Fear is not something that many people enjoy feeling. There are some who love being scared and having that flow of adrenaline go through their body, but it is not for everyone. It is also usually only enjoyable when the fear is fun and safe. Circumstances that are a real threat to our personal health and safety can be a whole other experience. However, have we ever stopped to think about babies and how they experience fear, or even why they experience it? Babies are innocent, and they are unaware of the dangers of this world, so how is it possible that they can be afraid?
We have all seen the viral videos that circulate social media of infants and young toddlers being scared, and we normally laugh it off as they can be quite humorous. However, is this something we should be doing? Is it really funny to see a baby scared, or is it doing more damage than we realize? Babies all develop and things like fear are developmental, and their fear will change as they age into a toddler and then a preschooler.
When Do Babies Feel Fear?
To understand how babies process the feeling of fear, we must first understand when they can actually feel fear. According to CNN, babies will instinctively react to loud noises right from birth, but they may not be feeling afraid. It is a natural response and not something that they are intentionally doing. By the time an infant is 6 to 7 months old, they can start to feel actually afraid, and that is because they are starting to develop memories of familiar faces. That means that whoever they see that is not mom or dad, is a stranger to them and they can be fearful.
This is typically when we see separation anxiety start in infants, where a baby that never minded being held by someone else will cry and scream if they are given to someone who is not someone that they know.
It’s Biology
There have been studies done to see how and why babies respond to fear, and it may have more to do with biology than we thought. According to Science Alert, a new study was done that shows that the fear response in babies may be shaped by their gut microbiome. The study can be read in full here, and it found that babies with less balanced gut microbiomes tended to show an increase in fear behavior during an experiment. This was compared to infants who had a more balanced gut bacteria level.
To complete the study, the researchers gathered 30 infants and measured their fear responses when they wore different Halloween masks. They assured everyone that they worked hard to make sure that they were not traumatizing these babies. Studies like this could be important for finding ways of calming down babies who tend to be overly fearful.
Human Behavior
According to Zero to Three, another reason why we start to see more fearful responses when a baby hits that 7-month age is because, developmentally, they are starting to understand facial expressions, and that facial expressions have meaning. They are studying the human behavior of the adults around them and they will often take longer to look away from a fearful face, possibly because they are studying it.
How To Calm Down A Fear
No mom wants her baby to be in a state of fear and discomfort, so when her baby starts to exhibit signs of being genuinely afraid, they want to make sure that they can calm them down. With young babies, the only thing that may work is bringing them around new faces and places more often. The more they are around a new person, with a familiar mom present, the more they will relax and the fear should subside.
When your infant grows into a toddler, fear takes on a whole new meaning. When a child is 18 months old, they have now entered the developmental stage where they cannot distinguish the difference between real-life and make-believe. That means that if they see a scary monster on the TV or in the book, they cannot distinguish that this is not real, they think it is real. Toddlers process fear in different ways than infants do, which means that different strategies need to be used to calm them down when they get afraid. When it comes to calming down an older infant and toddler, the best weapon is going to be gentle reassurance. Since an 18-month-old is starting to be able to understand the world around them, they can process explanations a lot better than a young infant can.
Sources: CNN, Science Alert, Nature, Zero To Three