Do you need to spend some time with other adults, come to a weekly Parent-Child Playgroup at your nearest Family Center.
When Judy is running late and getting more tense and irritable by the
minute, the one thing she can count on is one-year-old Bobby putting
up a fuss.
Bobby usually is pretty easy-going. Why is it then that when Judy
least needs a cranky baby, he acts up?
Chances are Bobby is picking up on his mother’s crankiness or stress.
Children are sensitive to the moods of those around them.
Babies often look to adults for emotional cues. When a new toy is
shown to eight-to-ten-month-old babies, they often look to their mothers
for some emotional signal to tell them how to react.
Like adults, babies tend to respond to happiness with happiness, to
sadness with sadness, to anger with anger, and so on. Infants in a
nursery may start to cry for no other reason than they hear other
infants crying. It’s called "crying contagion."
So it’s safe to assume that your baby is sensitive to your moods, facial
expressions, and tone of voice.
But you shouldn’t worry that your mood swings will damage your child.
Temporary "baby blues" isn’t likely to have any long-term
effect on your child’s emotional development. Constant and severe
depression, however, is a bit more serious and should be treated.
A particularly undesirable situation is if parents are always emotionally
unresponsive to their child. In other words, they don’t react positively
or negatively to anything the baby does. Except for minimum care, they
leave the infant alone, constantly.
A child’s emotional development can also be affected if you are always
angry, tense, or irritable. If that’s the case, you should consider
taking some steps to soften the impact.
Pay attention to your common and persistent emotional reactions and moods.
If repeated over and over, they can have a marked influence. If, for
example, you gasp in horror every time your child falls when learning to
walk, your baby will likely learn to cry with every tumble. But if you
smile, treat the fall as expected, comfort for a few seconds, and set your
toddler off again, you’ll teach your child that it’s no big deal to
tumble.
And if you are really feeling seriously stressed, irritable, or depressed,
ask another adult to take over with your baby until you’re more relaxed.
When you’re back to being yourself, give your baby a smile and a hug.
You’ll probably get one in return.
This column is written by Robert B. McCall, Co-Director of the
Office of Child Development and Professor of Psychology, and is provided as a
public service by the Frank and Theresa Caplan Fund for Early Childhood Development
and Parenting Education.