Right from birth your baby is spellbound by human faces, especially yours. This preference for looking at faces is believed to be hardwired into our brain.
The first thing your baby will want to do when she’s born is look at your face, gaze into your eyes, grasp your finger with her tiny hand and snuggle in close to you. Her body language gives you a powerful message of, ‘Hello! I want to know you. I’m so glad to be with you at last.’
This is one of the first times you experience your baby’s amazing ability to communicate with you through non-verbal language. When you gaze back at her you feel a rush of ‘love hormones’ that help you to connect and know each other. Sometimes this doesn’t happen immediately, but it will eventually.
After you both enjoy your first meeting, you have your first breastfeed or formula feed together. Everyone always says hello and has a chat before they have a meal together.
Non-verbal cues
Your baby can’t communicate her needs to you with words until well into her second year, and even then she will have some trouble communicating all her needs with words. But her ability to communicate with you non-verbally will be efficient throughout this period. It’s just a matter of you getting to know what her non-verbal communications mean.
She can communicate effectively with her body movements; she uses her head, legs, arms, hands and her facial expressions. These non-verbal communications are usually called ‘baby cues’.
Non-verbal cues are small, moment-by-moment movements, which are not always easy to recognise or identify. Each cue is exactly the same as hearing one single word. Usually, you can’t understand or get meaning from that unless you hear words put together in a sentence or from a gesture. So, just one non-verbal cue isn’t enough to tell you what your baby’s trying to communicate. For you to understand your baby, you need to watch all the non-verbal cues she’s using in a given situation.
Let’s look at a familiar scenario to learn how your baby might communicate. Many parents experience these types of playtime situations and their baby’s behaviour can be confusing.
Scenario: confusing non-verbal cues
Your baby has just had her lunch and you decide she might like some playtime. You put her on her mat with some toys and plan to do a few quick chores while she plays. You look down at her and she lifts her face, gazes straight into your eyes and smiles. Her eyes are bright and shiny and she waves her arms towards you. She looks so sweet! She gives you a really strong message she wants you to play with her, so you decide the chores can wait.
You smile, touch and talk to each other for a few minutes. You show her some toys, but she’s more interested in you than her toys. So, you sing a nursery rhyme using exciting facial expressions and finger actions. She really likes this game and for a minute or so she finds it very exciting, her eyebrows raise, she reaches out to you, smiles and joins in. You’re both having so much fun.
Suddenly, and it seems for no reason, your baby starts to frown, she looks down and turns away. This confuses you because you were having such fun. You haven’t got to the end of the rhyme and actions yet, so you keep going to cheer her along. She turns away even more. You follow her turned face and move in more closely to her and ask, ‘What’s wrong? Are you sad? Do you have a tummy ache?’ Then you try to cheer her up by grasping her hands and trying to engage her in the nursery rhyme game again. You show her a happy face.
This time she pulls away from you, starts to flap her hands, shows you a sad face and cries.
What just happened? One minute you were having such fun together and now she doesn’t want to play with you. Is she tired? Is she just fussy? Her behaviour seems so confusing.
Have you ever been in this situation? It’s a common one, but even so it can be hard to interpret sometimes. So, here’s what happened.
In the beginning of that time together, you can easily read her strong, non-verbal signals that she’s ready to play.
Cues that your baby is ready to play
The cues are:
• raising her face to you
• gazing straight into your eyes
• reaching to you with her arms
• smiling
• her eyes are bright, shiny and alert.
These strong messages tell you she’s ready to socialise. She’s also alert and wide awake. That’s the perfect time for her to play and socialise with you. You read her non-verbal language well. These types of baby cues are usually easy to read.
The next group of non-verbal messages she gives are not as easy to see and are often misinterpreted. When she starts to frown, look down and turn away, she’s beginning to say, ‘Wait a moment, this game is a bit too exciting.’
At this point in the game, she’s not so bright and alert anymore. She’s getting fretful, which gives you another clue that she’s not ready for play or socialising at that moment. When she doesn’t look at you with bright eyes, she’s not ready to socialise or play.
Your baby can only take in little bits of stimulation at a time. Even though she enjoys the rhyme, finger play and your exciting facial expressions, every now and then she needs to take a break and relax from the game.
When she frowned, looked down and turned away, she was telling you, ‘I need to stop for a moment.’ Her behaviour is no different to your need to take a break when you’ve been working and concentrating hard. The only difference is that you verbally say, ‘I need a break for a moment’, and then you give yourself some time out.
