I heard somewhere that babies have different cries–one for irritation/annoyance, one for hunger, one for actual physical pain, one for a dirty diaper, etc.
Is this an actual thing? I don’t understand why if that is true that children and adults don’t have different categories of crying themselves. I mean, we generally use words to express our complaints, but I can’t imagine hunger for example being distinct enough from other sources of discomfort to merit a completely different biological response.
Does a baby actually have the presence of mind to know what’s wrong and cry accordingly?
Also, is it true that parents (particularly mothers) recognize different types of cries? How do they do that? Is it a matter of knowing a baby’s routine, or is it something else? And do fathers have this same ability to recognize?
I am in awe of mothers. But this is a mystery to me. It seems like a great story, but is it backed up by facts?
I can only refer to my own kids who did indeed cry differently if it were pain, hunger, tiredness discomfort etc.
It isn’t perfect, nothing about child rearing is certain, but it sounded different enough to give us a decent cue most of the time (of course contextual cue matter as well, i.e. did we know they hadn’t slept or fed in while and so on.)
A baby isn’t deliberately making different kinds of cries.
A tired cry, for example, sounds tired. It’s low, not especially intense, and punctuated by yawns.
The hungry cry keeps getting more and more intense, and usually starts not particularly alarmingly, but if it’s ignored for something else-- an older child with an injury, you’re in the shower-- it gets “worse”-- louder, and higher pitched, and erratic, caused by the baby starting to kick and flail.
Not all babies cry for a diaper change, but the ones who do usually have a rash, and when fresh pee or even slightly loose poop hits the rash, there’s a sudden scream, and intense crying that lessens. It hurts.
If he baby is irritated by something other than a diaper or hunger, like you forgot to close the blind at nap time, and the sun is now in its eyes, the cry is coming in bursts, and sounds angry, but not necessarily like an expression of pain.
A lonely baby (and a perfectly normal one with attentive parents can still get lonely if no one notices it’s awake from its nap) sobs.
Ah, so it’s basically a response to the situation as it escalates, and different related to the intensity. Makes sense. Still I find it fascinating, and I guess there is some kind of connection between this and our response to the same types of situations. It’s interesting to consider babies’ reactions as an instinctual baseline of sorts.
So we can draw a line between babies’ intentional “communication” and babies’ reactions being communication in itself.
I agree with the above. Also, it is NOT spoiling to pick up a crying baby. They have no control over their feelings; they are incapable of manipulating anyone. If a baby is crying for whatever reason they need something.
Crying for a very young baby is about the only way they can communicate.
The plural of anecdote is not data. But my beloved niece did indeed have different cries for different situations. With practice I learned to differentiate hungry from wet or gas
I thought I had read somewhere that babies tailor their cries to that which gets them the required response, but I can’t find a cite to support that. Did I just imagine that notion?
There’s also the possibility that the baby does adapt, and learns to cry differently for different results. However, as they acquire words which can be even more specific (and thus work better), they no longer feel the need to use it, and thus forget about it (or get deconditioned).
How much do most of us remember as babies? And, even those who do, how many have memories from before they had language?
I have one memory from before I had language. Unfortunately it is an extremely boring one, the view of a house my family once lived in (or more properly the top half of the house). I assume I was being carried by my mother.
I have no idea why that stuck with me, and I wish it was just a little more exciting! Next oldest memories are definitely after I learned to talk.
As for babies, I think my kids taught me what they needed by crying differently for different things. My son and daughter did not have quite the same cries, but in general I agree with @RivkahChaya
Cats have different types of meows and hisses for different situations. When you have only one or two tools to work with, nature typically finds a way to get the most benefit out of the situation.
I don’t remember there being any real difference, but that was with my kids. Maybe other babies did this.
I suspect that some of it has to do with routines and some babies are much better at routines than others. Some babies will fall asleep at 8:30 every day, others are all over the place. If the baby is good at routines and the caregiver is attuned to that. That is one possibility.
It’s been more than a decade since my kids were babies so I’ve forgotten a lot of the details, but I remember just going down the checklist. Diaper? Y/N. If N, hungry? Y/N. If N, tired but can’t sleep? Y/N. If N, bored? Y/N. If N, is this deliberate and is she intentionally making my life a living hell? I think the answer to the last was always yes, or at least it seemed like so at the time. (Obviously a joke.)
As far as the question if fathers can be attuned to the child, yes, it’s just a matter of who spends a lot of time with them.
When my kids were babies, I read a lot of things and came to the conclusion that there is a lot of bad “research” on what babies do and what works with them.
We don’t? I mean, sure, we don’t cry very often, because we also have words available for use, but when we do, we cry in many different ways depending on the situation, too. An adult cries in a very different way at the end of Old Yeller than they do when hurt, and for that matter in different ways for different sorts of injuries.
Our Coconut Retriever, Simi, has several different barks he uses. One is a high pitched bark/yelp he uses when he wants a toy that he can’t quite reach. When he does this bark my gf or I go see what he wants.
The other day I heard Simi doing that bark in the sunroom, but when I went to the sunroom Simi wasn’t there. I found him in a different room, then he barked again, from the sunroom even though he was right there with me.
Rocco, our African Grey, has learned to bring someone to his room.
I’ve seen people cry at weddings, and it’s a whole different thing from the way people cry at bad news.
And, it’s pretty rare to see an adult cry from pain that isn’t from an injury-- something bad that happened, in other words-- but I have seen in happen, and it has its own quality. I mean, an adult crying in pain after a successful surgery when the news was all good, and the crying was provoked purely by pain.
In fact, it alarmed the doctor and nurse enough for them to start checking vitals and run for a stronger pain medication (back when those were still seen as good things).
Dogs have different vocalizations, too. One of our previous dachshunds was a spurlauter (sp?). This is the cry a hunting dog makes when on the trail of prey. And it’s gawd awful LOUD. He’d sound like he was being stabbed to death. And our neighborhood was full of squirrels. I hated having to try and train him out of the behavior because it was instinctual, but it was annoying to everyone in the general vicinity.
My experience as a Dad, yes, my kids all had cries that I recognized for hungry, dirty diaper, tired, overstimulated, etc. what’s more, each of my kids quickly developed a “lingo” for each parent. If Vaderling was tired and wanted Mom instead of me his cry was somewhat different as an example.