Infants. Of course they don't know much, so they've
got to figure out all the bits.
A thing I find interesting of my little one is how he
reacts to unknown and "scary" situations, such as the
little incidents or noisy events.
Let's say a pot fell on the ground, making some noise.
He will seek for me, with an alarmed expression, but
not crying quite yet. Not even knowing how to speak,
he will ask me with his eyes what to do: should I cry
or should I laugh of it?
Then if I laugh he will laugh, and ...I'm guessing he
will cry if I also look worried. I didn't try, and I
don't see why I should look worried for something like
that.
Another "dot" to interpolate: some time ago we visited
a couple of friends, and they've a little girl. She
started messing around with some fairly unbalanced
object, making it fall on the ground. She fell on the
ground too, but fortunately with no damage.
While knowing nothing bad happened, her father jumped
to the rescue, and consoled her. He explicitly told us
how he prevented any crying by not looking worried in
the first place, for a thing that didn't deserve in
fact any worrying.
Third example: me and my wife saw a video where a
father walks around carrying a baby. He knocks a door,
causing a little noise, and then assumes a caring and
defensive behaviour, as the baby was hit. The baby
starts to cry, even if literally nothing happened.
I found this video moderately amusing, and the father a
bit of an idiot, to be honest, but this confirmed the
intuition: we're worried when we're told so, and this
happens since day 0.
So I now learned that I want to teach my son not to be
worried, but to face difficulties coldly.
