Botox bad for babies, with blank looks all round Getting to know you: Brooke Possa with baby Ethan, who reads his mother's facial expressions and can tell when she's happy. It is that intimate, magical chemistry that allows a mother to show even the youngest of babies how she is feeling. A grimace, a frown or a smile are all useful tools for helping a little one to learn what is approved of, and what isn't. But one of the country's leading child psychologists believes that having a Botox injection could freeze your child out from reading your thoughts because the procedure immobilised facial muscles. Renowned parenting author and Playgroup Australia ambassador Steve Biddulph wrote in the magazine Totline: "Even the youngest human beings are hard wired to tune into other people's feelings. Say, for example, their mum is sad or their big sister is worried - when your little one mirrors that look with their own face, a miraculous thing happens. Their brain also starts to feel the feelings that they're seeing in the face of the other person. This ability to read faces and understand them is what we call empathy. Our faces are so connected to our feelings that when a person who has Botox treatments [freezing some of the face muscles so they can't move any more], they actually start to have less feelings as a result. We have trouble feeling emotions that our face can't express, which is why a 'stiff upper lip' keeps someone from crying. Biddulph, whose latest book is called Raising Girls, said when we talk to toddlers and preschoolers, if we are expressive with our faces, it helps them to understand what we are saying. An experienced mum is often quite theatrical with her face - being able to look angry saves her having to get angry, he said. "Amazingly, at the age of two, when discipline starts to be effective and needed, it's also the age when toddlers develop the visual part of their brains and can actually remember our face visually, calling it up in memory when we're not there," he said. Brooke Possa, whose first baby Ethan had his first birthday two weeks ago, doesn't need convincing of the power of facial expression. He responds dramatically. When we are happy, he knows, and when we are sad or stressed, he picks up on that. Babies look at your face all the time. Asked if she would consider having a Botox injection, she said: "I have a couple of friends who had it done and they are are younger than I am. I didn't agree with it when they did it but to each their own. She added: "But never say never."