Growing Up by Susan Swindell Day
Worry Not!
Socializing Your Baby is Easy Babies and toddlers confined to the company of adults can have socialization issues that continue into adulthood. It’s a good reason for starting a fun play group with friends, or getting into activities away from home.
K
aren Jackson says that if she believed everything she read about the horrors of isolation for young children over the last two years, she’d be a basket case. Jackson delivered her first baby, a girl, during the early years of the pandemic in 2020. Her little family went immediately into lock down, filled with concerns and worries about the future. “I thought we would do some mommy-and-me music or movement classes when she turned 6 months old, but everything was shut down except for virtual, and that wasn’t what I wanted to do. Luckily, I sort of stick my neck out pretty easily, not a lot of fearfulness,” Jackson says. “But I have friends who still have a lot of anxiety about everything. I can sort of tell that they’ve passed that on to their kids; it’s sort of a lot of uneccessary fear or at least it hasn’t helped.” Two years later, Jackson’s daughter, Emma, is a handful of energy and a little chatter bug at home. “My mom is a teacher,” Jackson says, “So she taught me about drawing Emma out and about how important it has been to talk to
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Emma and get her to be responsive. It’s a constant. I say things like, ‘Nana said, hi!, so, say, hi!, Emma!’” A study from Columbia University Irving Medical Center found that babies born during the pandemic scored lower on tests of gross-motor, fine-motor and social skills at 6 months compared with babies born earlier. So parents need to intervene beyond the comfortable walls of their own homes. Of course, parents socialize their babies naturally from birth in the way they engage with them. Making eye contact, smiling, talking and singing to them helps them get a sense of turn-taking. Experts believe that infant socialization is the foundation of communications, encouraging healthy language development and even empathy. When your 1-year-old child wraps their little arms around your neck and lays their head contentedly on your shoulder, it’s probably hard to imagine that they need more than your love, care and affection. But if you take them to a gathering where there are other babies and young children, you can see how they perk up. They connect with them in a way they cannot connect with you. They watch them in rapture. They may tag behind the older ones and explore
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