Bundle of Nerves?

How Your Emotions Affect Your Baby's Attitude

By Gina Roberts-Grey, LCSW

Have you ever noticed that when you are having a difficult day, your baby seems to be sharing a similarly unhappy mood? The same is true when you are enjoying a calm or emotionally level day. Your little one is likely to enjoy playing happily and feels quite content.

Our emotions are powerful indicators to our children. Emotions not only dictate our moods, they project our feelings on to those closest to us. Without ever uttering a word, the youngest of children can perceive if we are happy, nervous, calm or distressed. Our children sense our feelings and react based on our emotional actions. Despite a feigned smile, body language, facial expressions, attentiveness and the way you perform routine functions all let your baby know how you're really feeling.

Parents represent the largest source of security and comfort for their children. Children rely on their parents to teach them and offer comfort and support. A parent is also one of the strongest emotional role models a child will have in the first five years of his life.

Whether as a parent you are under extreme amounts of stress, exceptionally happy or having a typical day, your emotions are demonstrated in the most subtle of ways to your children. As a new mother, Linda Rabagliati, of Algonquin, Ill., learned that even young children can tell how their parents are feeling in the tone of their voices, the way they carry themselves and in the way they address them. "I was so stressed out about trying to be a 'perfect' parent that we both were a bundle of nerves!" says Rabagliati.

Rabagliati eventually learned that when she was enjoying a pleasant day, she'd be apt to smile more at her baby, communicate in a calm tone of voice and exhibit her mood in her overall behavior. "Once I finally relaxed, my daughter was more at ease as well," she says. "Conversely, when I was having a difficult day, I'd seem distant or irritable, preoccupied or be physically demonstrative of my agitated feelings," she says.

Even though parents never intend on their moods transferring to their children, sharing emotions is a natural process. Children raised in households with high stress levels learn to feed off the stress. A study performed in 2000 by researchers at the University of Chicago concluded that babies who are only a few months old can sense agitation and begin to display similar emotions to those of their caregiver. Russell R. Posey, Ph.D., supervised that study and explains that "three out of five of these children experienced higher levels of stress and anxiety as preschoolers and had a harder time integrating with their peers."

Want to see more?

• Baby Emotions: An Inside Look at Your Infant's Feelings
• The Mind of the Baby: Unleashing Your Child's Potential
• BabyFace Album
• Talk about it!