Written by Kathy Benjamin
As anyone who’s ever encountered babies in the wild can tell you, they’re shiftless little balls of deception and greed. Those of us who stand up to walk, and sit down to poop may not be Mother Theresa, but it turns out we had a long way to go from our babbling drooling selves.
Yes, unless you’re a borderline sociopath today, you were probably at your worst before you ever uttered a word. It’s science!
#6.
Lying
It seems crazy that a barely functioning human infant could be cunning enough to lie to get out of trouble, but it’s true. Baby You was such an asshole that you started lying before you could even speak. Scientists have found that by the age of just six months mini-you was already “fake crying” and “pretend laughing” to get attention. Babies are so good at that lie they will even pause briefly and listen to see if someone is responding to their crocodile tears before starting up again.
Oh shut up, you piece of shit.
Perhaps even more surprising is that, when they know they’ve done something wrong, the little bastards will distract their parents to avoid getting caught. Crying for attention isn’t so terrible, because receiving positive attention makes you feel good. But causing a distraction? That means the slimy, shrieking baby knows it has done something wrong and wants to cover up for it. Before they learn how to poop without assistance, babies know how to create an alibi.
Why Did I Do That?!
Lying is considered an important part of a child’s development. Once you can speak, your lies become more complex, and believable and the early non-verbal attempts at lying help us learn the types of lies we can get away with.
According to science, lying isn’t something that happens when a normal baby get’s corrupted by TV–it is normal human behavior. Telling the truth is the thing we have to learn. Most of us start to feel bad about lying around age four, once we’re old enough to understand those morality tales our parents keep telling us. So the only thing standing between you and a life of crime was “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
Pictured: You, if your parents were flightless birds.
#5.
Prejudice
It’s not a mystery why you treat attractive people well now: You want them to have your sex. There’d be no reason to discriminate against ugly chicks when you where a baby right? Wrong. It turns out you’ve been favoring hotties since the doctor smacked you. In a 2004 study in the field of weird-shit-we-can-make-babies-do, a UK scientist made several babies look at two pictures. One of those pictures was of an attractive woman, and the other was of a non-attractive woman. Out of these babies (all of seven-days old, max), almost 100 percent looked significantly longer at pictures of “attractive” people than “unattractive” people.
Wait, how did this study even get approval?
But it doesn’t end there. In those first months, babies would look at an attractive person of another race for just as long as an equally hot person of their race. But within a few short months, even if shown a supermodel of a different skin color, the baby would ignore her completely. If a white baby was shown two pictures of Asian people, of any level of attractiveness, the baby would look at them the same amount of time, then get bored and look away. To that white baby, Asian people all look alike. Seriously.
“So… are you girls quintuplets or what?”
Why Did I Do That?!
Survival. In general, attractive people have more “normal” features and therefore better genes. By staring up with your big blue eyes at the hottest person in the room, you are assuming that’s your mommy, or at least hoping that turning on the charm will make her adopt you. Being raised by someone healthy gives you a better chance of living to see your first birthday. The baby-racism makes sense as well from an evolutionary perspective: It’s important as you get older to know who all the people in your tribe are, but that other tribe down the way? According to the studies, all you need to know is they don’t look like you. Their individual features? Irrelevant in your tiny, racist baby mind.
#4.
Defiance
From the minute babies are able to understand basic communication techniques they give everyone a big fuck you. You’ve all seen babies thrown tantrums; screaming and thrashing their limbs about, forgetting that at any moment you can crush their tiny, fragile bones in your superior man-sized hands.
Any goddamned moment.
Tantrums not only stem from not getting what you want but also from refusing to do things. Babies will even resist things they actually want to do or enjoy doing, seemingly just because they are tiny freaking assholes. “No” is one of the most common first words spoken by children and can sometimes occupy their entire vocabulary for three months before they say just about anything else.
Why Did I Do That?!
Defiance is a way for a baby to define themselves. They start to realize that they are separate from the world and have their own thoughts, desires and actions. When you were first born, your parents would put you into your crib and you fell asleep. But a few months later it occurs to you, what if you don’t feel tired? What if you CHOOSE not to go to sleep? What if you refuse and express your displeasure?
“I feel nothing but contempt for you.”
