Stress response to inoculation in infancy

Stress regulation skills emerge in early infancy and play a central role in different domains of child’s development. Mandatory vaccinations in the first years of life are highly stressful for both children and adults and provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the development of self-regulation abilities and the role played by caregiver’s soothing behaviours. In this review, we discuss the variability of infant’s stress responses to inoculation and describe the main measures to assess child’s response and caregiver’s behaviour during vaccinations; in the final part, we propose some techniques aimed at decreasing infants’ distress in such situations.