SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL SKILLS
As parents learn to recognize their infant’s
behavior cues for engagement and disengagement
or distress, and consistently
respond appropriately to their infant’s needs
(eg, being fed when hungry or comforted
when crying), babies learn to trust and love
their parents.
Children with special health care needs
may not exhibit the same responses as other
children. This difficulty can cause parents to
feel inadequate because they cannot discern
their child’s needs.
Helping a family recognize
even the small gains their child is making provides
support to the family and acknowledges
the progress and growth in their child with
special needs.
By 3 months of age, infants may interact
differently with different people.
At about 8 months, an infant shows social referencing,
looking to his parents in ambiguous or unfamiliar
situations to figure out how to
respond.
At about the same age, his capacity
to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar
people shows itself as stranger anxiety.
By 14 months, he develops enough assurance
and communication ability to contain his
stranger anxiety and deal successfully with a
new person.
During the first year, the infant’s
social awareness advances from a tendency
to cry when he hears crying, to attempts to
offer food, initiate games, and even take
turns by 1 year.
As autonomy emerges, babies may begin to bite, pinch, and grab
what they want. Health care professionals
should tell parents to anticipate these infant
behaviors and advise on consistent, appropriate
(firm but gentle) responses to redirect the
infant’s behavior.
It is, therefore, important to ask not only what the
child can do but also what the family expects
and allows.
Separation Anxiety
Parents need to know that infants as young
as 4 to 5 months of age may be anxious,
when they are separated from their parents,
to meet strangers or even familiar relatives.
Even grandparents need to allow the infant
to warm up to them before taking the infant
from the mother.
This anxiety peaks at about
8 months. This is not a rejection but a normal
developmental phase.
Providing time for the infant to get to
know a new caregiver in the presence of the
mother, before separation, is critically important.
There must be consistency in this relationship.
Transitions will be easier if a child is
encouraged to have a special stuffed animal,
blanket, or similar favorite object, which she
holds on to as an important companion
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