Babies Binary Communication Systems

I am not an expert in babies, but I have had 'charge' of the odd one or two and have studied their ways. In order to try to understand the baby you have too remember two things:

1. They always have a mission or purpose (normally with a real tight time scale).

2. They communicate using binary oral systems.

Point one first (logical eh?). However random a small child's actions may appear they are in fact tremendously busy at all times, interrupting any one of their little projects can cause them to become more than a little agitated.

Take the beach for instance..you decide to walk the little fella (or lass) down toward the sea and he kicks off...why?

Well it may just be that he was under a severe time constraint on moving those shells from a to b, he was, until you intervened, progressing quite well through his little task list;

a. Move 3 shells.
b. Taste Sand.
c. Complete 4m crawling speed trial in southerly direction (practise two emergency stops during this evolution).
d. Fill nappy with approx 4 oz of sand.
e. Gnaw on pebble.
f. Assess interest from parents, if surveillance is low to poor - eat sand.
g. Move remaining four shells.

Also, he knows he only has a limited daylight hours at the beach, this does not leave him an awful lot of time to complete his tasks as it is, let alone having to swan off down to the water (once there he will of course create a new more urgent wave focused list).

Imagine how you would feel if you were dragged off onto some unauthorised activity in the middle of one of your projects. I have recently felt the full force of my little girls rage, when I decided to give her a bottle midway through her 'snap' DVD re-arrangement and electric plug tasting session.

So, neatly onto the title of the post. When I interrupted her session she communicated her displeasure in a certain way, the indications she gave me were I suspect, no different to the indications I would have received had she just had her left arm ripped off below the elbow by a sabre toothed tiger...it may be that she was actually THAT upset (that to her, the DVD removal appeared in her little brain no different to an arm removal), or that she only has a binary communication system which is the theory I favour.

For instance, what has happened...













What we imagine given the verbal communication we receive...










You see, until a certain age the little scamps use an all or nothing binary system to communicate, they transmit either happy (gentle cooing, gurgling etc) or 'life threatening danger '(blood curdling screaming intermixed with little panicked sobs). They is no middle ground.

This system I suspect was designed way back in the day when our ancestors babies often did face extreme situations which required immediate clan action (mammoth attack springs to mind).

These days it can be a little annoying.