newborn Communication Skills

How to Interact With a Newborn Baby

Nov 30, 2009 Lisl Fair
Interacting With Nature - Robert Fair
Interacting With Nature - Robert Fair
Babies communicate long before talking. Months before using words babies express
needs and feelings. Here is how to observe interactive signals and respond appr
opriately.
Newborns use their own set of verbal and nonverbal communication devices to comm
unicate with the important people in their world. These are called precursors to
language development and include eye contact, turn taking, crying, vocalization
s (vowel-type sounds like "aaaeee") and body movements. Precursors are very impo
rtant in language development as they lay the foundation for good communication
skills in later life. According to Prof. L.M. Rossetti in Communication Interven
tion: Birth to Three (Singular Publishing, 2001), early language skills are cons
idered to be the best predictor of the future intellectual abilities of a young
child.
Pepper and Weitzman, authors of It Takes Two to Talk: A Parents Guide to Helping
Children Communicate (Hanen Centre Publication, 2004) believes that as far as l
anguage development is concerned, parents are the best toy in town and the best
game around. Studies concerned with the effect of early separation on a child s de
velopment indicated that face to face interactions between babies and their care
givers provide the foundation for the development of communication skills.
Abilities of Newborns
During the first year of life, babies are like sponges soaking up all the langua
ge and social interactions in their environment. Newborns have the following abi
lities to help them communicate:
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Newborns Can Hear and Understand
Hearing is the first sense to be fully developed in babies. The inner ear reache
s adult size by the middle of pregnancy and within minutes of a baby s birth she s
tartles at loud noises. Babies seem to be pre-wired to like to listen to voices,
especially high pitched ones. Many adults and even young children involuntarily
speak in a higher tone of voice when they play with a baby. It is estimated tha
t babies can discriminate their mothers voices from other voices within three day
s after birth.
The process of understanding language also starts while a baby is still in the w
omb. Although babies are not able to understand words when they are born, they a
re able to discern emotions. Babies are attuned to the emotions of their caregiv
ers as one of their skills to survive. They understand the feelings of caregiver
s by listening to tone of voice, looking at facial expressions and feeling the p
ace of their caregivers breathing. It is not so much what is said, but how it is
said that is being absorbed not literally, but emotionally.
Newborns Use Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Signs
The most common and effective way for a newborn to communicate is through crying
as new parents soon find out. If new parents can get through those exciting yet
bewildering first days they will soon be able to discriminate different cries.
Crying is not the only way of communicating newborns also use their bodies to sh
ow that they are aware of their environment. Most of these bodily reactions are
reflexive and therefore involuntary. Babies startle reaction to a loud sound or s
uckle reaction to stimulation close to the mouth are ways in which they are indi
cating that they are making sense of their world.
Read on
* Playing With a Newborn Baby
* Language Milestones for Toddlers
* How to Interact With Toddlers
Newborns Make Eye Contact
Prof. Rossetti states that one of the first reactions mothers universally have a
fter the birth of their babies is a desire to look into the baby s eyes. In a stud
y on early attachment, mothers reported that they felt much closer emotionally t
o their babies after they had made eye contact with them. A newborn s visual abili
ties are fine-tuned for eye contact. Researchers found that newborns prefer to l
ook at faces or drawings of faces above other objects. A newborn can see best wh
en an object is approximately 20 to 30 centimeters away, which is just about the
distance a mother s face will be if she is cuddling the baby or feeding.
How to Interact With a Newborn
Adult communication needs some adaptations for newborns. Newborns love rhythmic,
predictable language such as lullabies or reading from a novel. Even though the
y don t understand the language, they love the rhythm of a human voice. The follow
ing are guidelines to follow for interaction:
* Establish eye contact as much as possible when talking to a newborn.
* Stick to a short utterance length (4 to 7 words) and simple grammar.
* Use even cadence while talking, aiming for rhythmical speech.
* Try to copy what the newborn is doing occasionally for example yawning or
stretching and wait for her reaction.
* Use heightened facial expressions and gestures such as hands out for all g
one when the feed is finished.
* Use frequent questions such as "Where s my sweetheart?" as well as greetings
.
* Interpret her communication signals as meaningful turn taking and put it i
nto words for example: when she starts to whimper during a massage respond by sa
ying "I see you don t like this now. I will stop."
* Have frequent verbal rituals during daily events such as feeding, changing
and bathing, saying the same things over and over. This will help her to begin
to predict events.
Newborns come into this world pre-wired to communicate. They have innate abiliti
es to understand verbal and nonverbal language. Acknowledging their role as an e
qual partner in interaction and adapting adult communication to their abilities,
will enrich the attachment between them and their primary caregivers during thi
s important period in life.
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In a call centre environment, the minute we pick up the call, body language in t
he traditional sense disappears. Remember, however, that a customer will hear body
language in the tone of voice. Tone accounts for 86% of the total communication
, words accounting for the remaining 14%. In an industry where standard scripts ar
e the norm, it is challenging to remain constantly aware of how we sound to the
customer, both through the words we use and how we use them. FENMAN UKwebsite