Institutionalized and abused children react like that. They have no experience of anyone reacting to their cries with help or care and so stop crying.
There’s a lower level of abuse that occurs with children in daycare. Normal children react to strangers by looking at them and smiling. Daycare babies don’t react to strangers or turn away. It’s the beginnings of anti-social behavior.
I took a class on child development back in the olden days when American child care was almost always mother care with an intact family. Our case studies and data were mostly from war torn countries and foreign government orphanages. America was very different back then. I never thought I’d see those children in this country.
::...in the olden days when American child care was almost always mother care with an intact family.::
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Our culture has suffered much from the abandonment of that paradigm.