The wonderful art of communication
Monday, 19th January 2009 by Julie
Communication with babies is always rather hit and miss in my opinion. They all develop at different rates, and even when they do understand the words, there’s still no guarantee that they’ll modify their behaviour accordingly!
While various people have tried to assure me that babies “understand more than you think”, I confess I’ve remained sceptical where Jon is concerned. In my experience, he’s always been very good at cheerfully ignoring most forms of verbal interaction.
But these last couple of months, Jon has entered a new phase where we can finally see the results of him processing things we’ve said. It’s great!
At first, Jon took us quite by surprise. An early example was when I asked him, rather whimsically, “where are your shoes?” To which he responded by doing an about turn and crawling off into his bedroom. When he got alongside the middle of the bed where we change him, he pulled himself up, grabbed his shoes from their customary resting place, and came crawling back with them, one in each hand.
Clever boy!
Since then he’s grasped a number of phrases, many of which make our lives easier. “Close the door, please” is a useful one when he’s just let himself and a chilly draft into the bathroom, and “let’s say grace” silences the squeaks and whines when he’s waiting at the table to be fed.
At the same time, Jon has been working on his own -less verbal- communications. Most particularly with an endearing little pointed finger, occasionally punctuated with a grunted “Der” (“there”?) or a generic chirp to draw the appropriate attention.
The pointing, which can admittedly be a little primitive by itself, is then refined with a stern head shake and appropriate frown, to indicate a definite No! if we’ve got it wrong and proffered an incorrect article. This being the case, the little finger will shoot out once again.
Being able to tell us precisely what he wants is equally exciting for Jon. The other night in the kitchen, he spotted the oven gloves (which he rather likes to put on, it’s very cute 
) hanging out of reach, and he very clearly pointed them out for me. The look on his face as I got them down for him was sheer delight.
Other coarser forms of parental direction involve grabbing an adult hand, and dragging it to where it needs to be applied. Be it opening a lid, pushing a difficult button or putting an intransigent puzzle piece into its rightful place. (This is usually when the adult in question has ignored the obvious verbal hints in the form of frustrated whines.)
Of course communication, as adults have shown countless times, is a flawed process with ample room for misinterpretation.
And that’s completely aside from the ability of each party to induce vexation by independently choosing to ignore the communication at will!
But after 17 months of us talking at Jon and him crying randomly at us, I think both sides are rather pleased with the current state of progress. 
