0-4 Months: It's About Trust - Milestones

1. Responds to familiar adults.

Young infants respond to the people around them from the moment they are born. For example, newborns just a few minutes old turn their heads toward the sound of their mother's voice. Even in the first months, babies demonstrate the ability to respond to and initiate interactions with the adults around them. Babies use several ways of paying attention and attracting interactions, such as looking in the direction of people around them, smiling, crying, protesting, or clinging. Long before they show clear preferences for specific adults, babies come to know those adults who respond to them socially. For example:

Developing as expected, they might:

• gaze into their caregiver's eyes while they are fed
• turn their head toward familiar voices
• stop crying when they hear their caregiver's voice
• coo or smile when someone talks to them
• follow their caregiver with their eyes, and continue to look at the door when their caregiver leaves the room
• fuss or cry to gain the attention of familiar adults
• cuddle into a caregiver's shoulder when being held

Needing development, they might:

• search in several directions when they hear a familiar voice
• quiet briefly when they hear a voice, but then resume crying
• look when someone talks to them, but not respond
• not respond easily when a familiar adult coos to them

2. Shows awareness of unfamiliar people.

Even in their early months, many babies begin to respond differently to people they are not familiar with. Sometimes you have to look carefully to see how they differentiate their responses, because they can be quite subtle. They might be more reserved in their body motions or their facial expressions. They might explore a new person by looking at him or her and perhaps show hesitancy, wariness, or even distress when approached by an unfamiliar person. For example:

Developing as expected, they might:

• look passively and then begin to fuss when a new person moves toward them
• stop cooing and smiling when a new person tries to play a game of "Hi, Baby"
• make no cooing sounds when an unfamiliar person leans over to "talk" to them
• turn their head into the shoulder of their caregiver when a new person approaches
• stiffen and lean away from the unfamiliar person who picked them up

There are no clear indicators for needing development. During the first four months of life, many babies demonstrate wariness or withholding tactics toward unfamiliar adults. However, other babies seem to be very comfortable with almost everybody. This may be due to their different personalities, the frequency of exposure to a variety of adults, or the ease and skillfulness with which an unfamiliar adult approaches them. Therefore, at this age, consistency or inconsistency of response is not a clear indication of babies in distress when approached by new people.