Feelings: babies

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What to expect

Your baby is likely to:

• laugh aloud (between 2-4 months)
• begin to withdraw from strangers (at about eight months)
• give loving cuddles (from 10 months)
• prefer you to any other adult and be clingy towards you (from about eight months)
• experience increased separation anxiety (from 10-18 months), even when you walk out of the room
• experience increased anxiety with new people, called stranger anxiety (from about eight months)
• start to verbally express how she feels, such as saying ‘sore’  for pain or ‘yay’ for happy (from about 14 months)
• experience fear for the first time (from 12 months).

The sheer thrill of just being alive or seeing your face will have your baby grinning from ear-to-ear and crowing with delight.

Your baby might also learn to show feelings such as hurt or confusion through play. Playing aggressively around a new sibling, for example, may be an expression of feelings of confusion and hurt that someone has ‘taken her place’.

Play ideas to encourage the exploration of feelings

Play is one of the best ways for young children to find out about and express their feelings. There are some great ways to encourage them to express feelings:

• Messy play with sand, mud, paints and other gooey substances can help your baby get used to the way different things make her feel.
• Messy play can also help your baby express upset feelings. She can slap mud around, slosh water angrily and then stamp on the whole lot if she wants to.
• She can act out feelings with puppets or toys.
• If you take your baby to a park or an open space where she can crawl, roll and explore different things, she'll be able to release emotions. This is something she’ll want to do more and more as she becomes a toddler.
• Let her lead the play. She can express her feelings best when she’s in charge of your shared play time.

Play is most valuable for your child when she gets the chance to lead it. If you step back and let your baby be the boss, it will help her learn to make decisions and use her own imagination.

Play is simply about having fun. The fact that your baby learns a lot along the way is a bonus, not the focus.

If by 18 months your baby shows no sign of separation anxiety, or no preference for familiar faces, it could mean that there is a problem. It’s a good idea to see a health professional if:

• Your baby’s feelings are difficult to understand.
• Your baby’s feelings are not appropriate or seem at odds with  the situation.
• Your baby rarely uses emotional expressions to communicate her feelings.
  

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