With new born babies, it appears communication and values are being sorted out deep in the soul, and it is important for adults to try and identify with them. Infants move their arms and legs to rhythms of human speech. Random noise, rhythmic tapping, or disconnected vowel sounds will not produce this language dance. Only natural speech has this effect. Why do day-old infants dance to speech but not other sounds? One possibility is that language recognition is innate. Humans have a biological predisposition (hereditary readiness) to develop language. Language patterns are inborn, much like a child’s ability to coordinate walking. If such inborn language recognition does exist, it may explain why children around the World use a limited number of patterns in their fist sentences. Typical patterns include: Identification: See puppy. Non-existence: Allgone milk. Possession: My car. Agent-action: Mam give. Negation: Not ball. Question: Where doggie? Psycholinguists (specialists in the psychology of language) have shown that language is not magically switched on by adult speech. Imitations of adults and rewards for correctly using words (as when a child asks for a cookie) are an important part of language learning. Also, when a child makes a language error, parents typically repeat the child’s sentence, with needed corrections. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

More important, still, is the fact that parents and children begin to communicate long before the child can speak. Months of shared effort precede a child’s first word. From this point of view, the filmed infants’ behavior reflects a readiness to interact socially with parents, not innate language recognition. How do parents communicate with infants before they can talk? Parents go to a great deal of work to get babies to smile and vocalize. In doing so, they quickly learn to change their actions to keep the infant’s attention, arousal, and activity at optimal levels. A familiar example is the “I’m-Going-to-Get-You Game.” In it, the adult says, “I’m gonna getcha…I’m gonna getcha…Gotcha!” Through such games, adults and babies come to share similar rhythms and expectations. Soon a system of shared signals is created, such as touching, vocalizing, gazing, and smiling. These help lay a foundation for later language use. Specifically, signals establish a pattern of conversational turn-taking (alternate sending and receiving of messages). Mother says to baby, “Oh what a nice little smile! Yes, isn’t that nice? There. There’s a nice little smile.” Baby Annie smiles. Baby Annie burps. Mother says, “Well, pardon you! Yes, that’s better, isn’t it?” Baby Annie vocalizes and smiles. Mother says, “What’s so funny?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

These exchanges between a parent and baby are more important than they seem. They represent real communication. A baby’s vocalizations and attention provide a way of interacting emotionally with parents. Even infants as young as 3 months make more speech-like sounds when an adult engages them in turn-taking. Overall, the more time parents spend interacting with children, the faster they learn to talk. The more often adults label objects, the faster a child’s vocabulary grows. Babies who most readily imitate new words learn language the fastest. Clearly, social relationships contribute greatly to language learning. When talking to infants, parents use an exaggerated pattern of speaking called motherese or parentese. Typically, they raise their tone of voice, use short, simple sentences, and repeat themselves more. They also slow their rate of speaking, and use exaggerated voice inflections: “Did Annie eat it A-L-L UP?” What is the purpose of such changes? Parents are apparently trying to help their children learn language. When a baby is still babbling, parents tend to use long, adult-style sentences. However, as soon as the baby says his or her first word the parent switches back to parentese over normal speech. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

In addition to being simpler, parentese has a distinct musical quality. No matter what language the mothers speak, the melodies, pauses, and inflection they use to comfort, praise, or give warning are universal. Mothers of all nations talk to their babes with a rising, then falling pitch (“BRA-vo!” “GOOD girl!”). Warnings are delivered in a short, sharp rhythm (“Nein! Nein!” “Basta! Basta!” “Not Dude!”). To give comfort, parents use low, smooth, drawn-out tones (“Oooh poor baa-by.” “Oooh pobrecito.”) A high-pitched, rising melody is used to call attention to objects (“See the pretty BIRDIE?”). Note that parentese is not literally baby talk. Many parents cannot seem to resist imitating a baby’s cute mispronunciations of words. This is harmless enough for a short time. However, if parents continue to use baby talk they may slow a child’s language learning. Unless parents help their children pronounce words correctly, a child can easily reach school age still using baby talk. However, in the meantime, motherese helps parents get babies’ attention, communicate with them, and teach them language. Later, as a child’s speaking improves, parents tend to adjust their speech to the child’s language ability. Especially from 18 months to 4 years of age, parents seek to clarify what a child says and prompt the child to say more. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

Here are two typical strategies for getting a child to say more. Expansion: Child: Cereal. Parent: Does Leo wants milk and cereal? Child: Leo coffee and cereal. Parent: Let’s get Leo some milk and cereal. As one can see, some elements of language are innate: All normal children learn language, unless they grow up in an extremely abnormal environment. Nevertheless, our inherited tendency to learn language does not determine if we will speak African, English, German, Spanish, Mandarin or Cantonese, Japanese, Arabic, or Russian. Environmental forces also influence whether a person develops simple or sophisticated language skills. Clearly, a full flowering of speech requires careful cultivation. “If you had lived in Victorian Europe and heard Dr. Freud say, “It is a sexual experience for a mother to nurse her infant,” you would probably have put the heat on under a vat of tar and begin plucking chicken feathers, ready to give the speaker a new wardrobe! Similar Victorian reactions are still around, even in this enlightened day and age. However, the term sexual, newly and more broadly defined, should now be more acceptable. Breast-feeding is far from being the exciting or lustful experience that it is commonly associated with the word sexual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

