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Question if most infants automatically know and cry for their parents when they are lost.

Oz67

Well-Known Member
Are most infants able to know that they are lost and cry for their parents? When I was a baby, psychologists did an evaluation, they tested if I would cry and my parents were gone, and I did not cry and they concluded that have a developmental delay.

My parents were not really gone though, it was just a test and they were in another room.
 
Sounds like the Strange Situation Test.

Some person on Quora said that I can't be developmentally delayed, just because I remember very well what happened in my childhood. I just happened to have good memories on most things and have a history of developmental delay.
 
There is also a subset of autistics that have lower circulating levels of oxytocin and vasopressin being secreted from the posterior pituitary. These hormones are, in part, responsible for seeking out and maintaining social bonding,...a mother and child,...walking up to someone and introducing yourself to a potential love interest,...etc. There are studies using inhaled nasal oxytocin spray to significantly reduce the "introversion" and help the socialization skills in some autistic children.

If, you are one of these autistics, it could also explain the lack of response, as well. In other words, you may have been "indifferent" to your parent leaving the room and not suffering from "separation anxiety".

Or,...you were just a baby not suffering from separation anxiety. Working in a children's hospital, we have hundreds of babies here,...and they sleep just fine by themselves,...parents come and go all the time. Most of the time separation anxieties, stranger anxieties, and the like occur between 1 and 3 years of age, but not as infants.
 
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Because my mom maybe is on the spectrum, she left me and my brother alone for huge periods of time when we cried. She basically just ignored us. I remember crying for long periods of time. I also remembered being left alone as a small child with nothing to do in a closed room. My brother who was my step-father's son seemed th receive validation and was the golden child. I pretty much feel l need to take care of me and don't trust many around me because of family situations.

My mother and l never bonded much. However since l have spoken to her about autism, it seems to have opened her eyes a bit. She did ask my brother to communicate things to me which is new.

I never left my daughter alone. She slept with us as a baby, and she always napped close by. By two, she had a bedroom right next to ours and transitioned quite nicely with no fear or crying at night.
 
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Are most infants able to know that they are lost and cry for their parents? When I was a baby, psychologists did an evaluation, they tested if I would cry and my parents were gone, and I did not cry and they concluded that have a developmental delay.

My parents were not really gone though, it was just a test and they were in another room.
Babies can get used to their parents stepping away momentarily. They quickly learn that mommy or daddy or gramps will return soon. They learn this because in the real world, parents cannot spend every minute with their babies and must step out of the room. (In fact, there are techniques that psychologists advise using to teach clingy babies to accept that parents can leave and will soon return.) Plus some babies are naturally more independent than others. This typically starts to happen at 3-7 months. By a year, they'll have the independence to wander off on their own and get into all kinds of trouble which makes childproofing an entire house really important.

I doubt that just this test by itself would be enough to "diagnose" anything. There may have been many other things going on that nobody told you about. Or they may have misinterpreted what was going on. Or they were just bad psychologists.
 
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Babies can get used to their parents stepping away momentarily. They quickly learn that mommy or daddy or gramps will return soon. They learn this because in the real world, parents cannot spend every minute with their babies and must step out of the room. (In fact, there are techniques that psychologists advise using to teach clingy babies to accept that parents can leave and will soon return.) This typically starts to happen at 3-7 months. By a year, they'll have the independence to wander off on their own and get into all kinds of trouble which makes childproofing an entire house really important.

I doubt that just this test by itself would be enough to "diagnose" anything. There may have been many other things going on that nobody told you about. Or they may have misinterpreted what was going on. Or they were just bad psychologists.

They did other tests and made a report that I had severe sensory issues, delusional imaginary friends, and trouble with intellectual and adaptive functioning. They concluded that I have PDD-NOS and Mental Retardation Unspecified, and so far it was only suspended and there only thing I know, is that I have a diagnosis of Autism.
 
If you were old enough to have "delusionary imaginary friends," you were definitely not a baby. Probably in the preschool age range at the earliest. To have an imaginary friend, you have to be old enough to understand the concept of friendship.

It was not that long ago that autism was rarely diagnosed because:

A) Parents would do anything for a different diagnosis because autism was always blamed on "Refrigerator mothers."

B) Unless it was really bad, mental health pros didn't have a clue what to look for. High-functioning autism wasn't a term in use back then. Maybe a passing mention of Asperger's they promptly forgot about because it wasn't considered serious enough.

So moderate levels of autism got diagnosed as other disabilities.

Today autism is a very common diagnosis. Still, even today there are a lot of poor and rural (and often culturally conservative) areas where it doesn't get diagnosed. There are still shrinks who deny females can have it. That's just what they learned.
 
If you were old enough to have "delusionary imaginary friends," you were definitely not a baby. Probably in the preschool age range at the earliest. To have an imaginary friend, you have to be old enough to understand the concept of friendship.

It was not that long ago that autism was rarely diagnosed because:

A) Parents would do anything for a different diagnosis because autism was always blamed on "Refrigerator mothers."

B) Unless it was really bad, mental health pros didn't have a clue what to look for. High-functioning autism wasn't a term in use back then. Maybe a passing mention of Asperger's they promptly forgot about because it wasn't considered serious enough.

So moderate levels of autism got diagnosed as other disabilities.

Today autism is a very common diagnosis. Still, even today there are a lot of poor and rural (and often culturally conservative) areas where it doesn't get diagnosed. There are still shrinks who deny females can have it. That's just what they learned.

It's kind of strange, because they said that I have very good imagination and bizarre fantasies of imaginary friends at that age. I could have been a toddler when the made that report, but unusual situation test was done when I was a baby.
 

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