Which self-preservation skills is a baby born with, and which do they have to learn?

Infants at birth have a reflex to hold their breath if they have their face put into cold water or blowing air in their face. They lose the reflex between six months and one year of age.

The big skill is to pester the shit out of anyone within earshot til they get what they want.

You should check out Pestalozzi. I went to a Pestalozzi school once. They had five-year-olds playing at a ravine, unsupervised, easily a ten-metre-fall.

If you believe them, there is very little our kids can’t do.

Some self-preservvation skills we train out of kids: Eating only what they know/refusing bitter taste; being wary of new things; trust; stubbornness; curiousity.

Yes, there is one very useful instinct for self preservation which many parents do train out of their kids to their detriment.

Along about 2–3 years of age, children develop a natural wariness of strangers (and even distant family members whom they very seldom see)

Practically forcing a child to endure Aunt Sadies sloppy kisses or forcing them to give Uncle so and so a kiss on the cheek may do a lot for the egos of the relatives involved but robs the child of their right to make independent decisions about who is allowed to do what with them.

Letting the child take as much time as necessary to get comfortable with new situations or people and backing up their decisions sends an important subliminal message to a child.

Later on when they’re older we expend a lot of energy trying to drill into them “Good touch vs. bad touch” But a child who has always been allowed the freedom to decide what kind of touching they are willing to accept from even a pre-verbal age will be way ahead of the curve on this necessary self preservation skill.

Raising a confident child from an early age is the best deterrent to them being prey for an adult at a later age.

Child predators have an uncanny instinct for which kids they can easily take advantage of with minimum resistance.

A child’s right to be uncomfortable with interacting with others, even extended family, should be honored and supported from the earliest age.

They are born with the ability to breathe and screaming for attention.

@Buttonstc very, very good point. If, for some reason, my grandkids, or any kid, doesn’t want to give me a hung and a kiss goodbye, I curtail the parents if they insist.
I say, “It’s their body, their decision.”
I only have to do it once because they immediately see where I was going with it.

@longgone I was a little confused about which way you were going with your list.
Do we train them out of eating only what they know?
Do we train them out of eating bitter things? Or the other way around? “Bitter” taste in the wild is often a sign of bad food.
Do we train them out of being wary of new things?
Do we train trust out of them?
Do we train stubbornness out of them?
Do we train curiosity out of them?

I started to write out a whole thing and then I found a youtube video that (hopefully) explains it better. The visual cliff experiment!

@Dutchess

I faced the same situation repeatedly when I was doing kids parties and street fairs with face painting and balloon sculpture.

Some parents just HAD TO get their kids faces painted even if the child was crying and screaming.

I tried to keep a smile on my face and a friendly tone but made it clear that I would absolutely not facepaint an unwilling child.

Some kids have sensory issues and just don’t like the idea of some stranger smearing cold wet stuff on their face. And they should have that right respected.

Sometimes the parents would complain about having to wait so long in line and I told them that the child was welcome to sit nearby and watch and if they changed their mind, I’d gladly take them next without going through the line again.

Some kids would eventually change their mind after watching me with the other kids for awhile and seeing how much they liked it. Others let me paint the design on the back of their hand so they could see it (which actually makes more sense) and others never changed their minds that day, but that was fine by me.

Also when speaking with parents on the phone to arrange my being at a birthday party, they would bring up that their child might be afraid of clowns.

I told them that the only time I’d have a problem with that would be if THEY kept trying to force or pressure the kid to interact with me.

My advice to them was to just let things unfold naturally and let the child take the lead.

Most kids go through a stage at around 2–4 years old where they will scream bloody murder if a clown tries to come near them.

So, the obvious solution is don’t approach them. Let them come to you whenever it’s comfortable for them. Every kids party clown with a brain knows this. We just have to clue the parents in.

Looking at it through a young child’s eyes, it makes perfect sense for them to be wary of a stranger with a huge headful of outrageously colored hair and dressed in brightly colored clothes that nobody else in their right mind would ever consider wearing.

To override a child’s avoidance instinct basically sends them a message that they can’t (or shouldnt) really trust their own judgement. That’s not a good message to be sending to your child.

And most of the time it’s done simply to spare the ego of some adult. It’s not worth it in the long run.