Breast feeding is a complex and interdependent relationship. It is more of a sensual experience, which means just what it hints at: responsive to sensory stimulation. However, the term has been abused to much that it has take on the same kinds of connotations that sexual has, and that is wildly distorted and inappropriate. Several things are happening to both mother and infant: the sensory neurons in the nipple are being stimulated and the response is one of pleasure; the sensory neurons in the child’s mouth are being stimulated and this response, too, is pleasurable; the body of the mother, coming into contact with the body of the child, is experiencing pleasurable warmth and stimulation; the same experience of warmth and stimulation is being felt by the child; the mother’s entire memory and ideational system is being stimulated by things she heard as a little girl about the importance of breast-feeding for the child’s health and security, about the importance of togetherness for mother and child, about the importance of skin contact for a feeling of comfort and security; the mother is reminded of the vital role she played in carrying and delivering this lively bundle of life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

A baby stirs the souls of the parents so deeply that parents experience a major transformation of character. The child may be a reminder to the mother of the love and intimacy she has with her husband; the child is gaining attitudes and experiences about closeness (in addition to their immediate pleasantness) and a sense of physical belonging. Many, many other things might be going on in both members of the mother-child unit, such as the pleasure of warm, nourishing milk going down and satisfying hunger, the pleasure of relieving the tension of breasts too full of milk, and so forth. Right after birth of a child, many women’s breast produces yellowish liquid called colostrum. Colostrum contains antibodies and protein. This is probably to disinfect the nipple, which removes bacteria and makes it more sanitary for the baby to feed from. Lactation, or milk production, begins about one to three days, after you give birth to your baby. Pituitary hormones stimulate milk production, in the breast, in response to the stimulation of the infant sucking on the nipples. If a new mother does not begin to nurse or stops nursing, milk production subsides within a matter of days. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

Breastfeeding also has emotional and healthy advantages. Breast milk provides infants with free digestible food filled with antibodies and other immunity-producing substances. Breast feeding or nursing also induces uterine contractions that help speed the return of the uterus to it pre-pregnancy size. Breast feeding is also beneficial for the mother, as it is emotional and sensual experience for the mother, and it will help her bond with her baby. It is said that children, who are held close, by their mother grow up stronger and more confident.  Breast feeding is also a form of birth control, you are less likely to get pregnant because breastfeeding will temporarily inhibit ovulation, for women who feed their babies breast milk only. Birth control, during the period that you are breast feeding, is not recommended because the hormones can reduce the amount of milk produced and affect mother’s milk quality. However, progesterone-only pills can be used because progesterone-only pills will not affect milk supply or quantity. Nevertheless, stay from estrogen-containing birth control pills, do not use them. Some couple prefer to use a condom, after the baby is born to avoid an extra hormones from being passed on to the child. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

When it comes to child development, in the first 2 years of life, a child’s intellectual development is largely non-verbal. The child is mainly concerned with learning to coordinate purposeful movements with information from the sense. Also, object permanence (an understanding that objects continue to exist when they are out of sight) emerges about this time. By about 18 months of age, the child begins to actively pursue disappearing objects. By age 2, the child can anticipate the movement of an object behind a screen. For example, when watching an electric train, Leo looks ahead of the end of a tunnel, rather than staring at the spot where the train disappeared. In general, developments in this stage indicate that the child’s conceptions are becoming more stable. Objects cease to appear and disappear magically, and a more orderly and predictable World replaces the confusing and disconnected sensations of infancy. The child during this person reveals a young human being learning to control the actions of one’s young body, learning to walk, to talk, to move muscles in a coordinated way, and deriving real pleasure from such control. None of the baby’s physical functioning have been prevented or inhibited before this. The baby has been able to eat, drink, sleep, breathe, eliminate, stretch, scratch, sneeze, and do anything the body needs to do. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

However, in this period the baby is suddenly told that some of his or her physical function must submit to the controls demanded by the culture’s leaders: the baby must wait for meals to come at something called meal time; the child must excuse oneself before belching; the youth must cover one’s mouth when one sneezes; one must never make certain noises in public; one must watch one’s step, both figuratively and literally. However, among the most enforced restrictions one finds are toilet rules. Prior to this one’s sphincter builds up a certain amount of tension and then the baby simply lets go in the diaper. Suddenly one must learn when, where, and how to eliminate. Strange as this set of rules must appear to the child at this age, one notices that the parents put a lot of importance on toilet behaviors. The child observes and makes note very early. One can please one’s parents by going to the bathroom in the right way and displease them when one makes a dishonorable discharge or mistake or accident. Suddenly, the youth has a means by which one can control those big, powerful adults. In the Anal-Retentive phase, the child can derive some further pleasurable control by holding back. There is, apparently, some pleasurable sensation attached to temporary bowel constriction, but one again the greater pleasure may come from controlling the parents. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

Children are our most precious gift from God—our eternal increase. Parents for the most part see their greatest fulfillment, their greatest happiness in a home and family. God planted within humans something divine that expresses itself in quiet strength, in refinement, in peace, in goodness, in virtue, in truth, in love. And all of these remarkable qualities find their truest and most satisfying expression in parenthood. The greatest job that any parent will ever do will be in nurturing and teaching and living and encouraging and rearing their children in righteousness and truth. There is no other thing that will compare with that, regardless of what a mother or father will do. The kingdom of God is not and cannot be complete without women and men who make sacred covenants and keep them, women and men who can speak with the power and authority of God! Today, we need women and men who know how to make important things happen by their faith and who are courageous defenders of morality and families in a World that is still developing. We need parents to know how to call upon the powers of Heaven to protect and strengthen children and families; and people who teach fearlessly. “Those who look upon the Son with faith will have life eternal,” reports Helaman 8.15. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11