Coregulation of Emotions- Adults use it, why can’t babies?

You know that same fight you get into with your partner? The one that’s a bit cyclical, maybe it changes a little, but it’s essentially the same one? No? Just me? Well ok— but I’ll bring you along for the ride anyway.

So one of the common arguments my husband and I find ourselves in— despite our efforts to untangle it, find the root, and move forward next time from a place of understanding each other just a tiny bit better— relates to how we (meaning I) like to coregulate. And what I mean is this— when I’m upset, I prefer to have someone sitting with me through it in a calm emotional state. This REALLY helps me move out of a place of anxiety or anger much easier. My husband is not like this. He prefers to be alone and calm down on his own. Neither of us is wrong or right, but as you can imagine, this is difficult to navigate when both of us are in a heightened emotional state. Each of us wants to down-regulate in a way that is helpful for us, but that modality is quite literally the opposite of the other’s. So it can be hard!

One such event like this last week got me thinking about my preferred way to calm down, i.e. coregulation. This term is commonly used when referring to how babies use our own emotional cues and our own emotional states to determine how they feel and behave (or rather, the ease with which they move from one emotional state to another). No one would bat an eye if I said this, for example:

“When I’m upset or angry, it really helps me when my husband calmly listens to me, offers support, and doesn’t get activated himself”.

But if I say this: “My baby cries out at night, even after I’ve fed him, but once I pick him up, he is immediately calm and falls back to sleep in my arms”…

I may get this in response: “Yes, he is likely not hungry, but only crying out for comfort. If you respond to his cries every time, he will not learn to self-soothe.”

But the difference is this: a baby or young child does not physically have the neurobiological ability to down-regulate from a heightened state of stress on their own. And when they do “calm down” or “fall asleep”, they do so from a place of stress so great that their nervous system signals the brain to essentially shut down to preserve energy.

So why is it that I, an adult woman whose brain IS capable of down-regulation on my own (I just like the support of a loved one), am largely granted the social acceptance of that preference? But a baby is not only not granted it, but is often “taught” how to ignore their deep-rooted, biological drive for proximity and physical connection?

A question I seek to understand, but one that also makes me sad to think about.