While infants vary in their sensitivity, research shows that babies do, indeed, sense and react to their parents' emotional cues.
“Your infant may not be able to tell you that you seem stressed or ask you what is wrong, but our work shows that, as soon as she is in your arms, she is picking up on the bodily responses accompanying your emotional state and immediately begins to feel in her own body your own negative emotion.”
Insecurity – When a child or baby gets scared frequently it will cause emotional insecurity even in presence of parents. It can lead to depression and anxiety.
Between 8 and 12 months of age—around the same time they understand the meaning of a fearful face—babies begin to produce fearful expressions and other fear-based behaviors, like clinging to a parent, making distressed sounds, or turning away.
Observations as far back as Charles Darwin's own family stories about his children suggest that babies' laughter and fear aren't far apart, which is also a connection made by a 1989 study involving babies and Peek-A-Boo. That is, babies think the unexpected is funny when they don't think it might be dangerous.
It happens as your baby develops a healthy attachment to familiar people – like you. Because babies prefer familiar adults, they might react to strangers by crying or fussing, going very quiet, looking fearful or hiding.
Many people wrongly believe that babies do not notice or remember traumatic events. In fact, anything that affects older children and adults in a family can also affect a baby, but they may not be able to show their reactions directly, as older children can.
A baby can detect anger in a voice as early as 5 months.
Parental arguing causes stress in the baby, elevating their heart rate and increasing their blood pressure.
Research suggests that babies are indeed affected by parental squabbles, and exposure to chronic conflict may affect brain development. Experimental studies confirm that babies can sense when their mothers are distressed, and the stress is contagious.
Toddlers do not hold grudges.
The tantrum may even last half an hour. But once they calm down (sometimes with help), they go back to being their cheerful, curious selves— unlike adults, who can wake up on the wrong side of the bed and be cranky all day. Toddlers are also amazingly forgiving.
Most common baby fears
In newborn babies, common baby fears include loud noises, falling, separation from parents, and strangers. At this stage, babies can't distinguish between objects accurately enough to be scared by looking at them. However, loud noises trigger the startle reflex.
When infants display anger and aggression, it is often due to discomfort, pain or frustration. Older babies will use aggression to protect themselves, to express anger or to get what they want. When your baby is aggressive, it is because he has not learned a better way of behaving.
A 2014 study in The Journal of Child Development demonstrated that yelling produces results similar to physical punishment in children: increased levels of anxiety, stress and depression along with an increase in behavioral problems.
In a follow-up across pregnancy, the fetuses of the high-anger women were noted to be more active and to experience growth delays. The high-anger mothers' high prenatal cortisol and adrenaline and low dopamine and serotonin levels were mimicked by their neonates' high cortisol and low dopamine levels.
“Infants are fairly resilient, but we are concerned about harm when yelling out of anger around an infant or towards an infant happens at a significant level of intensity or commonly in the home,” says Horvitz. “This will likely increase infant anxiety, which overtime may have an impact similar to trauma.”
Research has found that babies don't easily forget seeing anger-prone behavior in adults, even if that behavior is directed at someone else. The results of two separate 2016 studies may make you think twice the next time you are tempted to lose your temper in front of your baby.
In 1998, Harvard research showed that babies who cried excessively were susceptible to stress as adults, and sensitive to future trauma. Chronic stress in infancy can also lead to an over-active adrenaline system, causing anti-social and aggressive behavior, and even affect physical illness far into the future.
This could include sexual abuse, witnessing violence, physical neglect, or emotional abuse. But traumas also include unintentionally harmful events such as as a natural disaster, parental separation, witness to violence, or even medical interventions in infancy or early childhood.
The sound of your baby's cries activates areas of the brain associated with movement and speech; it primes you to pick up and talk to your crying infant. This evidence suggests that we have hard-wired responses to our child's distress.
Believe it or not, you come home to a crying baby not because he doesn't remember you, or because he's sorry to see you, or because you've fallen out of favor with him. Instead, all those tears mean that he's thrilled to see you (though he's got a heck of a way of showing it).
According to Psychology Today, there are certain actions that cause babies more distress than others, which could cause a child to dislike someone. Not holding them enough, leaving them alone for too long, and ignoring them, all are possible reasons a baby could decide they don't like someone.
They're curious about the world, and everything is new to them. They want to interact with people and be social. Your baby may be staring as an early form of communication between them and the huge world around them.
About Separation Anxiety
Between 4-7 months of age, babies develop a sense of "object permanence." They're realizing that things and people exist even when they're out of sight. Babies learn that when they can't see mom or dad, that means they've gone away.