With the opening up of the Circuit Breaker (CB) to Phase 2 recently, our family was invited for a meal with our friends today. Apart from the delicious homemade food, one of the highlights was Dodo and our host playing and singing to/with/at a microphone, improvising freely, making up tunes and words through sights and sounds Dodo observes in the environment. I wished I had taken videos but I was rather immersed in that special musicking moment between child-adult. Dodo was in an unfamiliar environment and do not see our friends regularly. It was heartening to see him expressing so freely and confidently.
In my previous post, I shared a little about our babies as keen listeners, with innate auditory perceptual abilities that allows them to discriminate between pitches and temporal patterns from birth. This is likely because sounds are important for the survival of our kind, sounds allow our newborns to communicate their needs with us to ensure their survival!
John Bowlby (1958) and Mary Ainsworth (1963, 1979) are prominent theorists who had discussed attachment theories and styles respectively. Generally, Bowlby had theorised that babies are attached to their mothers because of the gratification of basic food and warmth. Babies like to be close to their mothers, such that their cries for gratification can be attended to in a timely fashion. Bowlby’s later studies also demonstrated that an attached child develops higher levels of self-reliance as they get older. This is consistent with Ainsworth’s studies where she found that mothers who were more sensitive to their babies’ needs developed secure attachment. This secure attachment allows their babies to explore freely, knowing that their mothers are secure bases. Thus, apart from being keen listeners, our babies are also active agents of sounds to communicate needs that serve biological survival functions!
Sounds are evident of our babies innate intersubjectivity, as argued by prominent child psychologist Colwyn Trevarthen (1998), where they have the agency to elicit their mother’s (or main caregivers’) emotional and physical care through creating sounds (such as crying) to ensure their gratification of basic food and warmth (comfort). Ellen Dissanayake, a scholar who argues for the evolutionary, ethological perspectives of aesthetics, discusses this innate intersubjectivity of babies and the shared intimacy with mothers as “mutuality” that is essentially the foundation of the arts.
In Dissanayake’s (2000) book “Arts and Intimacy”, she defines “mutuality” as “the sharing of emotional states in patterned sequences with others” (p.22) through “rhythm and modes”. She identifies the first instance of this as the interactions between mother and infant. Dissanayake is not the only scholar who had made connections between mother-infant interactions and the arts. Similarly, psychiatrist Daniel Stern compared the interaction of preverbal infants and their non-verbalising adults to temporal-based art forms such as music, dance, theatre to demonstrate the concept of “vitality dynamics” (2010, p.3). Recall an instance when you watched a performance and something struck a chord with you? Or when you felt your heartstrings were tugged? This is likely what Stern means when the vitality of an arts experiences resonates with you. Do you feel resonance, joy, deep focus, pure love when you look into your babies’ eyes and sing to them? This is probably what he meant by “affect attunement”, where the vitality dynamics are basically matched.
Other scholars have even related the early “conversations” we have with our babies as musical endeavours! Stephen Malloch, who studied music and psychoacoustics, and subsequently psychology with Colwyn Trevarthen, developed the theory of communicative musicality (2009) where the communication between babies and their mothers were observed to demonstrate musical characteristics. These conversations tend to be rhythmic, with musical contours varying in timbre, pitch and volume and a narrative form as though there were introduction, climax and resolution. Additionally, these were often accompanied by other modalities such as gestures and expressions.
So, why do we sing to/with our babies?
These are what the above research had suggested. Firstly, it serves biological functions. Secondly, it’s the innate nature of our babies - to communicate. Thirdly, it’s essentially the foundation of all arts. Or rather, essentially we are aesthetic beings. It is in us to sing, move, dance, respond to rhythms, melodic contours, volumes, timbres; and we do this best none other than when we are doing it with our babies!
So, mummies and daddies, we are all artists to begin with, most evidently through our interactions with our babies. Let that flourish!
As in my anecdotal introduction, Dodo’s intersubjectivity had extended beyond interactions with his close attached figures (i.e. myself and my husband) to include others in the community. Dissanayake, in the same book “Art and Intimacy” had termed this as “belonging”, where the initial infant-mother “mutuality” extends into the larger community where we belong to. Thus, singing and musicking really goes beyond egocentric self-expressions or intimate, private interactions, extending into the community and a general sense of integration and well-being for our children in the future as well, through the embracing of our aesthetic beings.
References
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1979). Infant–mother attachment. /American psychologist/, /34/(10), 932.
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1963). The development of infant-mother interaction among the Ganda. In B. M. Foss (Ed.), Determinants of infant behaviour II. London: Methuenp, 67-11
Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of the childs tie to his mother. /International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39/, 350-371.
Dissanayake, E. (2000). Art and intimacy: How the arts began. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Stern, D. N. (2010). Forms of vitality: Exploring dynamic experience in psychology, the arts, psychotherapy, and development. Oxford University Press.
Malloch, S., & Trevarthen, C. (2009). Musicality: Communicating the vitality and interests of life. Communicative musicality: Exploring the basis of human companionship, 1, 1-10.
Trevarthen, C. (1998). The concept and foundations of infant intersubjectivity. In S. Bråten (Ed.), Intersubjective Communication and Emotion in Early Ontogeny (pp. 15-46). Cambridge: University Press.
Image: 5 Jan 2020, Sydney, Australia. Just me and Dodo being silly, sharing our vitality dynamics, being perfectly attuned.