28/05/2025
Babies recognize another person as someone close to them based on a mix of sensory cues, emotional connection, and repeated experiences. Here’s how that works:
1. Familiar Faces
Babies are wired to recognize faces early on. Within days after birth, they can distinguish their caregiver’s face (usually the mother) from others. Over time, they learn to recognize other close people (like a father, sibling, or grandparent) through repeated exposure.
2. Voice Recognitio
Even before birth, babies can hear sounds in the womb. They become familiar with the voices they hear most often usually their mother’s. After birth, they’ll turn toward familiar voices and show calmness or excitement when they hear them.
3. Smell and Touch
Babies can identify their primary caregiver by scent. The smell of a parent’s skin or breast milk is comforting and familiar. Gentle, consistent touch also helps them build a sense of security and connection.
4. Emotional Bonding
Through repeated comforting experiences feeding, cuddling, soothing babies form emotional attachments. This is part of attachment theory, which explains how babies start to prefer the people who consistently meet their needs.
5. Consistency and Routine
Babies thrive on patterns. When someone is regularly present and interacts with them in a warm, consistent way, babies come to see them as "close" or safe.
So when a baby recognizes someone as “close,” it’s because that person has become a reliable, comforting presence in their little world one they’ve come to trust through their senses, emotions, and daily experiences.