Understanding and communicating with your baby

We’d all love to be able to get inside our babies’ heads and understand them better. What’s upset her all of a sudden, when she was so happy a moment ago? What’s she laughing at? What’s so fascinating over there?

It’s sometimes frustrating not being able to communicate with our babies, or understand what they want. However, even from a very early age there are certain “cues” which parents can pick up on and ways in which we can communicate with our babies at a basic level, before they master the art of talking.

Baby cues
Small babies can indicate a lot through certain behavioural “cues”, and understanding these cues can help understand your baby’s temperament and mood. Generally, cues fall into three categories: “approach” cues, which show that your baby is ready to play and interested in what’s going on, “withdrawal” cues, which show he is tired and is not engaging with you, and “feeding” cues, which simply indicate that he is hungry.

Examples of approach cues:
- Making face-to-face contact
- Reaching out hands
- Turning eyes or head towards you
- Smiling
- Babbling and cooing
- Raising head

Examples of withdrawal cues:
- Turning head or eyes away
- Crying
- Arching back
- Squirming or kicking
- Pulling away
- Yawning
- Wrinkling forehead
- Dull looking/closing eyes

Examples of feeding cues:
- Chewing on fist or finger
- Tongue protruding from lips
- Crying
- Sucking movements of the mouth and tongue

Crying
For very small babies, crying is the only way that they have of communicating that something isn’t right – they have a full nappy, they are hungry, they are tired, or just plain bored. Crying is the only sound that they can make, and they soon learn that mum and dad come running when they do. For the first couple of months, crying will be her primary means of communicating with you, and to begin with, finding out why she’s crying is going to be largely trial and error. Gradually, you will start to distinguish between the “tired” cry and the “hungry” cry as you become more attuned to your baby, and after a few months, your baby will start to learn other means of communicating with you, and will consequently cry less. See our section on crying for more information. (See Identifying different sorts of cry to find out more)

Smiling
During the first month, any smiles that your baby makes are likely to be reflex actions. However, from 3-4 weeks onwards, babies start to smile in response to being spoken to and smiled at, and these smiles will increase as your baby gets used to interacting with other people and objects.

Baby signing
Baby signing was developed in the USA by Dr Joseph Garcia, a leading child development expert, who noticed the ease with which the children of deaf parents learned sign-language. Baby signing is growing in popularity in the UK and there are a number of books and courses available. The system works on the basis of a number of simple signs, much in the same way as deaf signing, to represent simple concepts, for example “where?”, “all gone”, and “more!” The signs are all devised to make it easy for babies to copy and use them.

Many parents swear by baby signing, claiming that giving their children the means to communicate in this way removes a lot of the typical frustration of pre-talkers. It’s also been claimed that it speeds up the development of verbal communication too – once your child has got a taste for communicating, he’s keen to try out new ways of doing so more effectively. Also, while signing, you are repeating the words and phrases associated with that particular sign or gesture, so your child is learning both ways of communicating simultaneously.

Reading to your baby
You may feel silly reading to a young baby, but babies will love to hear your voice from a very young age and this can help to foster their love of reading as they grow. There are plenty of books that are suitable for very young children and as your child develops the grasping reflex she will love to reach out and touch them. As she listens to the words you are saying she will start to be able to understand them and respond in babbles. This is why it is important to read and talk as much as possible to your baby.

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Last Modified: 24/09/2008

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