Fight, flight, freeze: The squirrel edition

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We normally respond to perceived danger with flight, flight, or freeze. 

During my son's early days, when he wasn't sleeping through the night, I was reading up about sleep training and how it affects babies. Some articles say that sleep training is all about providing a baby the opportunity to learn how to self-soothe. Crying is often times seen as a baby's way of manipulating parents to what he/she wants; minimising this behaviour is important so that parents can rest. On the other hand, some articles say that sleep training's success is actually the baby's freeze reaction. He/She is stressed too much because he/she perceives that he/she is alone and his/her parents will not come to the rescue. Crying is a communication tool of the baby and it is suppressed because the child quickly learns that his/her parents will not come to his/her rescue.

The choice to train a child to self-soothe or to suppress his/her care cues (depending on how parents see sleep training) really depends upon the parent, factoring in the child's health and temperament. My preference is towards always responding to a child's cries; but I respect parents who train their children to sleep... doing this is never an easy decision.

Anyway, the fight-flight-freeze reaction was on my mind when I saw a squirrel during one of my morning walks with the little guy (he was in his carrier). This squirrel just succeeded in collecting food; I don't know what it is but it certainly reminded me of the Ice Age squirrel. We first saw the squirrel near the footpath and when it saw us approaching, it immediately ran (flight) and hid (freeze). We continued walking along the path until we reached the parking lot. When I looked back, I saw the squirrel do this:



I am no squirrel behaviour expert so I can't say for sure what it's doing. However, it appeared to have taken on a fight stance. It's ready to defend its food from aggressors (including me and the wee one who just happened to be walking along the same path). Eventually, the poor squirrel decided that we were not a threat and went on his way. 

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