Can babies FEEL embarassment/shame?

You bet! I have been reading tonnes of material on babies and parenting ever since I found out I was preggie, that was ermm, 17 mths ago. Some material I have read says that babies start feelign embarassment in two stages, 1st between the age of 15-20 months and later when they are about 3 years old is when the shame aspect comes in. The fact is, no matter how much you have read there will always be something to be surprised about when you have a little person eagerly trying to take in everything around them and at the same time trying to express themselves! I realised my little almost 9 month-old CAN be embarassed, only a couple of weekends back.

It all started one Saturday evening, while I was baking in the kitchen and she decided to venture out from the kitchen into my sister's room. One look into the room, I knew what exactly attracted her to it, my sister's bag with half the guts spilled out. Within seconds she was seated next to the beg which was placed on the mattress that was on the floor. When she put one hand out to grab the bag, both my sister and I went, "Hey!". She retrieved her hand, slowly pushed the room door to block us out of her view and grabbed the bag once more. The best part is, babies always think just because they cannot see us, they think we can't see either. Which is SO cute. Reminds me of a gf and her son, who plays hide and seek by covering his eyes thinking no one can see him when he does that!

Anyways, what happened was the next day mum came to visit so all of us girls were hanging out in my sister's room with Nia in the middle. There was mum, my aunt who is Nia's nanny, my two sisters & I. I recounted the story from the day before how Nia tried to not show us what she was doing by pushing the door etc. From the time I started telling the story she was already getting upset at me, she kept staring at me and shouting, "Eii!", "Eii!", she actually does this quite alot especially when we are talking about her, so I just went on with my story. But this time, when I finished telling the story, everyone laughed, and this was when she jumped on me from where she was seated, buried her face in my neck and started crying. I had to carry her in my arms and comfort her before the crying subsided.

Later that night when I re-told what happened to hubz, we both realised that she was actually embarassed! Now I know. I reckon when they are able to feel different emotions, they should be able to feel embarassed or shy too, no? Whatever the professionals may say on the topic. I mean, we can deduce babies actions and reactins to a certain degree, unless I sit down with Nia every minute of her waking life, recording every single thing that she does, I will never be able to tell for sure whether whatever that is written about babies in different stages are accurate as far as my baby's concerned, isn't that so? Aren't all babies, just like adults, individuals?

Nia did start crawling when she was barely 5 months, well, no, I wouldn't call that crawling, it was more like a caterpillar's movement, where she uses her head to push her way through, and sometimes, she leaps using her whole body! When she got tired of this, she tried walking, she will slide down from the couch and start crusing by holding on to the couch! At this point she can't even sit up yet, so I had concerns for her wanting to walk so fast when obviously her back and legs aren't strong enough. But we encouraged it nevertheless, just that, we took extra measures like ensuring she's fed sitting up straight in her baby chair and whenever she wants to be sitting up, we'll prop her against piles of pillows so that she get the 'experience' of it. Then, by the time she turned 6 mths, her two lower front teeth erupted, as you can imagine, this was a major event in our lives, not only Nia's! She only became extremely active in crawling after her teeth erupted, I do not know if there is any connection between this two events, but it seems so to me. Now that she can be classified as F1 crawler, she still cruises whenever possible and most time she will stand up holding on to something, like TV, book shelf & table and has her little "no-hands" moments!

Back to my point, what I'm saying is that just because there's no recorded evidence by the pros does not mean what a baby experiences is unreal. I guess, as parents, we may read too much into something, as of course, we all WANT to believe or LIKE to believe that our offsprings are the smartest/cleverest/cutest of the lot. Unfortunately, that is NOT my intention, I do not wish to start comparing Nia with other kids, I don't want her to grow up thinking that she's better than certain people or she's worse than some. It may be important that she has some competitive streak in her but this she can learn that when she's older by playing sports. Nia is Nia. She has spunk and lots of personality (as what her daddy claims!), she does not give up and she does everything in her own time. As a parent, I know my responsibility is to nurture that sense of independence & curiosity and allow her to be a baby AND an explorer.

I, too, am learn something new everyday and everyday hubz and I talk about what she did, what we did etc just to keep a tab on the small mistakes we make sometimes without even noticing and go through all the stuff that we should never do as parents. I do realise that nowadays 70% of the conversation hubz & I have are either on Nia or on parenting, only about 30% is for everything else. Not that I'm complaining in any way, I think I'm blessed to have a husband who wants to actively participate in his child's development and is as passionate about it all as I am.