them as they are animals that like to burrow. Using an air filter will only capture the dust mites that become airborne. In comparison to the mites that do not become airborne the amount will be relatively small. You do not want to completely ignore air filters though because they can become a valued contributor to the entire effort of getting the dust mite away from the presence of your baby.

You also need to know that not only do you need to get rid of the mites that are alive, but you will also need to get rid of the fecal matter and the carcasses of the dead mites as well. These substances are just as much an irritant to babies that have baby eczema, as the live dust mites.

When you kill your mites, you need to use vacuums with special filters that can capture and contain the dust mite, their carcasses and their feces. The dust mite is only between 100 and 300 microns wide. At this size, normal vacuum cleaner bags will not be able to hold them. They will be able to pass right through the fibers and back into the locations where they were previously irritating your baby from.

Now back to the bleach. It is unlikely that you will be able to kill dust mites using bleach. The option I see that negates this statement is maybe if you boil them in bleach you can kill them. You see when you boil them in water for about two or three hours you are able to kill them. So if you can kill them by boiling them in water, you may be able to kill them by boiling them in bleach. Otherwise, bleach will not have an effect on killing the dust mite. You just need to get as much of the dust out of your baby’s environment that you possibly can. However do not depend on bleach to get rid of your dust mite problem.

By: Broyde McDonald