Babies cry because that’s the sole way they have to communicate. In a lot of ways, they’re more resistant to discomfort relative to adults- how would you do if someone tightly wrapped you up in a blanket and put you in bed? I suspect you’d be uncomfortable in short order, yet babies routinely fall asleep without issue.
As they get older, they get better at communicating. First, it’s through different sorts of cries; parents often can tell the reason for the crying based on the crying itself; many children cry differently if they’re bored, upset, tired, wet/poopy or hungry. As time goes on, they can sort of gesticulate and grunt, and eventually they start talking more or less. By the time they’re toddlers, they’re out of the crying as communication stage in large part, and on to using language. They still cry, because their emotional regulatory mechanisms aren’t developed yet, but it’s a sort of throwback behavior since they don’t know how to deal with those emotions or how to communicate them using language either.
i mean, what i’m asking tho is how do you know it’s ONLY that they just can’t communicate more clearly? how do you know that they don’t actually FEEL more strongly and that tapers off with age, AS WELL as learning to communicate more?
i am not saying you’re wrong, i am just curious where your info comes from. a study? a theory? or just what you surmise from personal experience?
because babies can communicate in other ways. they smile, giggle, babble, grab at their limbs, flail wildly with joy, etc. i simply find it hard to swallow that a baby SCREAMS at hunger only because it doesn’t know how to say “hey, i need a sandwich” (“milkteat”). SCREAMING because of hunger seems to indicate a feeling so intense it’s borderline unbearable.
and like others have said–babies seem to be unable to manage being any kind of uncomfortable, even mildly so, but they still make faces of unease or unhappiness in phases previous to all-out bawling. which is a form of communicating.
i would just like to have a cite or two, or a study or a reference.
I think you’re making the mistake of equating adult or older child screaming and crying with baby screaming and crying. When adults or older children cry out in pain or discomfort, it’s usually pretty serious. Assuming that babies feel more intensely because they cry out at lesser things doesn’t really make sense, because babies don’t really have the same frame of reference that we do.
I mean, if my stomach hurts, I have nearly 42 years of experience with stomach pains, and can usually tell if it’s hunger, gas, or something I ate, and I’m familiar with different levels of pain as well. A 3 month old doesn’t have any of that- all he knows is that his stomach hurts. We don’t know if a hungry baby is crying at the very first sensation of hunger, or if the baby has been mildly hungry for an hour, and is just crying now that he’s having hunger pangs.
And trust me, there’s a difference in crying between a hungry baby and a baby that just got his head bonked or who’s getting a rashy butt-crack cleaned. They’re not feeling those sensations with the same intensity, assuming the crying intensity equals the sensation’s intensity.