It’s projecting. And delusion.

First words are also often ‘mam’ ‘mum’ and a bit later ‘da’ or ‘pa’, not because babies love their parents, but because those are the easiest sounds to mimic.

So we adopted those sounds/words to mean mother and father. Not the other way around. We are really good at finding arguments to fit our view and narrative.

Yes, the babies all said that was the reason when they were interviewed later.

Regardless of the source’s background, the information she mentioned actually reflects current knowledge of how infants and older children develop. In order to develop emotion regulation skills, healthy attachment, and social skills, we do naturally look away from our caregiver and others doting on us as a way to self-regulate intense feelings.

In fact, many children can develop attachment and emotion regulation issues if caregivers aren’t responsive and share compassion or empathize with a child’s behavior (e.g. a baby becoming upset and crying if- when looking away- the caregiver instead tries to get its attention repeatedly and not giving the child a break.) That’s why it’s important to have some level of emotional intelligence to develop healthy attachments with kids and them with us.

For more information, you can look up attachment theory and theories on human development (Erikson, Piaget, etc.). This is also mentioned here.

Source: Therapist

[citation needed]

In my experience, the first time your child smiles at you, you’re overwhelmed with joy and wonder, which is undercut moments late by the realization that your child is not smiling because of you, but because they just took a massive shit.