she must be a musician

She is. Priscilla Dunstan was recently featured on the Oprah Winfrey show and talked about the language babies use to let you know they're hungry, uncomfortable, have lower gas, need to burp, or simply, are sleepy.




You can watch the video here.

After testing her baby language theory on more than 1,000 infants around the world, Priscilla says there are five words that all babies 0–3 months old say—regardless of race and culture:

Neh= "I’m hungry"
Owh= "I’m sleepy"
Heh= "I’m experiencing discomfort"
Eair= "I have lower gas"
Eh= "I need to burp"

Those “words” are actually sound reflexes, Priscilla says. “Babies all around the world have the same reflexes, and they therefore make the same sounds,” she says. If parents don’t respond to those reflexes, Priscilla says the baby will eventually stop using them.

Priscilla recommends that parents listen for those words in a baby’s pre-cry before they start crying hysterically. She says there is no one sound that’s harder to hear than others because it varies by individual. She also says some babies use some words more than others.

The musical connection: (via www.dunstanbaby.com)
"Already an exceptional violinist by the age five, [Priscilla] could hear a piece by Mozart once, then play it back in its entirety, note for note. Her father, Director of the Educational Testing Centre at the University of New South Wales, found that his young daughter had an eidetic memory - a rare photographic memory for sound.

"During her teenage years Priscilla toured throughout Europe and Australia as an accomplished concert violinist. Priscilla then spent more than 10 years exploring the world of opera, where her talent as a mezzo-soprano deepened her understanding of sound produced by the human voice.

"When Priscilla gave birth to her son Tomas, her instincts as a mother and musician led her to believe that a baby’s cries had to be something more than just random sounds. Noting combinations of sounds in a journal, Priscilla explored various settling techniques and observed Tom’s reactions. Eventually she was able to recognize patterns, and identify how specific cries had a distinct need attached to them."

Priscilla says, "Because of my gift for sound, I was able to pick out certain patterns in his cries and then remember what those patterns were later on when he cried again. I realized that other babies were saying the same words.”

From the Oprah show: The Secret Language of Babies

- televised November 13, 2006

Thanks Molly McGinn, for getting this out in the blogosphere!