When your baby gives these small, not so easy to see cues, it’s time to sit back, give her some space and wait to see what happens next. When you can’t see or you misinterpret her non-verbal cues, difficulties often occur in your communication with her.
It’s easy to forget that your baby can’t take in too much stimulation; to you, 1 or 2 minutes may not seem long at all, but it is for your baby. Her tolerance for the amount of stimulation she can cope with will vary, and your baby will let you know how much she can handle by giving you some non-verbal cues.
Your baby can only take in little bits of stimulation at a time.
Cues that your baby may be overstimulated
The cues are:
• frowning
• looking down
• looking away
• yawning
• putting her hand in her mouth
• touching her ear or head
• dull or glazed eyes.
In the example scenario we looked at, the difficulties started when her cues signalling her need for a rest were misinterpreted. It’s natural to think your baby might be sad or have a tummy ache if she frowns or looks away. In fact, one of the first things parents are encouraged to think about when their baby cries or fusses is whether she has a tummy ache. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tummy aches don’t cause every problem your baby has, but because there’s a lot of talk between parents about stomach problems being the cause of unhappiness, it’s often the first thing you think of. That’s not your fault, but you can begin to think about things differently.
In this particular scenario, your baby was telling you that she needed some time out please. Naturally, when you misinterpret her behaviour as sadness or a possible tummy ache, you’re going to want to cheer her up. So it’s common to follow her turned head and move in close to her face, smile at her and try to continue the game in an effort to distract her.
Unfortunately, as soon as you do that she starts to give you some strong non-verbal messages, which may surprise you. Instead of cheering up, she indicates she has had enough.
Cues that your baby needs a break
The cues are:
• turning her head away from you
• starting to flap her hands
• arching her back
• showing you a very sad face
• crying.
These strong cues are hard to misinterpret. She’s telling you, ‘Stop trying to play with me.’ It might be tempting to try harder still to cheer her up, but she can become even more upset.
So what happened? The same thing that happens to you when someone doesn’t listen to you when you’re overloaded and you need some peace and quiet for a moment – you are likely to get irritated or upset. Your baby is the same.
When she becomes overstimulated, your baby needs to take a break from playing. If her more subtle messages asking for some time out get misinterpreted, she’ll send you some strong non-verbal cues saying, ‘Stop playing! I’m even more stimulated and need you to soothe me now.’ She’s giving you clear messages that she needs your help.
When she gets to the point where she starts to cry, she’s going to need your help to calm down. That means some soothing and reassurance to bring her back to a calm, relaxed state.
Here’s what you do
When you’re playing with her, it’s nice to maintain both your own and her personal space. Personal space is usually about 20 to 30 centimetres from each other, except when you’re being affectionate, kissing and hugging. This is especially important when she does need a break during your play or social time together.
When she gives you a non-verbal cue that means ‘give me a moment’, that’s the time to sit back and wait until she gives you a non-verbal message that she’s ready to socialise with you again. Tell her you’re waiting in a quiet, soothing way.
When she’s already overstimulated by the game you’re playing, trying to continue may only stimulate her more. That’s when she has to send you her strongest non-verbal cues.
Cues that your baby needs you to stop playng
The cues are:
• fussing
• crying
• flapping her arms
• arching away from you.
When she gives you these strong cues, she’s saying, ‘I need to stop the game now!’
Sometimes these types of cues are interpreted as having a tantrum or being naughty, and you might have been told she is bored and you try to do something even more exciting to distract her. But what your baby is really saying is, ‘I’m overwhelmed and I need your help to calm down now.’ The best way you can help her when she is distressed and upset is to use the soothing strategies outlined in Chapter 5: Why your baby cries.
Another snag that occurred in the example scenario is when you showed your baby a happy face and she showed you a sad face. When this happens, you become emotionally out of harmony. If it happens frequently, it can be confusing and uncomfortable for your baby.
She needs you to accept her sad feelings and then you can help her recover.
You do this by recognising she’s sad, telling her she’s sad, and then soothing and calming her to help her feel more in control of her emotions again. As she recovers, that’s when you smile and tell her she’s all right now and your harmony is restored.
Don’t worry too much when your harmony gets disrupted, because it will happen quite often. No relationship is perfect and through incidents like this your baby learns that relationships have their ups and downs. You just need to figure out how to patch up the misinterpretation of her signals and move on.
