Cocooned at home with LuLu yesterday, we tuned into Oprah once we’d run out of all of LuLu’s favorite flicks. There we saw Priscilla Dunstan, a mom from Australia, who has discovered five sounds that infants make universally to communication with the world. Ms. Dunstan, who has a gift for understanding emotions and feeling behind language, has tested her theory of a universal baby language on over 1000 infants from many cultures, races and languages. She has found that infants from birth to three months all make the same basic five “reflex sounds” to communicate their basic needs – hunger, discomfort, lower gas, upper gas(need to burp) and tiredness.


It was fascinating to consider this universal “language” our babies have. But as I listened to Dunstan coach some new moms to understand this language, I realized that a lot of moms actually do learn this from their babies, whether they realize it or not. While Dunstan pointed out the actual sound, it was nearly intuitive to listen to the babies’ cries and tell the difference between hunger, tiredness and gas. So, it’s obvious that nature has wired moms who are emotionally healthy and attentive with the ability to decode this secret language.

Dunstan said that after about three months the babies lose this reflex language for two reasons. If sounds are not responded to properly they are replaced with other sounds, and the children start to pick up the language sounds of the language that is spoken to them.

Infant language development is a fascinating subject, especially as it relates to children who come from background of neglect or pathological care. Although it was one sentence that Dunstan quickly spoke, it important to note that the baby will stop making a sound not properly responded to. In fact, studies in orphanages say that they are remarkably quiet places for having so many infants in them. But, if you think about the situation, you start to understand that if babies are not responded to when they make sounds, then babies don’t see their sound-making as having any impact on their environment, so they stop. If you cry and nobody comes, what’s the point in continuing to cry?

Most of us will adopted our children after they are three months old, so we won’t have an opportunity to respond to their reflex language. But we will have both the opportunity, and the responsibility, to recognize that our child’s language development may suffer some delays and problems due to their early childhood care. And approaching language issues aggressively is the best course of action.

More information:

Dunstan Baby DVDs
Language Development in Internationally Adopted Children
Dr. Gindis’ Language Development in Internationally Adopted Children

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