As adults we spend a lot of time worrying. We either worry about money and finances, the impression we make on other people, our health, our futures, or hundreds of other events in our lives. How young are we when we start to worry? Do babies have the mental capacity to worry?
I grew up in a fine home and really wasn’t a worrier as a kid. In fact I had a poster on my dorm room wall in college that read:
Why worry? Either you’ll live or you’ll die. If you live, you have nothing to worry about. If you die, you have only two things to worry about. Either you’ll go to heaven or to hell. If you go to heaven, you have nothing to worry about. If you go to hell, you’ll be so busy shaking hands with your friends that you won’t have time to worry. When I look back in time, I was rather naive about real life as a kid. But I was full of faith and hope that everything would turn out okay. In fact, I am still full of faith and hope, but I realize that we have to push ourselves and help ourselves to make things happen. We can’t rely entirely on other people.
How young are we when we start to worry? It’s hard to say, but I suppose a lot of it depends on experience and environment. Toddlers are taught through a lot of “no-no’s”. Some of them may worry about what will happen if they do what they’re not supposed to and others may just go ahead and do it to see what really happens. This is called learning by experience and the more experiences they have, the more they learn. Of course, we don’t want them to be in danger, but they must be instructed carefully about the dangers around them without having to experience those consequences.
A child’s environment can cause him a lot of anxiety. First of all, he needs to feel safe. He needs to have enough to eat. He needs the feeling of being loved. In other words, he needs to be taken care of by responsible adults. Teachers at school can have a huge impact upon a child’s feelings.
Now back to the question of whether or not babies have the mental capacity to worry. We know that from the time of birth a baby cries when something is wrong (but they also cry when nothing is visibly wrong). A baby can’t tell us what he’s thinking, so we have to do the thinking for him and act accordingly. But does he actually worry about something that may happen in the future or is he programmed to only think in the present?
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