As your baby starts to enter that six to eight months range, you may notice something interesting about their behavior. Where they used to be more open to random people holding them, they may object a lot more frequently. They may start to cry and call for you, their parent, to quickly retrieve them. This is a form of stranger anxiety, and guess what—it’s perfectly normal. Not only that, but it’s an important step in their growth, and here’s why.
Learning About Danger
The concepts of fear and danger often get a bad rap. The truth is that fear is a crucial part of who we are and a powerfully important one at that. Without fear, we would throw caution to the wind and do dangerous activities on a daily basis, and that’s not what we want.
For this reason, you want your baby to learn the concept of stranger danger early on in life. You don’t want them to think it’s okay to walk off with random people as they get older. So you notice them whining about someone else holding them, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your baby at all. It’s just their defensive instincts kicking in—instincts that’ll serve them later in life.
Balancing It Out
Of course, eventually, your child will learn to weed out the dangerous ones from the safe ones. You’ll be able to help them out with that along the way, but in the meantime, you can sleep soundly knowing that your baby is developing just as they should be.