Before writing this script, I was brooding in isolation and witnessing a strange connection with “The Blue Bird”, a fairy tale by Belgian poet and playwright Maurice Maetarlink. In this inspiring work, the poet narrates how the soul of a baby, waits in the hall of the Blue Palace (Paradise) to be born, and comes down when called by the mother. This clue inspires to think do children communicate at all?

Now let’s take a look at the development of a human baby, even before taking birth. Almost after 25 weeks in the mother’s womb the baby gradually develops senses that understand emotion, build gestures that give a sweet kicking effect and start reacting to light and sound for the first time. Even as long as the expecting mother is awake and working, the baby within the thin membrane inside the womb hardly sleeps. The urge to be born as a human being comes from the numerous attempts the yet to be born baby makes during the course of pregnancy. In this a silent urge that an offspring from the race of the great communicators would make? Certainly not; the first musical school for any human being is the maternal womb.

In 1971, Ruth Fridman began tapping sonorous rhythmic intonated ex-pressions of many infants. Of course, the idea of how early infants could start singing, repeat melodies and tap rhythms is extremely interesting. This new inheritance had a special origin, and the cultural environment in which the infant is nurtured is not the only cause. Fridman taped the voices of babies in a children’s hospital in Buenos Aires ranging from full-term, pre-mature, or significantly retarded ones. The researcher realized, if he separates the cry from the sounds included in it, it could be labeled as “musical”.  Later analysis through electronic devices confirmed this grand hypothesis. Fridman even suggests baby cries had the proper characteristics of sound: frequency, timbre and intensity. When reviewing the bibliography about infant sounds, he did not discover any systematic study of the first mass of sounds and their sonorous rhythmic structure in relation to musical activity. Infants’ most elementary vocal rhythmic schemes make up the psychological matrix for future language and music acquisition. In a way I would advice every expecting mother to have a reading of Fridman’s “The Beginnings of Musical Behaviour”. The book depicts how important music is during the gestational period. Can music decide the communicative behaviour of the child?

The first sounds that the baby hears when still in the womb and has completed successful weeks; it will start echoing as the centre of audio-magnetic resonance is the brain. Today pediatricians and neonatologists agree to this dictum that sound/ music can be a deciding factor on how well your child communicates. From the senses comes ex-pression that sounds manifest to the external world in a form well understood and termed ‘words’.

The dynamic interaction of the baby, the behaviour, and the environment in which the behaviour is performed; consider multiple avenues to behavioural change, including skill and physical change all decide the success. As Noam Chomsky suggests that a particular use of language in messages has more or less persuasive power depending on the value system, the effort and motivation of the receivers. Babies are fast learners and echo everything they have been fed with. 

Mothers whoa are expecting or are yet to plan must understand how vital a role, can communication play in the true development of their child. After the child’s brain is almost developed in the later gestational stage, the fetal middle ear which is already full size receives sound vibrations, sends it to the brain to decode and respond appropriately. We have to think that the intrauterine environment of the fetus is deeply affecting personality development. Thus the womb is the place where the brain develops and begins working. This stimulation takes place with the exchange of the experiences between the fetus and the environment in which it is immersed. The development of the brain will be enhanced if we can offer the appropriate stimuli for this to happen. It will depend much on the quality of what the mother will transmit to her baby whether the imprinting will be made in a positive or negative way. 

Until now, we were deeply monitoring the various criteria that decide your child’s communication for the years that he/she will live as of course a child, a youngster and a for the rest of life.  

In recent years the birth rate of children with Down’s syndrome has substantially grown up. The neutrality with which children should grow is snatched from them even before the development of the brain. Remember children are definitely good communicators, and good communication means good receiving as well as dissemination of information in any form. Music of course can serve well if played jusiciously. Even after the baby is born, in the first few months of existence outside the secured walls of the womb, for example the music that is played before the baby’s birth if repeated gives the new born a scope to familiarize, build trust and take the first steps much earlier than stipulated. It is surprising but true, the more communicative your child is the smoother will be the development. Communicating before and after with children before and after their birth is an essential lesson that you need to forward to your next generation for building a society with better understanding.

Have a nice blogging!