“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
George Bernard Shaw
My sister-in-law recently gave birth to a beautiful little girl. Her parents named her Alexis. I won't post a picture of her here but trust me when I say that she's the cutest cooing, gurgling, bundle of joy and the object of everyone's affection. Our family has grown and I am now an uncle (yikes!).
Alexis is just a couple of months old and can't speak yet. But she's definitely thinking and learning and communicating: she's capable of carrying on a conversation with whichever adult is carrying her - in baby talk. She can go on and on and on - a true blue bibik! Interestingly, her parents bought a book on baby sign language and are picking it up to teach it to her. The idea is this: Alexis may not be able to speak the words for many more months to come but she'll be able to learn some simple actions to convey her needs, wants, and feelings. Here're some of my favourite baby signs:
Images taken from babysignlanguage.com
The baby signs above say "More", "Eat", "All Done", and "Thank You". Can you guess which is which? Scroll down for the answers.
I'm going to learn baby sign language. Just so I can ask Alexis who her favourite uncle is.
All this got me thinking about how we communicate with each other. Conceivably, there's baby signing, speaking, writing, typing, texting, emailing, and who knows what else the future will bring (emojis?). In any given day, I email and text more people than speak face-to-face. It's efficient but impersonal: a lot gets lost or misinterpreted between the lines. There are many methods of communication but what do we actually communicate? I struggle with this.
The most significant conversations I've ever had in my life took place face-to-face, where I could hear the other's voice, see the other's face, and shake the other's hand (suffice it to say, I got to do a lot of that playing smol tokthe past few months).
But back to Alexis. As she grows up, I'll try to make sure she gets as much face-to-face time as possible. I'm not about to create a baby version of smol tok but I'm super excited to start baby signing with her!
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(Answers: from top to bottom, "Thank You", "Eat", "All Done", and "More")