At a guntur restaurant one beautiful morning, i was slowly sipping my favourite cup of coffee and cherishing fondly the gift of solitude and unusual silence.
With the golden rays of sun touching the glass windows of the restaurant and slow submissive, graceful movements of tree leaves outside the window to flirtatious action of the morning air, it was wonderful start of a beautiful day, the best and the finest possible.
Suddenly a couple entered the restaurant to disturb my philosophical joy. I thought nothing lasts long in life.
I noticed a lady with a small baby and a young man in early thirties. I thought they should possibly be a newly married couple. May be they wanted to try an early breakfast at the restaurant. Hmmn...cooking was definitely becoming outdated these days.
Suddenly, i saw a small baby in the arms of the lady, I must confess, i was instantaneously attracted towards the baby and was admiring its inquisistive expressions.
Babies to me are very special and interesting as their actions are most natural and honest, their expressions most inquisistive and intelligent.
They lack the deep hypocrisy and immeasurable prejudice that is built in our system as we grow older and older.
Suddenly the baby started to cry, making its mom extremely uncomfortable. The mom started the standard procedure taught to married women to handle such situations ie try feeding food to the baby, check for wet nappy and comfort the baby by hugging it or making weird sounds (some call it lullyby or whatever to scare it into silence).
She tried all the tricks in the book but to no avail. No matter what she did, the baby would not stop crying.
The lady started looking around and smiled at everyone to hide embarassment to herself, i smiled back
at her and waved to the baby so that she would feel better and the situation would look apparently normal.
The young man like a typical Indian husband wasn't much bothered about what was going on around him, afterall the baby is the mother's problem isnt it?
Now this is a normal incident that happens everywhere. What is so special about it? But my mind had started thinking on something deeper.
I was now thinking why do the babies cry so much and so often? and why wasn't her mother able to console it?
Does the answer to this question lie in the study of body language of the child and child pyscology, i think it most certainly is.
Firstly to understand body language, we must know that human beings have extremely underdeveloped capacity to communicate with actions or gestures alone. We may be able to show actions for a couple of things like water, pain etc but will definitely falter at later stage.
This is because we have developed language as primary method of communication over long period of years resulting in complete death of our ability to communicate with body and actions alone.
In the animal world the reverse is true, animals communicate completely with their body and actions because they dont have any language.
This is very effective form of communication in the animal world and particular actions are decoded and understood as good as language in humans.
When two flies are flying around your room, it is not just randomness but they are constantly communicating with each other about food, temperature, danger signale etc But How ? By action. Body language my friend.
How do you think a male bee communicates to a female bees that it needs a companion for mating? Simple make two rounds around the female in clockwise and anticlockwise direction, if the female is interested it flies with the male for mating.
In human beings, we need to resort to language to achieve the same effect, going around girl in clockwise and anticlockwise direction would only make people laugh and cause embarassment.
Now how do babies try to communicate with the world. Surely language communication is not possible as the baby doesn't know any language. So how does the baby communicate with the world. Simple. by crying. Yes you read it right. A baby communicates with the world by crying alone.
Animals naturally and instinctively communicate by use of sound made from their mouth organs that is mutually understood between them. Crying is the most natural method of making sound through mouth. So Crying is a part of body language communication or lets call it an attempt towards body language communication as we humans dont understood uniqueness of each cries and cant decode it.
A baby cries not only to indicate its physical needs like a bad nappy or hunger but for many psycological needs that arise due to world view it has.
Just Imagine the world of a baby. How will it be. Just think and see.
A baby has a developing vision system and hearing system and a feeble perception of world but it is bombarded with the same amount of noise and information like us. Its mind is full of constant amazement and confusion. It is continously trying to make sense " what the hell is going on around me?"
The world outside is super complex yet wonderful. The reality is seemingly comprehensible yet extremely confusing.
Sound and light is the first Instinct. So a baby observes that some objects like cell phones, speakers that make sounds sometimes other times they do not. tats very confusing. Some objects like door lamp or tube light are stationary and give out light some times and sometimes they do not. Tats again confusing for the baby. Some objects are moving others are not.
So many confusions in the mind of the baby and complexity of reality which is incomprehensible creates deep insecurity in the mind of the baby. It wants a reassurance from its caretaker of physical needs...its mom. It communicates by crying. The smoothing touch or warm hug provides the most instinctive and natural form of re assurance to the baby.
This insight of insecurity in the mind of the baby helps us to know why babies cry so often. Other reasons it cries could be because of maladjustment to light and sound. For eg if there is heavy light or loud music, it is hurts the soft developing eyes and ears of the baby so it asks by crying that you should stop it.
Now this insight will help us to also know that we should let a baby cry if it is crying for its psycological needs rather than its physical needs. This is because by letting it to cry more, we are allowing it to better adjust its mind to the world outside and remove its sense of insecurity or constant reassurance from its mother thereby letting it to learn faster.
