Rhythm is so important in our beings.
Moving to rhythms seem to be a direct manifestation of this sense of “felt immediacy” (Bråten, 1999). Can you help not moving to a rhythmically engaging piece of music? Have you noticed your lil’ ones bouncing along to songs?
Such rhythmic manifestations through movements seem to be an innate feature of our beings as babies.
Recall how you engage in conversations with babies, taking turns making babbling sounds with them? Researchers termed that “proto-conversations” (Coope & Aslin, 1990), where parents engage in rhythmic, turn-taking behaviours with their babies, often accompanied (cross-modally) with gestures and facial expressions.
Child Psychologist Colwyn Trevarthen (2011) wrote that,
In protoconversation with an attentive and sympathetic adult, the brain of an infant a few
weeks old, with very immature cerebral cortex, can engage in a precisely regulated rhythmic
exchange of interests and feelings with the adult brain by means of sight of head and face
movements, with eye-to-eye contact, and hand gestures, hearing of vocalizations, and touches
between the hands.
In one of my previous posts, I had discussed this in relation to several theorists whose works I find resonate with the foundations of my practice. In this post, I would like to share their writings about “rhythm” directly while reflecting upon experiences of moving to rhythms.
In analyzing “proto-conversations”, researchers Malloch and Trevarthen (2009) had come up with the theory of communicative musicality, with “rhythm” being one of its elements. Referred to as pulse, the researchers described it as
…the regular succession of discrete behavioural events through time, voice or gestural,
the production and perception of these behaviours being the process through which two
or more people may coordinate their communications, spend time together, and by which
we may anticipate what might happen and when it might happen.
The parent-infant interaction is also described by Dissanayake (2010) as “mutuality” in the form of “rhythm and modes”. For Dissanayake,
Rhythm has to do with an /unfolding in time/, the patterned course of an experience…
where rhythms are something like verbs…(p.22)
This is suggestive of the felt, moving quality that we feel when we hear patterned sequences of sounds, or groove as we may say.
Stern (2010) described such rhythms in “vitality”, which is basically ‘being alive’. The sensory experience of such “vitality” does not happen in silos; it is often cross-modal, as I describe above where “proto-conversations” between parent-child go beyond vocal interactions but are manifested through gestures and facial expressions as well. He wrote,
…the infant early on is largely multimodal. Experience is multi sensory
because the qualitative aspects of the modalities are not yet fully
discriminated. However, the vitality forms are. If this were so,
stimulation from any sensory modality would first be experienced as
dynamic flow of movement, contoured in time, imbued with force, and with an intentional
direction (p.111).
How I relate to this is the experience of listening to sounds and music, unconsciously moving along, whether through a little bounce in our knees, tapping of our fingers or toes, and nodding away. It seems impossible to not be moved by rhythms.
In the accompanying video from this week, I show some home documentation (apologise for the bad video editing, I’m still learning!) of Dodo moving along to something he heard on the TV. He often looks to us (his parents) as he moves as well. While I must admit I’m guilty of not moving with him all the time due to my heavy pregnancy, I sincerely encourage parents to move along with your babies as they engage in musicking through their bodies!
Why?
Similar to “proto-conversations”, I am for the perspective that doing so builds your child’s secure attachment and is important for their socio-emotional development in the long run. Perhaps colloquially understood as “bonding”, the secure attachment allows our children to gain autonomy to explore and take risks in their development. And this is done through the patterned sequence of ‘feeling’ one another, in what Stern (2010) terms the “affect attunement” that allows both parties to feel the “vitality dynamics” of the interaction. This is also present in the performing arts, where we feel moved by a particular performance, as though entering the consciousness of the performer and the world presented.
Children are less inhibited than us as adults. Dodo’s immediate reaction to hearing the music track (performed by our colleagues NADA actually!) was to move along with it. NADA’s dynamic performance even prompted him to “run” and flow with the movement of music he hears.
I miss my own child-likeness when I witness Dodo and his peer’s naivety. It’s charming, carefree, natural and honest - values that I learn from babies.
Find an opportunity to move with you lil’ ones today, tomorrow, everyday!
References
Dissanayake, E. (2000). Art and intimacy: How the arts began. University of Washington Press.
Bråten, S. (1998). Intersubjective communion and understanding: Development and perturbation.
Intersubjective communication and emotion in early ontogeny, 372-382.
Cooper, R. P., & Aslin, R. N. (1990). Preference for infant‐directed speech in the first month after
birth. Child development, 61(5), 1584-1595.
Malloch, S., & Trevarthen, C. (2009). Musicality: Communicating the vitality and interests of
life. Communicative musicality: Exploring the basis of human companionship, 1, 1-10.
Stern, D. N. (2010). Forms of vitality: Exploring dynamic experience in psychology, the arts,
psychotherapy, and development. Oxford University Press.
Trevarthen, C. (2011). What is it like to be a person who knows nothing? Defining the active
intersubjective mind of a newborn human being. Infant and Child Development, 20(1), 119-
135.