The Power of Listening Part I Babies: Listening to Pre-verbal Children

I am a marriage and family therapist, but also a developmental psychologist. Human development–how we grow, think, change, and yet remain the same over time–fascinates me. Babies also fascinate me. How we go from a zygote to a fully formed human is biologically miraculous. No less miraculous is how, in the space of a few short years, we go from knowing nothing and having very few communications strategies to knowing the complexities of speech, emotions, and social relationships. Human development has always seemed miraculous to me. 

Caregivers are key in children’s development. One of the things you notice the minute you start studying infants and those who care for them is the interactions or exchanges between the two. A typical baby is born with pretty good hearing and pretty poor eyesight. Yet that underdeveloped eyesight’s one spot of focus is about 8 inches away from the baby’s own face; usually about the place a mother or father’s face will be when the baby is held. Nature sets us up to focus on the people who will keep us alive and teach us about the world. 

The child comes with no speech; no ability to communicate other than their natural reactions to the world. Newborn emotions are limited to discomfort, disgust, and contentment. But even with just these limited building blocks, communication between infants and caregivers is on from the moment that child is placed in its caregiver’s arms. 

Newborns don’t have many communication tools, but caregivers tend to make the most of what tools the child does have. Attentive mothers, fathers, and others watch for signs of distress and work to keep the baby fed, dry, and comfortable. This is how communication starts; we are born to it; born to parents who watch, listen, and attend. And in no time, those same parents and caregivers begin to turn that attention, or listening, into a conversation. 

Adults and older children naturally talk to babies and infants. They speak softly and pitch their voices slightly higher than normal. That higher pitch is actually helpful to babies, whose hearing capacity is tuned to slightly higher frequencies. Caregivers also frequently repeat themselves, a tendency that will eventually help a child separate the sound stream into words, and then begin to assign meaning to those words. Consider this simple “conversation” between a caregiver and infant:

“How you doin’, buddy?

(pause)

“You feeling hungry?

“Yeah, I bet you’re a little bit hungry by now.” 

In it, the caregiver is providing the infant with a template of how conversations work. There is turn-taking (notice the pause). There are questions (which are marked by changes in inflection). There are statements. Children are attuned to these templates, and TiKTok and YouTube are filled with delightful videos of children, about a year old, holding nonsense conversations with others. No words make sense, but the sound stream, inflections, pauses, and reactions are all there as if the child is fully engaged in conversation in another language. 

In addition to language development, these “conversations” between infants and adults begin teaching children about two other areas of major importance: emotional regulation and attachment. Attachment is a blog post (or several) for another day, but some key features of emotional regulation follow.

Videos of caregivers and infants show that caregivers engage, probably subconsciously, in teaching emotional regulation from birth. For instance, as a mother holds her baby and notices signs of distress, the mother’s face naturally mirrors the infant’s distress as she gazes at the infant. Her brows knit together, concern darkens her eyes, and a slight frown crosses her mouth as she notices the child’s discomfort. She may talk to her child,

“Oh, sweetheart! Does your belly hurt? You got some gas?” 

This display of distress only lasts a moment, and then the mother’s face typically clears, and reflects a more comforting expression, 

“It’s ok! We can get rid of that. Let’s see if we can get some burps out.” 

She may then turn the child into a more comfortable position, and begin to physically soothe it. 

This mirroring of emotions–matching the child’s distress, and then moving to an expression of calm or comfort–is a signal to the baby. I see your discomfort. It will pass. You will feel good again. The child can identify, in the mother’s face, the reflection of her own emotions, and see them pass away. With time, she learns some key things about emotions: 

1) Emotions are temporary

2) Distress will be replaced with comfort

3) Others notice my distress and wish to provide comfort to me 

Fascinatingly, parents do not consciously set out to teach emotional management to infants in this way. It just happens. Parents do consciously soothe infants, and as babies grow, parenting techniques for managing children’s emotions expand to meet the child’s growing capacity. Parents begin to use techniques like a distraction to manage children’s emotions, which children then begin to employ themselves. Before they are a year old, infants can be seen trying some basic self-soothing behaviors (sucking a fist) and distraction (looking around) when they are distressed. 

The miracle in all of this, for me, is how naturally it happens between children and parents. All parents have to consciously do is tune in. When they do–when they attend to the child–listening happens. Conversations begin to happen long before the child can talk, and building blocks of language and emotional development fall into place.

However,  this process can also be disrupted. Mothers who suffer from post-partum depression are less attentive to their infants and less likely to talk to them, and children whose mothers suffer from post-partum depression do not progress as quickly. Medication and therapy can help. 

As children grow and become increasingly verbal, these conversations between caregivers and children continue to promote healthy emotional, cognitive, and social development. Listening and talking with children is key. As a parent, one of the best things you can do for your child at any age is to tune in, listen, and keep the conversation going. This strategy literally works miracles, even before children are old enough to verbally respond.