Archive for the 'Infant Signals' Category

I. Your Baby’s Earliest Feelings

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Paul C. Holinger |

The purpose of this blog is to help develop great kids and great parents. I hope to do this by discussing information about infancy and childhood – and especially about the feelings of infants and children. Why the focus on feelings? Because feelings lead to behaviors – our actions or inaction stem from our feelings.

Over the next several months, we’ll be looking at infant and child development, parenting, and the role of feelings. If you understand what your child is feeling, everything else falls into place.

Some of the topics I’ll take up include your baby’s earliest feelings, how they are expressed, what feelings are and how they work, and how understanding feelings can make sense of not only early childhood, but adolescence and adulthood as well. We’ll take a look at pictures of babies, and we’ll explore specific issues such as self-esteem, corporal punishment, recent research, and the views of experts in a variety of fields.

For the moment, let’s just take a brief look at your baby’s earliest feelings. You might ask “How do you know my baby even has feelings?” Great question! After all, the baby is not using words yet to tell you how he/she is feeling! I’ll explore this question later when discussing how feelings work, but for now the answer lies primarily in the facial expressions of your baby.

Current research shows that your baby is born with about 8 to 10 built-in feelings, as shown by the facial expressions. Although there are some interesting controversies in this area, the best information available now suggests humans are born with 9 feelings:

Interest (curiosity)

Enjoyment

Surprise

Distress

Anger

Fear

Shame

Disgust (a reaction to noxious tastes)

Dissmell (a reaction to noxious odors)

Believe it or not, these are your baby’s earliest feelings! Most of them are apparent within the first few days of your baby’s life. Over time, they will combine with experience and with each other to form our more complex emotional life. This is the embryology of feelings!

These feelings operate on a low-to-high scale, so that the range of feelings looks like this:

Interest – Excitement

Enjoyment – Joy

Surprise – Startle

Distress – Anguish

Anger – Rage

Fear – Terror

Shame – Humiliation

Disgust – lower to higher levels

Dissmell – lower to higher levels

“But,” you might say, “What do all these look like? How does my baby communicate these feelings? And, most importantly, what do I do with them?!”

Again, great questions! And if you use these feelings to understand your baby, parenting – and your life – becomes a lot easier… so, that’s where we’ll start next time!

II. Your Baby’s Earliest Feelings: The Positive Feelings

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Paul C. Holinger |

How Does Your Baby Express Her Earliest Feelings?

What Do Feelings Look Like?

Last time the discussion involved your baby’s earliest feelings. The idea was introduced that human beings are born with about 8-10 reactions, or feelings, which turn into the more complex adult emotional life. Today the exploration involves what these feelings look like – that is, how your baby expresses her feelings. In a future discussion, we will examine how feelings work.

The human face is made up of many small muscles. These muscles help give the face its expressiveness. The face is a wonderful area for communication. The infant cannot talk. “Infant” means “incapable of speech.” So the infant uses its face, along with vocalizations and bodily movements, to express what’s going on.

Studies show that babies prefer to look at human faces more than anything else. They especially focus on the eyes and the mouth. The eyes and mouth have the most muscles in the face and can send the most overt and subtle messages. Thus, the baby and the adult communicate largely through their faces. The adult will also use words, which the baby will gradually learn and hook up with feelings. As future articles will explore, things can get complicated and confused because the words of the adult may not accurately label the feelings of the baby; in addition, adults are able, to some extent, to mask and distort their basic innate feelings.

One way to understand feelings is to divide them up into positive and negative feelings. There are two positive feelings: interest and enjoyment. There is one transitional or “re-setting” feeling, surprise: surprise seems to clear or rest the nervous system to prepare it for the next stimulus. There are six negative feelings: distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust, and dissmell.

You might wonder: why are there more negative than positive feelings? Great question! It may be because it is more important for your baby to let you know when there are problems than when things are going well. Negative feelings are really “SOS” signals. Negative feelings are your baby’s way of saying “Please help! I am in trouble – something is wrong here!”

Today, the positive and transitional feelings will be presented. Each feeling will be described and shown how it is expressed.

Positive Feelings

Interest (curiosity): The feeling of interest or curiosity is seen in your baby’s exploring. Interest is the root of our learning and creativity. The facial expression includes the baby being focused, looking and listening, engrossed. The eyebrows may be slightly lifted or slightly lowered; the mouth may be a bit open.

Enjoyment: Your baby smiles, her lips widens up and out, she laughs, and her eyes brighten. She may make some high-pitched sounds and gleeful noises. If your baby is smiling and laughing, all is well.

Transitional Feelings

Surprise: The baby’s eyebrows are up, and the mouth forms an “O” shape. Her head may turn, and she may make an effort to turn the body if the surprise came from the side or in back of her.

So these, then, are the earliest positive and transitional feelings. The next time the negative feelings will be examined.

Responding to Your Infant’s Signals:

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Paul C. Holinger |

“We [emphasize] the role of early relationships in affect development and in the acquisition of affect regulating capacities. These are complex developmental processes, however, that are influenced by other factors as well, including temperament and neurobiological structures and functions, and the reciprocal interactions between these endowments and the early social environment.” Taylor, Bagby, and Parker, Disorders of Affect Regulation, (p. 24)

“When the infant’s caretakers act to soothe and hold it, the infant internalizes the qualities and functioning of its caretaking environment. This will have an effect on how the infant perceives and experiences danger, tolerates affects, and develops a capacity to allay its own anxieties.” Ivri Kumin, 1996, p. 27.

“You ask about crying—Jessie cried a lot. Sometimes it seemed non-stop. In the old days they would have said she had colic, now they attribute it to all kinds of problems with allergies, foods, exposure to smoke. She cried so much that it was impossible to know what she wanted or needed. It wasn’t until she was several months old that it stopped. By then both she and I were worn out. I have three other kids, 8,4, and 2, and it’s been tough sometimes. With Jessie, I have to make a special effort to pay attention when she cries or fusses. My inclination was to ignore it a little bit. But now that’s she’s getting bigger she can be consoled, I can actually do some good for her. I just have to learn not to shut down when she starts to crank up the volume. I have to remember she is sending me a message and I need to try to figure out what it is. Is she tired? Hungry? Sick? Anxious? Usually these days, I figure it out. And sometimes my other kids are a real big help is identifying the cause..”
–Marie, 40, mother of four

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