One way you can do this is by learning your baby’s non-verbal cues, how to communicate with each other and, when you get the message wrong, how to sort out the mix-up. The main message from this scenario is the importance of learning to interpret your baby’s non-verbal cues.
When she’s enjoying a game, enjoy it with her at her pace. Watch carefully for the first signs that she needs to have some time out. This is the signal for you to follow her lead and sit back and wait to see what she’s going to do next.
There are a number of scenarios that could follow the break in the game you played:
• After she’s had a chance to calm down she may want to play again.
• She may want to play a new game.
• She might be finished with playing completely and be ready for some quiet time before bed.
Watch carefully for the non-verbal messages that say, ‘I want to play again and socialise.’
Cues your baby is ready for more play
The cues are:
• turning back to you
• bright eyes
• lifted eyebrows
• smiles
• arms stretched out.
Make sure to look for non-verbal messages that say, ‘I’m done with playing.’
Cues your baby has had enough
The cues are:
• turning away from you
• dull face and eyes
• frown
• fussing.
Follow your baby’s lead
The most important thing you can do is to follow your baby’s lead. This actually makes understanding your baby easier because her non-verbal messages give you much more information about what she wants and needs.
Playing with her becomes easier as well, because you just go at her pace and enjoy watching what she enjoys. That’s far more relaxing and fun for you than leading the game all the time. She’ll tell you what she likes and, through this method of play, her brain will grow and develop even more effectively than if you provided a completely structured play routine. The bonus is that she’s also learning that her communication is important because you are interested in what she’s doing.
Watching her non-verbal cues will tell you when she wants you to join in and how she wants you to join in; you can relax and wait for her to tell you when she’s finished. This type of communication between you will provide much more satisfying feeding and social times for both of you.
How your baby tells you when she’s tired
You’ve probably already heard of ‘tired signs’. Tired signs are another way of talking about non-verbal cues. But, like all non-verbal cues, you have to look at your baby’s cues carefully because it’s easy to misinterpret them if you don’t put the cues together in the right way.
There’s a bit more to interpreting tired signs than non-verbal cues, such as yawning, rubbing her eyes, pulling at her ears, making fists, kicking and fussing. Those cues can mean your baby just needs to take a short break from a social interaction, needs a position change, feed or cuddle. Remember the example scenario? There were lots of cues there that meant ‘I just need a break’, but those cues didn’t necessarily mean ‘I need a sleep’, although they are often interpreted that way.
That’s why it’s important to think about tired signs as a collection of signs that include non-verbal cues.
You’ll remember the information in the previous chapters about how sleep is controlled by the brain. The need for sleep builds up in her brain while your baby is awake. When she needs to go to sleep, her brain is going to tell her, ‘It’s time to go to sleep.’ During sleep your baby has active sleep and quiet sleep – these are sleep states. Your baby’s brain controls when she has each of these types of sleep. Her brain also controls when she naturally wakes up.
You can wake your baby out of sleep, of course, but you might notice that sometimes she’s much harder to wake than at other times. That’s because of the type of sleep she’s in. She’s much easier to wake in active sleep than when she’s in quiet sleep.
During her awake times you’ll notice that sometimes she’s bright-eyed, alert and sociable; at other times she’s alert and awake but fussy and wanting a feed, nappy change or just to be held. She’s not very sociable during these wake periods. The final awake time is when she cries.
Just as her sleep states are controlled by her brain, so too are all of her wakeful states. These brain states are called ‘states of consciousness’ and they aren’t under your control, although you can modify your baby’s state by waking her up or soothing her when she cries.
As an adult, you have your own states of consciousness and your brain manages when you feel the need to sleep, your sleep cycles, when you naturally wake up, socialise and need to take a break from work and socialising. You can’t control what your brain does when you’re asleep – for example, you can’t say, ‘Hey, brain, I need to go from deep sleep to dream sleep now please’ or ‘Brain, I need to go from deep sleep to awake now please’. You need an alarm to do that. And, just like you, when your baby needs to go to sleep, her brain will move from an awake state into a drowsy state, getting her ready for sleep.
Think about yourself: you usually feel sleepy and drowsy before you go to sleep, don’t you? You usually yawn, your eyes glaze over and if you looked in a mirror they would seem dull, your eyelids get heavy, your head might nod, and your body is fairly still. You may twitch and even jerk awake every now and then. These are those jerky movements and the tired signs that people say babies have.
Your baby is just the same and she also needs to feel drowsy before she goes to sleep. This means you are going to be thinking about and watching for several important things to determine when your baby is ready for sleep.
