Just a short time ago, your child was a ray of sunshine who looked at everyone with curiosity, but from one day to the next they react to their environment with rejection. One brief eye contact and it’s all over: the child turns away, holds its little hands in front of its face, rescues itself in its mother’s arms or even cries.
The explanation is simple: your baby is a stranger! But that’s no reason to worry. In fact, strangeness is an important stage in your child’s development and a sign of emotional and social maturity.
When do babies become strangers?
When babies start to feel strange and how pronounced it is depends on your child’s personal pace and individual character.
Insecurity towards strangers usually increases between the 4th and 8th month of life. The developmental psychologist Réné A. Spitz therefore gave the strangeness phase the name “8-month anxiety”.
Why do babies feel strange?
During the stranger phase, your baby begins to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar. Even in the first few months, it recognizes mom and dad by their voice and smell. A few months later, however, it can also clearly recognize the face of its closest caregivers and distinguish them from less familiar people.
Strangeness is therefore simply a natural and healthy distance from strangers. From an evolutionary point of view, strangeness is an important protective mechanism for survival.
Strangeness: Fear of separation
Strangeness also expresses another important aspect: separation anxiety. In the first few months of life, the baby has learned that its caregiver reliably looks after it and satisfies its needs. It is cared for and receives food, love and comfort.
From this sense of security, it develops what is known as basic trust, which will also be decisive for interpersonal relationships later on. However, at this stage, your child is still completely dependent on you. As soon as you leave the room or their field of vision, they react with restlessness or even panic.
Strangeness – a sign of a secure attachment
Whether intense or only mild: if your baby is alienated by others, there is a secure and stable bond between you and your child. Your child knows that they have a reliable base station in you when they are distressed, anxious or insecure. Only with this knowledge can they courageously explore their environment and develop an open and self-confident personality.
Strangeness: Assessing the danger situation
Too much caution is just as harmful to the child as too little. Over-anxious parents can put the brakes on their offspring’s thirst for action. An overly carefree attitude conveys to the child that strangers generally pose no danger.
What to do if your baby is a stranger?
As parents, you cannot train your baby to stop being a stranger – and nor should you. Support your child during the strangeness phase by giving them security and a feeling of security.
If your baby is a stranger, don’t force them into the arms of relatives if they really don’t want to. However, you should also not overprotect a child who is a stranger. Social skills, which are important for the rest of his life, can only be developed through contact with other people.
Tips for dealing with strangeness?
The following measures will help your child to get used to a new person, such as a babysitter, during the strangeness phase:
- Be patient!
- Gradually build up contact with this new person together.
- Involve the person in activities: playing, feeding, changing diapers.
- Announce that you are leaving and be positive and cheerful – don’t sneak off.
- Test run within reach: Leave the room only briefly at first and gradually increase your absence.
When babies are not strangers
For developmental psychologists, deviating behavior is an indication that the bond is less stable. If a baby is not alienated, this is usually due to negative experiences with the caregiver. If it experiences rejecting, distant behavior, mood swings, emotional coldness, neglect or abuse, the bond is disturbed.
Strangeness – a question of character
Attachment behavior is also genetically pre-programmed and not only dependent on the behavior of the mother or other close caregivers. For example, there are daredevils who boldly throw themselves into everything and timid bunnies who cautiously and tentatively explore everything new.
The extent to which a baby is alienated is therefore also influenced by the child’s character. Parents can do something to counteract this, i.e. slow down or encourage and have a positive effect on the child’s attitude through their behavior. But regardless of whether your baby is very or very unfamiliar, be their safe haven from which they can set off on new adventures!
