6-year-old 'baby whisperer' helps calm crying baby
Some people intuitively know when someone else is struggling. Six-year-old Welles Peterson is definitely one of those people.
His gift came to good use recently when his mom was watching the neighbor's baby.
"Alek [the baby] would not calm down. Nothing I did would calm him," his mother, Oakley Peterson of Salt Lake City, Utah, told "Good Morning America."
"He asked to hold Alek and within seconds, the baby calmed down," Peterson said.
The sweet video of Welles the "baby whisperer" has been watched 14 million times so far.
But the mom of three said it's just part of who Welles is, and one of the many gifts his Down syndrome brings to their family and friends.
"At every family reunion or big dinner, he finds the person struggling," she said. "My sister was pregnant and knew her baby would pass away shortly after birth. Usually I can't get Welles to sit still. But he would just sit with her and hold her. He knows how to sit with someone in their grief."
Now, her sister's new baby has been in the NICU for over four months and Welles has been his aunt's "rock," his mom said.
"Individuals with Down syndrome can feel other people's emotions in a way that's impossible for the rest of us," Peterson said.
She thinks people are so touched by the video because it's "a reminder that in all the chaos there's so much good in the world."
