Some Languages

Edith lifts her hands to her face as if to count the number of fingers on each hand. I notice that she is able to turn her eyes right in to focus on the object a few centimetres from her face.  Instead of counting she gargles some dental fricatives. Not any recognisable consonant. It’s her ‘ I’m busy working’ language.

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I’m just back home and Edith is always happy to see me. But she doesn’t like sitting in her high chair much. It’s too much of a bucket seat, and who likes bucket seats, right? She likes to sit upright at the moment, alert and able to look around. So to voice disapproval she lets out an almighty aaaaiiiieeeeeaeaeaeae, her tongue folding itself through the sounds. This is longer, more complex than the usual monophthong cries. This is dissatisfaction language.

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And then at other times I try a conversation.  She will squeak and I’ll squeak back… but nothing. I can try words or sounds but she just listens to me.  She’s not going to interrupt herself thinking. She does not need to sound out her thinking. 

Our first week with Edith

                  

                        Our first photo of Edith 

Let me introduce you to Edith - my daughter - born just a couple of days ago on the 25th of November at 17.17. As she emerged into the world she made a good healthy wail. I remember this clearly as I was sitting on an old hospital chair in a corridor outside the operating theatre. Sadly, at the last minute my wife needed an emergency c-section meaning I couldn't be in the room when the doctors birthed the child, but I certainly heard the moment. 

As a language teacher, and a dad, I'm so excited to see and describe how Edith's abilities will develop and how she will learn in the coming years. But the cry, the most simple form of communication, is not something she learnt - it was just a reflex response to the oxygen flooding into tiny lungs for the first time. 

Now - just a few days later Edith is doing great and my wife, Amy is recovering really well. And in the first five days we have learned plenty - how to minimise the spread of poo-ey nappy mess and how to try and comfort an inconsolable baby in the early hours of the morning. 

When I was trying to do this at 4am the other night I decided to offer baby a surrogate teat by placing my finger in her mouth. And while she isn't able to do much with any motor control yet. she can certainly synchronize her tongue, her lips and her jaw to create an impressive suction. 

Was she able to do this immediately? Or is this the first thing that a child learns to do? Well, babies do suck their thumbs in the womb, as if in preparation for their first meal. But Amy reckons that little Edie is now able to latch on - to get her mouth nice and open and generally get down to the important business of feeding much more efficiently than she was able to just a few days ago. 

The tongue, the lips, the jaw and probably the roof of the mouth. These are the first things we learn to use in an accurate and efficient way. Seeing this happen makes me think about these separate parts of the body harmonise so well to aid the function of so many different systems: respiratory, digestive, then slowly but surely they are trained to become the key members of the communicative system. And perhaps this is happening already - Even since I wrote this a few days ago Edith's vocabulary of squeaks and gurgles is already a tiny bit more nuanced. Anyway, I have to go.  Edith has just pooped.