A tired sign formula
To make it easier to understand when to put your baby to bed, here’s a special tired sign formula used by Tresillian:
Tresillian sleep formula
Brain state (state of consciousness)
+
Non-verbal cues
+
My baby’s age and stage of sleep development
+
My baby’s individuality
=
What my baby needs to go to sleep
Her individual needs
Your baby is an individual, so she has her own sleep needs. Hopefully, as you’ve been reading you’ve been getting a better idea of how sleep works and what her sleep needs are. It’s essential to remember your baby will need different amounts of sleep as she grows, so that’s an important clue to consider when you think about whether your baby is ready for sleep.
The first question to ask yourself is:
• ‘How long ago was her last sleep?’
The following questions could be ones you ask yourself when your baby is about 6 weeks old to see if she is ready for sleep:
• What’s her state of consciousness? Does she seem to:
• be drowsy?
• have heavy eyelids?
• be getting quieter?
• Have you seen her giving you these types of non-verbal cues:
• yawning?
• heavy eyelids?
• glazed or dull eyes?
• sucking hands or putting her hands in her mouth?
• still, quiet or not very alert?
• fussy?
• restless?
Take into account her age. When she’s 6 weeks old, she will probably need a sleep 1 to 1½ hours after her last sleep.
Start to recognise your baby’s individuality. Does your baby only stay awake an hour between feeds, or does she manage to stay awake and content for an hour and a half? You might be beginning to notice something special about her particular non-verbal cues when she’s ready for bed.
When you use this type of tired sign formula, you can work out whether your baby is tired and ready for bed at each age and stage of her development. The more carefully you watch your baby, the better you will understand her individuality.
Each of your children will be different. When you are wondering when it’s time to put your baby to bed, the non-verbal cues she gives will always go together with those other important clues in the tired sign formula to tell you what your baby needs.
Other non-verbal cue situations
Each situation you’re in with your baby will be different. She will still give you the same types of non-verbal cues, but you have to look at them in relation to that particular situation. For example, she will give you lots of non-verbal cues during feeding times that can look like tired cues, but are they? During the play scenario, some of her non-verbal cues meant she wanted to play and others meant she needed a break from playing and socialising.
Cues during a feed
Some cues during both milk and solid feeds will invite you to:
• feed her
• stop feeding her
• socialise with her
• give her a break or rest
• slow down or speed up the feed
• help her to calm down.
Once again, the ‘I need to have a break, please help me to calm down’ cues can be misinterpreted as a tired sign or boredom during a feed. Usually, it can be that your baby just needs to have a rest or some space during the feed before having more to eat or finishing the feed because she’s had enough to eat.
Non-verbal cues can mean many things during a feed, so it’s important to watch your baby’s non-verbal messages and wonder about what she’s trying to tell you. Here are some common messages you could be getting through non-verbal cues.
Understanding cues during a feed
• If she starts to cough or spit out the milk or solids, maybe the feed is going too fast for her.
• If she starts to smile and reach for you, she might need to stop the feed and have a social chat before she goes back and has a bit more to eat.
• If she starts to fuss, cry, pull away or push away, she might need to sit up or just have a cuddle.
• If it’s a solid feed and she bangs her hand on the highchair table and reaches for the spoon, she’s telling you she wants to hold the spoon on her own and try to feed herself. No matter how young she is, it’s good to let her have a little try.
• If she hasn’t finished her first mouthful before the next one is offered, she may arch her back, spit out her mouthful and push the spoon away. She’s telling you she’s not ready. Her mouth is too full. No one likes too much food in their mouth, it can make you gag. That can be frightening.
She’s not being naughty when she does these things – she’s just giving you clear non-verbal cues about her needs. From these examples you can see how easily non-verbal cues can be misinterpreted.
Once again, it’s time to sit back, reassure her and wait for her to let you know if she wants some more to eat. Socialise with her if she needs that, try the spoon if she’s ready to learn or end the meal if she’s finished.
If you’re confused about what your baby is trying to tell you, imagining what it’s like to be in her situation can help you see it from her point of view. Here’s another scenario where you are going to put yourself in your baby’s shoes.
Scenario: misinterpreted cues during a feed
Imagine you can’t speak any words yet and your parent is feeding you lunch. You like your lunch but you can’t yet feed yourself, so you have no control over how fast the food is coming. It is coming a bit too fast, so you try to tell your parent with non-verbal cues that you need her to go slower and give you a break.
