If a cave-baby senses that his mother is no longer around, and neither are any other adults - can’t smell her, can’t hear her, can’t feel her skin next to his, isn’t latched onto the breast - his body puts him into a stress situation. His body instinctively knows that if he doesn’t get to another adult soon he may get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger. Stress hormones race around his body and all his energies are focussed towards getting a human’s attention - he screams and screams and screams. If no adult comes, then he is more likely to survive if he shuts up and stops letting all the sabre-toothed tigers know where he is and that he’s alone so he stops crying. The stress hormones remain racing around his body until another adult human, preferably his mother, picks him up and holds him close. Even then he may need at least skin-to-skin contact or even to suckle at the breast in order for his body to truly believe that he’s now safe and to settle down on the stress hormones.

We are still giving birth to stone-age babies. They haven’t had enough time to evolve to live in our new world where they can be safe away from their parents and the stress hormones can do damage to their developing brains. As they get older and they learn about emotions - smiling, responding to other humans, a sense of humour, frustration - how these emotions are dealt with by the baby’s main care-givers can shape how they cope with emotions their entire life. Big feelings of dissapointment, frustration etc. are less likely to lead to uncontrollable rage if adults help them to dissipate the unpleasant hormones causing them ie. if adults don’t leave them screaming, saying ‘just ignore him, he’s just attention seeking’. He’s not seeking attention, he’s desperately seeking the help he needs to re-organise his feelings - he can’t do it on his own until he’s spent many years being helped to do so by a loving adult.