With the golden rays of sun touching the glass windows of the restaurant and slow submissive, graceful movements of tree leaves outside the window to flirtatious action of the morning air, it was wonderful start of a beautiful day, the best and the finest possible.
Suddenly a couple entered the restaurant to disturb my philosophical joy. I thought nothing lasts long in life.
I noticed a lady with a small baby and a young man in early thirties. I thought they should possibly be a newly married couple. May be they wanted to try an early breakfast at the restaurant. Hmmn...cooking was definitely becoming outdated these days.
Suddenly, i saw a small baby in the arms of the lady, I must confess, i was instantaneously attracted towards the baby and was admiring its inquisistive expressions.
Babies to me are very special and interesting as their actions are most natural and honest, their expressions most inquisistive and intelligent.
They lack the deep hypocrisy and immeasurable prejudice that is built in our system as we grow older and older.
Suddenly the baby started to cry, making its mom extremely uncomfortable. The mom started the standard procedure taught to married women to handle such situations ie try feeding food to the baby, check for wet nappy and comfort the baby by hugging it or making weird sounds (some call it lullyby or whatever to scare it into silence).
She tried all the tricks in the book but to no avail. No matter what she did, the baby would not stop crying.
The lady started looking around and smiled at everyone to hide embarassment to herself, i smiled back
at her and waved to the baby so that she would feel better and the situation would look apparently normal.
The young man like a typical Indian husband wasn't much bothered about what was going on around him, afterall the baby is the mother's problem isnt it?
Now this is a normal incident that happens everywhere. What is so special about it? But my mind had started thinking on something deeper.
I was now thinking why do the babies cry so much and so often? and why wasn't her mother able to console it?
Does the answer to this question lie in the study of body language of the child and child pyscology, i think it most certainly is.
Firstly to understand body language, we must know that human beings have extremely underdeveloped capacity to communicate with actions or gestures alone. We may be able to show actions for a couple of things like water, pain etc but will definitely falter at later stage.
This is because we have developed language as primary method of communication over long period of years resulting in complete death of our ability to communicate with body and actions alone.
In the animal world the reverse is true, animals communicate completely with their body and actions because they dont have any language.
This is very effective form of communication in the animal world and particular actions are decoded and understood as good as language in humans.
When two flies are flying around your room, it is not just randomness but they are constantly communicating with each other about food, temperature, danger signale etc But How ? By action. Body language my friend.
How do you think a male bee communicates to a female bees that it needs a companion for mating? Simple make two rounds around the female in clockwise and anticlockwise direction, if the female is interested it flies with the male for mating.
In human beings, we need to resort to language to achieve the same effect, going around girl in clockwise and anticlockwise direction would only make people laugh and cause embarassment.
Now how do babies try to communicate with the world. Surely language communication is not possible as the baby doesn't know any language. So how does the baby communicate with the world. Simple. by crying. Yes you read it right. A baby communicates with the world by crying alone.
Animals naturally and instinctively communicate by use of sound made from their mouth organs that is mutually understood between them. Crying is the most natural method of making sound through mouth. So Crying is a part of body language communication or lets call it an attempt towards body language communication as we humans dont understood uniqueness of each cries and cant decode it.
A baby cries not only to indicate its physical needs like a bad nappy or hunger but for many psycological needs that arise due to world view it has.
Just Imagine the world of a baby. How will it be. Just think and see.
A baby has a developing vision system and hearing system and a feeble perception of world but it is bombarded with the same amount of noise and information like us. Its mind is full of constant amazement and confusion. It is continously trying to make sense " what the hell is going on around me?"
The world outside is super complex yet wonderful. The reality is seemingly comprehensible yet extremely confusing.
Sound and light is the first Instinct. So a baby observes that some objects like cell phones, speakers that make sounds sometimes other times they do not. tats very confusing. Some objects like door lamp or tube light are stationary and give out light some times and sometimes they do not. Tats again confusing for the baby. Some objects are moving others are not.
So many confusions in the mind of the baby and complexity of reality which is incomprehensible creates deep insecurity in the mind of the baby. It wants a reassurance from its caretaker of physical needs...its mom. It communicates by crying. The smoothing touch or warm hug provides the most instinctive and natural form of re assurance to the baby.
This insight of insecurity in the mind of the baby helps us to know why babies cry so often. Other reasons it cries could be because of maladjustment to light and sound. For eg if there is heavy light or loud music, it is hurts the soft developing eyes and ears of the baby so it asks by crying that you should stop it.
Now this insight will help us to also know that we should let a baby cry if it is crying for its psycological needs rather than its physical needs. This is because by letting it to cry more, we are allowing it to better adjust its mind to the world outside and remove its sense of insecurity or constant reassurance from its mother thereby letting it to learn faster.
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