Curious Infant Behavior

[HappyEverAfter]

I'm not concerned about stopping him from doing these things, I just was curious because I had never seen other babies do this so regularly. The hoodies I will address since that could be dangerous but the other things I'll continue to let him do since they aren't currently harming him. I will watch over the next several months and make sure the behaviors don't become obsessive issues where he can't function without doing them but until then, he can continue.

[nannyde]

Let's discuss...

How come you would prohibit rather than just let it be unless as I said it becomes excessive or obsessive?

I'm not prohibiting it. I just modify it so that the "comfort" doesn't turn into the baby blocking out the rest of the world so they can get their cloth fix. I don't want their happiness to be dependent on cloth.

In my experience it escalates as they age. It doesn't get better. I've had a number of these kids and their backstory is usually the same. Parents let them sleep with cloth to the face or even a blanket over their face. Parents promote blankets as their favorites... get them to sleep with them from birth... have them latched all night to the nipple and then have their blankets over their faces or up to their faces so they can **** all night and have cloth to the face.

By putting the cloth directly on his hands he has access to that feeling and it blocks escalation to hair pulling.

I let them get their cloth on when they are upright in a bouncy seat or baby chair. I use little squares of cloth with the edges lined in satin cloth or cloth with rubber chews at the corners. Most of them don't go for it. Some try to get the cloth over their head but it won't stay for long so they surrender.

I've had babies who are so addicted to laying on cloth that they will slump over in a bouncy seat just to get their face on the seat cloth or push their face over to the side of the infant seat to get to the cloth on the head rest or sides of the seat. If they are in a play yard that is on a blanket instead of directly on the floor they will face plant the blanket even when they are surrounded by hundreds of dollars worth of the best infant toys ever made. They won't touch a toy unless it is cloth and they don't PLAY with it... they put it to their face.


I've also had kids who twisted hair. Even boys with very short hair they will grab it and pull. Picking shirts block that.

Cloth to the palm of the hand is usually very comforting to them... ime BUT... they have to do the work of keeping it at their face and it is a small surface area so it is not covering their face as they are used to.

Once they go home it's all cloth all the time so the small window of the day when they are at my house they have a break from it. I don't see it as comfort. My experience is more of babies with fixations. Fixations escalate and their happiness plummets without their fixations.

I also have a general philosophy that comfort items for the most part aren't really comforting the child. From my experience kids who are addicted to xyz use it as a block between them and the real world. I would rather they play toys on a blanket, play toys while on belly time, **** toys as infants etc than to spend every second trying to soothe themselves when their is nothing going on that should make them need to soothe. My environment is calm, loving, with tons of manipulatives and outdoor time. The food is good. The temp is right. The adults are loving. The schedule is good. Their diapers are changed. They have comfort in everything we do. They don't need fixation on comfort items in a really comfortable environment... not at full force anyway. A little here and there but I want the majority of their time focused on everything else we have to offer instead of comforting themselves exclusively with something and shunning the rest of our world.