I'm always interested in learning about and sharing information that brings parents and children together in meaningful ways. My now 15 month old benefited tremendously as a little baby from my knew-found knowledge of Patricia Dunstan's Baby Language. The payoff? A more relaxed, content, and secure baby.When my baby was a newborn, Priscilla Dunstan from Australia was receiving nationwide publicity over her insight into the 5 unique and distinguishable sounds babies make to communicate their needs.
I was definitely interested in knowing more, so I scoured the information and applied it when my baby cried. To my astonishment, it worked! It's really quite simple. Just tune in to your baby's different cries. Newborns function physically and emotionally by reflex, so it makes perfect sense to learn that they also are born with vocal reflexes.
Dunstan tested her baby language theory on more than 1,000 infants around the world. She found a consistent pattern of five words that all babies 0–3 months old say regardless of race and culture:
Neh= "I’m hungry"
Owh= "I’m sleepy"
Heh= "I’m experiencing discomfort or change me"
Eair= "I have lower gas"
Eh= "I need to burp"
Those “words” are actually sound reflexes, Dunstan says. “Babies all around the world have the same reflexes, and they therefore make the same sounds,” she explains. If parents respond to those reflexes early, they may continue to hear those "words" after the 0-3 month age; however, if parents don’t respond to those reflexes, Dunstan says the baby will eventually stop using them.
It's important that parents listen for those words in a baby’s pre-cry, the window of opportunity when baby is communicating his or her need and before baby gets so upset and hysterical that the sound is lost.
The musical connection: (from www.dunstanbaby.com)
"Already an exceptional violinist by the age five, [Dunston] could hear a piece by Mozart once, then play it back in its entirety, note for note. Her father, Director of the Educational Testing Centre at the University of New South Wales, found that his young daughter had an eidetic memory - a rare photographic memory for sound.
"During her teenage years Priscilla toured throughout Europe and Australia as an accomplished concert violinist. Priscilla then spent more than 10 years exploring the world of opera, where her talent as a mezzo-soprano deepened her understanding of sound produced by the human voice.
"When Priscilla gave birth to her son Tomas, her instincts as a mother and musician led her to believe that a baby’s cries had to be something more than just random sounds. Noting combinations of sounds in a journal, Priscilla explored various settling techniques and observed Tom’s reactions. Eventually she was able to recognize patterns, and identify how specific cries had a distinct need attached to them."
Priscilla says, "Because of my gift for sound, I was able to pick out certain patterns in his cries and then remember what those patterns were later on when he cried again. I realized that other babies were saying the same words.”
