What Babies Know

This week, I was blessed by the opportunity to hold a young infant. I always love that first sensation of fragility, as a parent or grandparent transfers into my arms that precious little miracle who has only recently entered the world. How do they let go?

Then the tiny sensory bundle that is a baby is there; back curving along the inside of my arm, bobbing head cradled in my palm. The complex scent that is a newborn creates a little bubble around the two of us. I am swept into the voice of this new child, learning about him or her as I smell freshly washed skin and hair, or a diaper that needs changing, or stale cigarette smoke. I feel the way he moves in my arms and I hear they way she "speaks," making long vowel sounds or strings of little "eh-eh-eh-eh" sounds. At the same time, my eyes take in hair and skin, movement, and facial expressions, and I learn more about this babe.

This is how babies experience us: pure sensory input (but without all the language to describe it as I have). For a newborn, each of us adults is nothing but a single sensory image. Everything about us that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or felt with the skin/body, streams into the infant like threads onto a hi-speed loom. In the shortest space of time imaginable -- SNAP! -- like that, but a million times faster -- those individual sensory threads are braided together into a whole. You, the adult holding the baby, are a sensory experience for Baby but you don't yet have a name.

This way of apprehending reality is the rich vein of ore from which this little being can mine the Childhood Treasure of Trust, if we adults know how to help.

From this sensory "way of knowing" the world, which I will refer to as capital-S Sensing, infants Sense their own bodies but have no names for the feelings. They know that there is a hollow-twisty Sense just below the solar plexus and that the feeling is unpleasant. We are the ones who tell them that this feeling is called hunger.

But wait, I skipped some steps. Here's the whole pattern: 1) Infant Senses unpleasant feelings; 2) infant squirms; 3) infant squirms and emits small sounds of distress; 4) infant emits a few loud cries; 5) infant fills his or her lungs and begins to cry in earnest, with little balled up fists shaking from the intensity of the discomfort and, now, frustration....

At any point in this stream of "infant-speak" communication, relief could come in the form of an adult who provides nourishment. Or maybe nobody comes.

If someone comes, she or he may bring relief, or bring more unpleasant or painful Senses. If someone comes and brings relief, he or she may talk about the shared experience that Baby and adult are having, may say nothing, or may talk to someone else as if Baby isn't there. Maybe the Someone (now recognized by the infant as a new or familiar Sense pattern) locks eyes with Baby, smiles, and speaks to Baby. Maybe that Someone never looks at Baby's face at all. Maybe Someone touches Baby in loving and tender ways while nourishment flows. Maybe Baby is left alone again, sucking in Life from a bottle propped on pillows.

If you think of yourself as a baby who always got your hunger fed as soon as you expressed it, by someone who looked at you, talked with you, and touched you with tenderness while nourishing you, how do you feel? Can you remember or imagine that you remember? And if you think of yourself as a baby whose cries brought no relief or brought more pain, or who was fed by a Someone who never looked at you or talked with you, or who left you alone with your food, how do you feel?

Whatever is happening, Baby is learning. That truth is crucial for all of us to know about this first year of life. An infant's Sensings, with links to other Sensings that occur within the same time frame, are building themselves into Baby's neural network. Baby is learning all the time (which begs the question: what are we teaching?) The architecture of the brain arises from Baby's experiences, which in turn, determines what facets and flaws Baby will cut into the Treasure of Trust.