And it’s important to remember that this kind of baby-bitch-negativism isn’t restricted to things the baby doesn’t want. The baby might whine when you try to put it to sleep when it’s not tired, but it might also whine when you take it out of the crib. And when you feed it, or rock with it, or try to comfort it, it will push you away simply because you’re doing something. The baby’s in control, and you need to know that.
#3.
Getting High
You’re a good parent. You’re doing your best raising your stupid little baby and, so far, you think you’re doing a pretty decent job. Then one night, you put your baby in their crib as usual but instead of nodding off they sit up and start beating their head against their crib over and over again. Hard. You’re in too much shock to do anything, or maybe you’re just kind of a crummy parent and you want to see where your baby’s going with this when, after a minute or so, it is all over and your innocent little angel is fast asleep. What the hell just happened?!
It’s not just your baby, either. Starting at about nine months, before going to sleep many infants will bang their heads against something solid up to 80 times a minute. Spells can last from a few minutes to a few hours. They’re not mad, they’re not trying to get something, they are seemingly just hurting themselves for no reason at all other than to fuck with your already fragile and sleep-deprived parent brain.
Why Did I Do That?!
It feels fucking awesome, and it’s the closest this baby can come to getting high (unless you’re really crummy parents). The surge of adrenaline that the kid gets from the slight pain induces a happy, calm and relaxed feeling followed by exhaustion. They don’t care if you protest, and they don’t care if there’s any harm done. They just want that next adrenaline fix, and they’ll bang their head all night to get it.
But they can quit any time they want. Totally.
You are destroying the lives of everyone around you.
#2.
Stealing
Imagine this: A guy notices his neighbor, or his brother has something he wants. A watch, or a car. This guy wants it, so he cons and lies and manipulates until, eventually, his neighbor or brother either feels guilty enough or bad enough for him, and they give up the watch. The con man gets what he wants. What would you call that? Stealing, probably. Now, imagine that same scenario, but imagine a tiny, worthless baby is doing it. What would you call that? That’s right: Adorable stealing, and babies do it all the time.
If they see something they want, they’ll do whatever it takes to get it. They’ll scream, sure, but they’ll also hit their head, injuring themselves, so their parents feel bad. One bumped head and suddenly every cookie and toy goes to the baby, and Mommy is cooing, “Are you alright?”
This behavior of self harm and manipulation usually starts before six months and can continue well into childhood. During tantrums, babies will hit and bite themselves, and some children will hold their breath for so long they pass out. This emotional manipulation is, not surprisingly, very effective.
“OBEY ME.”
Why Did I Do That?!
Children don’t have a complex understanding of other people’s ownership until they are a few years old. Unfortunately, an understanding of personal ownership comes much sooner than that. In other words, to a baby, everything is theirs. The concept of things being taken away makes no sense. If it’s MINE and I want it NOW why can’t I have it? Since everything is rightly yours there is nothing wrong with doing whatever you have to do to get it back. And if it takes making yourself pass out to get your damn pacifier returned, so be it. What do you care? You’re a little con baby.
#1.
Murder
For a long time scientists had a theory that left handed people might have started out as twins in the womb. Their rationale was that in a set of twins one tends to be right handed and one left handed. Genetic and nurturing factors can also affect handedness, but they can’t explain it completely in many cases. Maybe all lefties were the result of only one twin surviving the cage fight that is fetal development.
It wasn’t until ultrasounds, and fearless cameras capable of surviving the uterus, that scientists discovered their hunch was right. Sort of. They were right in the fact that most lefties were once twins but they didn’t go far enough. Scientists now think that a ridiculous one in eight people started out as two peas in a pod. Of course, only about one in 70 people actually is a twin. So what happened to your twin? You killed it and then absorbed it into your body. Yeah, those stories of adults finding teeth in their shoulder? Not urban legends.
Why Did I Do That?!
Because you’re evil.
Not really. Chances are you were just the healthier fetus. Or you hogged all the blood if you shared a placenta. Or you grew faster and literally left your sibling no womb at the inn. If multiple pregnancies are really as common as they now seem, we evolved to be this way for a reason. Trying out two fetuses to see which one is more likely to survive is a pretty good plan evolutionarily. Unfortunately, carrying twins is very dangerous for the mother, meaning that our best bet as a species was to let one twin kill off the other early on in development. Just another reason lefties are a sinister, sinister group of people.
