I do hope that as researchers look at the fussy babies who are later revealed to have particular difficulties, such as bi-polor disorder, that they will also look at possible environmental factors which could either cause both or be related to both. I look at the very high rate of depression in our society, fore example (and the rapidly increasing rates of depression in children - suicide among children in Canada has more than tripled in the past ten years or so) and strongly suspect there must be factors other than genetics involved. For example, is it possible that our current high-intervention birth practices are contributing to this? Or foods, particularly the use of ABM or starting certain foods too early? Or environmental contaminants? Or parenting approaches? We know that a baby's brain is growing and developing significantly in the first few years and so anything that happens then could contribute. In the field of child abuse/child protection, researchers have recently been studying "resilience." Some children who are severely abused nevertheless grow up to be emotionally stable and healthy people - in other words, they are resilient. The goal has been to identify what factors enable some of these children to grow up so well despite terrible childhood experiences, while other abused children suffer mental health and emotional problems all their lives. It makes me wonder if there is something similar happening with fussy babies - that they have some vulnerability that can lead to later difficulties, but that we might also find resilience factors which could help us prevent them. Teresa Pitman *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html