Although that is not what is usually explained, most babies need to spend much of the day in our arms, because that way they are calmer, they feel more secure and less alarms of restlessness and discomfort are triggered. At the beginning, in the first weeks and months, they usually prefer to be with mom, because it is she who has what calms them the most: the smell they know, mom's warmth, breast and food.
If they have a full stomach many can stay in the arms of unknown people, however, upon arrival at the age of seven or eight months, some more, others less, most stop consenting to be in the arms of anyone other than the mother or father and even stop consenting that mom or dad get away from them. It is the phenomenon that we know as separation anguish and, far from being a setback in its development, it is the most normal, the most logical and therefore we must try to understand them and not force absurd and unnecessary situations and separations.
We don't go back, let's go ahead
I repeat, it is not a setback as many people think. It is sometimes said that the child stayed with anyone, but look, "something you will have done wrong that now the child has grown and no longer wants to stay with anyone." If he didn't want to be with anyone before, the same thing is said, that "the child has grown up and still doesn't want to be with anyone, and now he doesn't want to be alone anymore." Then the causes are sought, that if "you are giving it a tit and you are making it dependent", that "as you sleep with him in the same bed / room he is falling in love", that "as you are so soft with him and do not want to leave him crying you have the measure ", which" as always you have taken in arms now look what happens, that has become accustomed and it will be impossible to leave it on the ground for ever and ever, amen ", etc.
However no, it's none of that, it is not a setback, but it is an advance. The child begins to have a bad time when he separates from his caregivers because he is developing well and now, more than ever, his alarm system works like a charm. This alarm system establishes that wherever the most important people in your life are not, do your best to remedy it: let him cry, let him not leave, put his lower lip out to give even more pain and let loose liters of tears to keep his parents from separating from him.
It's kind of like being clear that with dad and mom they are not in any danger, but without them anything can happen. It is not that it is a real thought, it is not that you know that you can hurt yourself or that your lives are in danger. It is an instinct, it is a malaise caused by loneliness or being with strangers, and it is a consequence of the correct establishment of a bond with their parents. Since I know who they are and how I know that I am safe with them, I do not want to be without them.
If I don't see you, I don't believe you
There are people who need to see something to believe it. You can already try to convince them in all possible ways that, until they see it with their eyes, nothing. Children are like this too: until they see their mother or father (and I say father because poor guys, we also deserve a little recognition, but many times they don't even want us, but they cry for their mother), they don't feel safe. When you go somewhere else, when you go to the next room, babies believe you have disappeared forever. How are they not going to cry?
It is with the passage of time, with the growth and with the development of his rational brain when that worry of not seeing you is being controlled by the thoughts that say "yes, mom is not, but I know that it is there next and that right away come back "or" yes, mom is gone, but I know that in a little while she will come back ". And this does not happen right away, but it happens over the weeks and months.
And what to do then?
Well, we have to do what one feels he has to do. There are people who fall into the involuntary trap of the opinions of others and end up forcing the separation, something like a "they are right, they are in love, it is my fault" and they begin to force separations and even get angry with the child for not being able of tolerating them. It is a mistake, because the problem is not of the child, but of who believes that what he does is wrong. Come on, that the problem is not such, that there is no problem, that it is something normal and that nothing needs to be done for the child to learn to separate from his parents, because it is something you will learn to do alone.
What you have to do, as I say, is to try to understand that your tears are logical and that your cries for you to come back are lawful. In the book "The science of being parents", by Margot Sunderland, it is commented that the suffering that children feel for the anguish of active separation in the brain the same areas as when they suffer physical pain. This would also explain why we feel so bad when a loved one separates from us, when they reject us or when a relationship is broken.
As parents we do not take long to try to appease the physical pain of our children when they are hurt. A baby of 8 or 9 months who is hurt crawling because he has failed to lend a hand or because he has caught a finger with a door is comforted immediately by his parents, holding him in his arms, giving kisses, wiping away tears, looking for things make him smile again and trying to appease that discomfort.
Well, knowing this, that the discomfort that a baby feels when we separate from him is similar to the discomfort he feels when physical harm is done, the logical thing is that as parents let's understand that suffering, those tears and that insistence to continue with us as logical and important, precisely because for the baby it is a real feeling, so important that it completely blocks him.
If we can avoid these separations, we must do so out of respect for their feelings and because we know that they depend physically and emotionally on us. If we can't avoid them, at least we'll understand how they feel and we can be more available and closer at the reunion, with more hugs, more kisses, more attentions and explaining to them, even if they don't understand us yet, that "I know, honey, I know you've had a very bad time without me, but I'm here with you," which is very different from thinking that the child is having a bad time because he is very spoiled, very spoiled and that what he really needs is precisely that, more hours without dad and mom, so that he learns to be alone.
To be independent, you don't have to do anything
Okay, so we let him be with us and we try not to suffer because we go to another room or we go somewhere else ... how will we then become an independent person? Well, I answer the question: not doing anything special. You don't have to force anything because the children immediately ask and take autonomy and become independent themselves.
While they are small, in the age that appears the separation anguish, it is advisable to allow them to always be with us. They, who already crawl or move around the house, tend to follow us wherever we go. Well, let them follow us if we are moving around the house, so they can see that we don't disappear when we leave one room, but that we move to another, just as they do behind us.
With freedom to go home, with autonomy to do what they think they need, children become independent as they learn to fend for themselves, and that's why one day they tell you they don't want you to feed them, a Suddenly they fall asleep without the tit and one day you find them with the open closet eating what they have come to catch because they are hungry. They imitate us, they learn from us, they look very much at what we do and so, almost without wanting to, they learn to do things. Forcing them to know how to live alone, without us, without needing us, when they are only 8 months old is not only counterproductive but also, in my view, quite sad, because the logical thing is that a baby wants to be with the people he wants, and not that he doesn't care who to be with because we've forced him to do it.
