Lead
One day it starts, without warning. Crying the moment you step toward the bathroom. A face crumpled by distress the instant your in-laws reach out to hold them. The same child who smiled at everyone last month.
"Stranger anxiety has started." "Separation protest is so intense I can't get anything done." These concerns cluster around six to ten months of age. The parenting books say it's a sign of healthy development. Which it is — but knowing that does not make it easier to cook dinner with a baby wrapped around your legs.
This article frames stranger anxiety and separation protest within attachment theory as developed by John Bowlby and subsequently elaborated by Mary Ainsworth — not to produce the reassurance that "this is good," which is true but incomplete, but to give the fuller structural picture that tends to hold up more durably.