By Elizabeth Messum, Specialist Health Visitor, Perinatal Mental Health
The theme of this year’s Infant Mental Health Awareness Week is ‘who is holding the baby?’. A baby’s environment is key in supporting them to achieve positive emotional wellbeing and mental health. It is fundamental for a baby’s future to consider ‘who is holding the baby’.
Babies are completely reliant on their parents and carers from birth to meet all their needs which is something that is well known.
What may be less well known is babies have mental health and emotional wellbeing needs. Babies and infants can experience mental ill health as adults do but will show it in different ways from adults. This can be quite a surprise for parents and carers, and the wider support network, who may not have previously considered it.
Infant mental health is an area that is becoming more widely known about. Research in the last 20 years has been published looking at how infant mental health can significantly impact a person as they grow through childhood and into adulthood. Babies and infants are born with a fundamental need to feel safe and secure, and to learn how to self-regulate. The ability to self-regulate is learned from how a parent or carer co-regulates with them.
According to Early Education ‘in its earliest stages, co-regulation involves a carer helping a baby who is overwhelmed by feelings – perhaps from being hungry, uncomfortable, or unhappy for any reason, to return to a state of calm. Through voice, sensitive handling, and tuning in to respond promptly to a baby’s signals, the adult helps the baby experience returning to balance after being in a state of emotional arousal. Each experience of co-regulation helps to build the neural pathways that regulate emotion’.
When parents are responsive to babies it does not mean the baby is controlling the parents, nor does it mean the baby is being spoiled. It means the baby is understanding that they matter, they are safe and loved. Ultimately, this means they can manage sleeping and feeding issues, assuming there are no underlying clinical reasons for these issues. This also leads to fewer behavioural challenges as they grow older because they feel emotionally held. Babies who do not have secure and loving relationships, or who are exposed to an environment where they feel vulnerable, may find it difficult to manage their own emotions and behaviours throughout their childhoods and, for some, into adulthood.
Factors that can be a barrier for a baby learning how to co-regulate their emotions can include parental mental ill health, environmental factors, state of parental relationship and support network, housing, finances, parental substance use, etc., this is not an exhaustive list.
If support is needed by the parents, carers or extended support network to address any issues that could interfere with them being able to support a baby’s mental health, that that is accessed as soon as possible.
Sources: Self-regulation – Birth To 5 Matters