Is your baby trying to tell you something?

Sarah Fitz-Claridge

“Young babies make meaningful sounds. By reliably meeting their requests you are enabling them to learn that they can have an effect on the world, and that problems are soluble.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge


      

When babies’ needs/wishes go unmet, some end up giving-up, developing a can’t-do, hopeless, uncreative mentality. Such babies are getting the life-blighting idea that problems can’t be solved. So no point trying. Learnt helplessness. I fear this is what is happening when parents leave their baby to cry, for example to train the baby to sleep through the night. My guess is that many ‘cry it out’ parents are themselves in a state of learnt helplessness.

Even if you would never dream of using the ‘cry it out’ sleep training method, sometimes parents just have no idea what is causing a baby’s distress, and nothing seems to help. It can be heartbreaking to be a parent of a new baby who often cries and you don’t know why. You want so much to know what your baby needs, but you don’t know. You would do whatever your beloved baby wanted if you only knew what it was, but you don’t know. You have no idea what your baby’s crying means, so your precious baby continues crying in distress. 😢💔😔

For parents of babies up to three or four months old in particular, there is hope! Babies up to that age have particular reflexes that create pre-crying utterances that correspond to what their need is in that moment. And if you meet each of those requests promptly and consistently, your baby will learn that ‘saying’ those ‘words’ reliably gets their request met, and the misery and suffering will be replaced by contentment.

The person who discovered the meaning of young babies’ pre-crying utterances was Priscilla Dunstan. As a professional musician with an acute ear for sound, when she first had a baby, she noticed that the baby made particular sounds, and she conjectured that the sounds might be a clue to what the baby wanted/needed. Through checking her conjectures about what each of the pre-crying utterances meant, and dropping conjectures that did not stand up to her critical scrutiny, she learnt that there were five meaningful request ‘words’ her young baby was often ‘saying’. She went on to discover that it was not just her own baby who was making these meaningful request vocalisations: almost all babies from birth to 3 or 4 months old do.

Priscilla Dunstan identified five meaningful pre-crying utterances:

  • “Neh!” means “I am hungry.” This sound is created by the sucking reflex, the tongue being sucked up to the roof of the baby’s mouth. To meet this request, feed your baby.
  • “Eh!” means “I need to be burped.” This is the sound young babies make when there is a large bubble of air trapped in their chest that needs to be released. To meet this request, put your baby vertically on your shoulder and pat their back to help release the air in a burp.
  • “Eairrr” means “I have lower gas.” The baby has gas pain or is trying to complete a bowel movement, and is tightening their muscles to force the air bubble out. If a bowel movement is in progress, young babies often also bring their legs up towards their body. To meet this request, change their nappy/diaper.
    • “Heh!” means “I am uncomfortable!” To address this, look for possible sources of discomfort. Is the baby too hot? Too cold? In and uncomfortable position? Is there something digging in to the baby somewhere? Does the baby have an itchy or painful rash or sore skin somewhere?
    • “Owwwh” means “I want to sleep.” To meet this request, desist from all the stimulating ‘awake’ things you are doing with the baby and switch to quiet stillness and peacefulness so that the baby can fall asleep asleep uninterrupted. (If you have ever been woken up by someone talking to you just as you have been dropping off to sleep, you know the jangling torture such interruptions can create.)

    If you promptly and reliably meet these requests while your babies still have the early reflexes creating these vocalisations, then, as Priscilla Dunstan discovered, your babies will continue making requests using those ‘words’ after they no longer have the reflexes that originally caused those vocalisations. Wow! 💡🔑✨

    You will have enabled your babies to create valuable knowledge that will stand them in good stead for their entire lives: that their wishes need not go unmet, that they are not powerless, that they can have an effect on the world, that they themselves can get their needs met through their own actions by communicating them to loved ones, that loved ones care, and that problems are soluble.1

    All of life is problem-solving. This is deep knowledge: the knowledge of human creativity. How amazing for a person to learn that problems are soluble at such a young age. And how amazing for us that we can have meaningful problem-solving communication with our beloved babies when they are so very young.

    Enjoy every precious moment communicating and connecting and learning and solving problems with your beloved babies. 💖👶🏻🫂

    Priscilla Dunstan on the meaningful request sounds young babies make, on the Oprah Winfrey show

    Notes

    1. For a deep understanding of this idea and why this matters, read David Deutsch’s life-changing book, The Beginning of Infinity.

    See also:

    Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 2025, ‘Is your baby trying to tell you something?’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/is-your-baby-trying-to-tell-you-something

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