The answer is yes, they can and will sense that something is wrong. This is an excellent question, and many parents have struggled with this concern.
Can babies sense stress and anxiety? Babies sense stress. While most caregivers and parents tend to think the ability to sense stress only happens later in their child's life (after a year or so of age), studies show babies can sense their caretaker's stress as early as three months of age.
To the legal system, the answer is clear: children have the requisite moral sense--the ability to tell right from wrong--by age 7 to 15, depending on which state they live in, and so can be held responsible for their actions.
Sense Emotions
Infants are sensitive to emotion. "By the time newborns are just a few months old, they recognize the difference between a happy expression and a sad one," says Alison Gopnik, Ph. D., author of The Philosophical Baby. Around their first birthday, a child can even sense how other people feel.
“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.”
Parents may think they are protecting their children by hiding life's stresses, but a new study suggests that children pick up on these cues and become stressed themselves. Being an adult carries a multitude of stresses and parents may try to keep their anxieties to themselves.
By the time they're 18 months old, kids know when you're sad, even if you're not bawling. Babies tend to wear their hearts on their tiny little sleeves.
And babies don't just detect our tension. They are negatively affected by it. It's one more reason to look after your own well-being, and calm down before interacting with your child.
One study showed that from around 14 months, babies begin to show the different factors of what makes up empathy: Empathic concern – wanting to help another person in distress.
Children as young as 6 years old are good at recognizing expressions of happiness, sadness, and anger. We get better at recognizing other emotions as we get older. Our ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion improves throughout childhood and the teenage years.
By the time a child is about 4 years old, he begins to associate his emotions with the feelings of others.
By age 4, children know the difference between telling the truth and lying — and they know it's wrong to lie. So, generally, they're truthful, and when they're not it's obvious.
4-year-olds: Begins to understand time. Begins to become less aware of only one's self and more aware of people around him/her. May obey parent's rules, but does not understand right from wrong.
Anxiety may present as fear or worry, but can also make children irritable and angry. Anxiety symptoms can also include trouble sleeping, as well as physical symptoms like fatigue, headaches, or stomachaches. Some anxious children keep their worries to themselves and, thus, the symptoms can be missed.
Children with generalized anxiety disorder are 3.5 times more likely to have a mother with generalized anxiety disorder. Children with social anxiety disorder are almost 3 times more likely to have a father with anxiety disorder.
Children with ADHD possess many notable characteristics. They tend to act impulsively, get bored easily, and become quickly distracted. One of the side effects of the combination of many of these symptoms can result in a lack of empathy.
Specifically, empathy of second-born children was significantly higher than that of only children in response to three emotions (i.e., sadness, fear, and anger).
Sometimes babies cry when they see a certain person who is unfamiliar because their brains are beginning to understand stranger danger.
Babies as young as six months can distinguish between good and bad people, according to a study in which babies observed characters being helpful or unhelpful. Scientists had thought that social judgments developed with language at about 18 months to two years old.
All children are intuitive, but some are more highly so and experience more intuitive messages, or perceptions, with greater frequency than others. They often are unusually aware of the needs and feelings of friends, parents, siblings and animals.
It is absolutely okay and encouraged to display emotions in front of your children. If you're sad, cry. If you're upset, be big mad.
While infants vary in their sensitivity, research shows that babies do, indeed, sense and react to their parents' emotional cues. Generally speaking, they're picking up on what you're giving off.
As early as three months, babies learn to recognize their parents or primary caregivers. And there staring is their way to communicate. Babies can't quite interact yet for the first few months, so their staring is their way of communicating with you.