Object Permanence

Lately, my baby son starts crying or whining when he cannot see me or my wife. His awareness seems pretty good and right when he can see us he stops, crying or whining usually. All my kids went through a phase like this, and they had to learn what object permanence means.

I would sometimes test my baby son to make sure he is actually recognizing when nobody is in the room with him. The other day, I put him down in the closet and stepped behind the wall. He immediately started crying and whining. After a second, I peeked my head around the wall and called out to him and he stopped. I hid behind the wall and he started crying and whining. I then popped my head out again and he stopped. I did this a few more times in short 1-2 second stages (since I didn’t want him to be sad too long!) and he definitely reacts very quickly to me being away.

When my 5 year-old daughter and I were stuck in traffic a little bit later in the day, I was recalling that her baby brother was starting to get really aware and know that we were not with him. She asked me why he didn’t know that I was just behind the wall. I explained to her what object permanence men and that sometimes babies have to learn that just because you cannot see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, especially if you just saw that something! She seemed to grass that concept pretty quickly and started to apply across-the-board.

She came home from daycare and mentioned that her friends didn’t believe that she had a laser light and that they didn’t know what object permanence meant. It brought a smile to my face because it was a cute application of the concept I taught her. I had to massage the definition a bit more to get the concept outlined more clearly, but I’d think now she gets it 100%. Little kids are like computers. If you don’t program things explicitly and clearly, sometimes the outcome can be unexpected!