How To Combat Anxiety When You’ve Got a Curious Baby

Photo: Kevin Gent

How what you resist persists, (and no, I’m not talking about the law of attraction)…

There’s a kind of social anxiety that I often see in parents and which I was reminded of recently.

I had a lovely mum come along to my class for the first time. Before she came, she messaged me to ask about what to do with her little one who has started crawling and loves to head for other babies, grabbing their faces or hair. She was really quite anxious about it. 

Now this is something I've come across so many times. It's very normal behaviour and so I thought I'd address it here because I’d like to help people understand some of the simple ways you can deal with this kind of behaviour whilst also accepting it as being perfectly normal and therefore nothing to worry about. 

Of course, when we worry about something that a child is doing or might do, we get anxious, and that anxiety gets picked up by a little one. Also, if it’s persistent behaviour, some parents will choose not to stay home, or will go out but take all the stress with them, making them feel that they have to constantly intervene in the children's play, following their child everywhere.

Having observed this for many years, I would conclude that this is not so much because we feel our children are doing things that are bad but because we are worried about what other parents will think of us. This is perfectly normal but actually makes life very difficult. And, we’ve lost touch with the simple, non-judgemental ways in which these situations can be handled.

On this occasion, my visitor was fortunate to be sitting next to a parent who has been coming to my classes for a really long time and currently attends with her youngest of just five months. Her baby (we’ll call her J) is very attractive, as all babies are, and immediately attracted the attention of our visitor (we’ll call her M). M headed straight over to where J was lying on the floor and wanted to get hold of her nose or hair or anything she could.

As we were ready for this, and because what I aim to create is a safe space where this kind of behaviour is understood, accepted and not judged, mum’s initial anxiety was gradually able to dissipate. We talked about it. We observed the children and talked with M about what was and wasn't okay while we soothed J, saying, ‘Yes, you didn't like it when your hair was grabbed.’ We managed to allow M to follow her interest in J enough that she was satisfied, and J was happy.

As Carl Jung is famous for saying, what you resist persists. If you constantly stop a child from doing something which they're really interested in doing, they will keep trying and keep trying until they manage it, and this causes so much stress. I've been there myself and it's only now through the training that I've completed plus my observations and experience, that I've learned how to really help both children in this kind of situation. 

It's so much better for the children and for us, the adults, if we just observe what's happening and make those observations to the children. You can say:

‘M has got such beautiful shiny eyes – you’re really interested in her eyes – but I can't let you touch them.’

And to M:

‘J is really interested in your eyes – they’re very sparkly – but you didn't like it when she touched them.’

You can say these things, acknowledging what you see. By doing that the child knows that they have been noticed, they know that their discomfort or their interest has been noted, and it helps them to understand what's okay and what’s not. The reactions they get from the adults are calm too. It’s all too easy to set up recurring challenging behaviours when our reactions are too great.

Photo: Adi Goldstein

If the behaviour persists, you can use very clear signals without being too quick (thereby startling the children) or aggressive or judgemental (because you’re stressed). You can use a very simple flat hand gesture, gently placing the hand in between the two, calmly saying, ‘I won't let you do that.’ 

If one of the children shows surprise or gets upset, you can talk about that too.

‘It upset you when M held your nose…’

‘J is upset because you held her nose and she didn’t like it…’

I know there are many of you out there who will have experienced something like this, feeling uncomfortable at the very least and feeling shame at worst – an emotion that comes up all too easily. (Check out this blog post for some more thoughts on shame…)

Sometimes the feelings that we have when our children are simply behaving naturally – showing the natural curiosity which we want them to be able to express – and worrying about how other parents feel can become overwhelming. Learning to deal with your feelings around this and being confident in how you handle it can really help to build your relationships – both with your own child and with other parents who can learn from your example.

Do give me a call or email me if you'd like to know more about anything I’ve said here or if you’re interested in my Authentic Parenthood course or parent-child classes.