Baby

Almost any baby development book will tell you separation anxiety is an older baby phenomenon, typically occurring at about eight months of age. Before then, explains Jean Wittenberg, head of the Infant Psychiatry Program at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, “the baby doesn’t have the cognitive structure to recognize mom as an individual, or to remember her when she is gone.”

Melanie Hannah might find that theory a bit hard to swallow. Her daughter, Caitlyn, is only now hitting the “official” age of separation anxiety. But, says Hannah, “She has been extremely attached to me since she was born. Until she hit 4½ months, she would not let anyone else hold her without crying and screaming hysterically, to the point where she could no longer vocalize because she was so out of breath.”

Few babies are so extreme in their reactions. Yet most parents have no doubt that their younger babies — under six months or even three months — recognize and prefer their primary caregivers (usually mom). After all, even newborns have been shown to prefer their mother’s voice over a stranger’s and to turn toward their mother’s used breast pad over somebody else’s. And we’ve all seen young babies fuss in a well-meaning visitor’s arms, until finally mom or dad rescues them and soothes them with a few well-timed jiggles.

If that’s not separation anxiety, then what is it?

It’s something a little different, says Wittenberg, but it still points to the normal dependence and attachment of an infant with her “important people.” Probably Caitlyn, at three months, didn’t cry when her mom left the room. She wasn’t old enough to understand that her mom was leaving or to fear her absence. However, says Wittenberg, “the baby can recognize mom’s voice and her smell, the way mom holds her — those kinds of things. So what you can have when mom’s not there is: ‘This soothing isn’t right. It doesn’t feel like it usually does when somebody who knows me really well does it. So I’m still upset.’ It’s more that.”

Originally published in Today's Parent, April 2006