Why Is My Baby Obsessed With Tags?
A fascinating explanation to a common fixation
For a person who felt no shame about blasting a man-sized fart in a busy coffee shop and seemed to prefer to be nude at all times, when my daughter was a newborn baby, she was pretty mysterious.
She was a stranger my body had grown from a set of genetic instructions over which I had no control. Every first in her life was in front of her. What would her first word be? When would she first smile? Which of the kid phases would hit first– dinosaurs, trucks, glitter, Disney’s Encanto, etc– or would they all hit at once? Would she be interested in music? Would she love math? Would other kids like her? Would she like other kids?
Juniper had a bin full of toys before she was old enough to appreciate them, each toy a guess at what she might like. Might she like this teether made of wood and rubber spheres? How about this stuffed llama? What about an owl puppet? A teddy bear? Sophie the Giraffe? (kidding; every baby loves Sophie the Giraffe.)
Now, at least one of those questions has been answered. Her favorite toy is “tags.”
The tags don’t need to be attached to anything in particular; they just need to be attached to something. She’s an equal-opportunity tag enthusiast. She loves the tag on a washcloth as much as she loves the tag on the soft long-eared toy rabbit my parents sent for Easter. She’s just as interested in the tag on the Boppy pillow as she is on an unfolded tee shirt. In a pinch, a ribbon or a tassel will suffice, but the real joy comes from a tag.
When Juniper gets hold of anything, the first thing she does is flip it around until she finds the tag. Once she finds it, she’ll get a serious look on her face and go about examining it as though she’s the greatest tag inspector in the world, the Jiro Ono of tags. She’ll grab it, pull on it, bring it inches from her face as if she’s trying to decode it, hold onto it and thrash the toy (or washcloth, or blanket) around. It will hold her attention longer than anything else.
I figured that with seven billion-plus current and former babies currently inhabiting this planet, there must be others who are tag-obsessed. Sure enough, according to the internet and the existence of an entire line of blankets called “Taggies,” there are many. (also, some parents are convinced that babies loving tags is a sign of autism, but it’s important to note that if you google most totally typical baby developmental behaviors and then the word “autism” at the end, you will find a hand-wringing forum entry by a writer of questionable bona fides speculating that yes, said benign behavior portends neuroatypicality. This is why when using the internet to get a sense of what a behavior might mean, it’s good to remember that the internet is sometimes helpful, but, if you internet too hard, it’s extremely unhelpful.)
I couldn’t, however, find anything that resembled an academic study on the relationship between babies and the tags they love.
My curiosity unsated, I turned to my Instagram followers on the off chance that one or more of them might know a child development expert. And I was in luck. I came across several. Although nobody could definitely explain exactly why some babies love tags (babies, turns out, aren’t great at explaining themselves), I got some pretty interesting theories.
Dr. Ben Deen, who as of July 1st will be an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Tulane University and received his PhD in neuroscience from MIT offered a few educated guesses. First, between birth and Juniper’s age, babies experience rapid visual development, going from 20/200 vision at birth to “near-adult levels” by 6-7 months old, so anything that sticks out visually is more likely to draw a baby’s attention. He also hypothesized that it could also be that Juniper is enjoying her rapidly-improving ability to grab and manipulate tag-sized things with her hands (which, as a fidgeter, I totally get).
Deen added, “One idea in developmental psychology about why infants prefer looking at or interacting with certain objects is that they opt for a medium level of complexity - things that aren't so simple or familiar that they provide no new information, but aren't so complex or new that they can't be understood. Along these lines, it could be that tags provide a good balance for your daughter at this age - they're familiar from experience, but still relatively new as an object that her developing visual/motor systems can process.”
Basically, tags are to Juniper what covers of the song “Boys of Summer” is to my Spotify playlist: I don’t care who’s attached to it, when I come across one, I’m fascinated for at least 4 minutes.
Laura Hemberger, who received her PhD in cognitive science from Columbia University but has since left academia for greener pastures, has nothing but good things to say about tags and babies, so long as the tags are not choking hazards.
Hemberger writes, “[Juniper] is understanding, learning, and really experiencing the world through her senses. In this case, your daughter is seeing, touching, and most likely putting tags in her mouth, as she is deeply exploring the tag as she gets to know the world. As she explores one tag and gets to really study that tag, it is very exciting for her to then experience another tag on a new object, as her object permanence and her schemas about the world are being developed.” Juniper is developing a “tag schema.” (Tag Schema, apropos of nothing, would make a pretty good name for a math-rock band composed entirely of child development experts.)
Patrice Hartnett, PhD, a lecturer in the Psychology department at UMass Dartmouth, said that she wasn’t aware of any research specifically looking into the tag-baby connection (which made me feel less lazy about my glancing search for answers), but, like Dr. Deen, noted that given babies’ rapid visual development from birth to Juniper’s age, it makes sense they’d be attracted to things that contrast with their surroundings.
“In the early months, babies scan the edges of objects more than interior features, so they are likely to notice a tag that protrudes from an object - especially if it also provides high contrast (e.g., a white tag on a dark or brightly colored object),” Hartnett says. “Objects that attract babies visually, of course, motivate reaching. When babies' motor skills have developed to the point that they can successfully reach for and grasp a tag, they are rewarded by the soft, slippery sensation. So, what starts with some visual appeal also provides tactile pleasure. And, as babies develop cognitively, they will come to know which types of objects have tags and intentionally look for them.”
Babies: tag sommeliers.
The more I learn about baby brains, the more it seems like Juniper and all babies, tag-focused or not, exist in a world that feels like a perpetual mushroom trip, a constant barrage of new connections and novel experiences that eventually build an entire brain. No wonder they get a little cranky sometimes.
I feel lucky that I have a front-row seat to witness this happen in my child’s little baby brain, and now I feel as though I should get her one of those tag blankets. I bet she’ll absolutely lose her shit.
Original Illustration by Tara Jacoby | Instagram