You give non-verbal cues to say, ‘I need a breather’, by:
• turning away
• banging on the highchair table
• putting your hand to your ear
• fussing
• frowning and kicking.
Unfortunately, your message is misinterpreted and your parent thinks you’re full and have finished lunch. You reach for the food to try and tell her you’re still hungry, but your parent misinterprets your non-verbal cues that meant you ‘want a break’ as tired signs. You cry for the food but, instead, you are picked up, rocked and told you are tired. Now you are really crying because you aren’t drowsy or ready for sleep. Your parent is even more convinced you’re tired because you’re crying.
Your parent puts you to bed and tries some sleep and settling strategies to get you to sleep, but they don’t work.
Your parent wonders if you have a sleep problem.
You are powerless to do anything.
This short scenario gives you another example of why you need to read non-verbal cues as they relate to the particular situation you are both in.
Right from birth your baby will give you lots of non-verbal cues about what she needs. When she’s less than 3 months old and ready for a milk feed, she will usually show you all sorts of non-verbal cues together that mean she’s hungry. She will:
• tuck her hands under her chin
• mouth and suck at her hands
• turn towards you if you touch her cheek (the rooting reflex)
• reach towards you
• curl her arms and legs up
• fuss or cry
• snuggle into your breast or body.
When she’s full and had enough of her milk, she’ll also show you a range of non-verbal cues:
• She’ll be relaxed with straight arms and legs.
• Her hands won’t be clenched.
• She may fall asleep.
• She may push or pull away from the breast or bottle.
• She may socialise to show you that the meal is over.
When she’s older than 3 months, she will show you similar cues but she may add in stronger cues, such as:
• arching her back
• reaching or pointing to food when hungry
• the rooting reflex will disappear.
Non-verbal cues are your baby’s powerful way of communicating with you. Once you watch her carefully, learn how to read her non-verbal language and understand how she’s communicating with you, you’ll both enjoy a much more satisfying relationship.
Anya’s story (mother of Otis, 2)
My son was 4 months old when I went to Tresillian – and I wish I’d gone sooner. I was incredibly sleep-deprived and almost at rock bottom. I’d suffered severe morning sickness throughout my pregnancy. I wasn’t able to keep anything down and even had to go to hospital several times for cannulas to stop me dehydrating.
By the time I delivered Otis, I was completely depleted and was suddenly at home by myself with a crying baby to care for. My husband works long hours and travels a lot and my family live interstate, so I felt incredibly alone. I was trying to breastfeed him but he woke so regularly for feeds that it seemed like he wasn’t getting enough milk. I tried sleep consultants and my GP but the one-size-fits-all approach just didn’t fit me at all.
Once I got to Tresillian, it was like I could take a big breath of fresh air and allow the experts to help me. The nurses were so empathetic; they looked at every aspect of my situation and worked with me to find a solution. I also consulted with a psychologist and a psychiatrist, as I was suffering a lot of anxiety.
I was finding it hard to settle him, so the nurses helped me understand his tired signs. I realised I was completely missing them. Otis would get really overactive and seemed to run at double speed when he was starting to get tired. I was taking that as a sign he wanted more play, but it was completely the opposite!
As he was only 4 months, the nurses advised arm settling, which I was really relieved about. I didn’t want to put him down crying and leave him to settle himself as it just didn’t sit right with me. I would rock him until he was really drowsy then put him in his cot and sit with him until he fell asleep. When he cried, I would pick him up and start the process again. I felt like such an awesome mum when he fell asleep happy, warm and comforted.
Otis is now 2 and is sleeping perfectly. It took me until he was 1 to really recover from my pregnancy, but now I feel fine and am really enjoying being a mum. In our situation there was nothing really wrong with Otis – it was all me, and my first-time mum anxieties, coupled with severe exhaustion.
Key message
• Your baby gives many small, moment-by-moment non-verbal cues, but a single cue is not always easy to recognise or identify as a message of what she needs. You have to put her non-verbal cues together, just like stringing words together to form a sentence.
• Your baby won’t be able to communicate her needs to you with words until well into her second year, and even then she will have some trouble telling you how she feels and what she needs. Your baby can’t cope with large amounts of stimulation, and this will vary according to her age and her temperament. Trust your baby and as you get to know her, she will let you know how much stimulation she can handle.
• Watch your baby’s non-verbal cues during a feed and consider what she’s trying to tell you. Non-verbal cues can mean many things during a feed, so when you watch, understand and respond to her in the right way, you’ll both enjoy meal times much more.
