It has been on everyone's lips for a few days and you may have seen it here in Babies and more. I am talking about the video of a 10-month-old girl who, when she listens to her mother sing, cries with emotion, or this is at least how she is running on the net and this is how they have explained it to me.
I have seen it on a multitude of pages, on Facebook and they have even spoken to me in person about him, people surprised and excited with the girl's face, inviting me to comment to explain how fascinating and tender the scene is. However, when I saw the video I did not see an excited girl, but a girl who cried and wanted to stop, a girl who suffered, who showed an emotion but negative. Therefore, to give my vision about what happens in that video, I ask you the key question: Can a baby cry with emotion?
His little face reminded me of my children's
"Look Armando, this video does nothing but share it on Facebook, they say it's from a girl who gets excited listening to her mother's voice singing," Miriam told me. I went to the screen of his laptop to see it briefly, because I was bundled with something else, and still standing, with the pose of leaving to continue doing my thing, I saw right away the faces that Guim makes, my youngest son of a year and a half, when he starts to cry because he wants us to catch him, because he has hurt himself or because he dislikes something.
That was the first warning sign that made me feel that something did not add up. "I don't know, I see her crying, but I don't think it's emotional," he thought out loud. Come on, if I don't hear the mother sing and I only see the images of the girl I would be sure that the girl asks for something or suffers or for something, or is living something that bothers her, bothers her or scares her and wants her to stop happening. These were my feelings when I saw her. Then I pulled theory.
Let's remember what babies' brains look like
I started thinking about what a 10-month-old baby looks like and then I denied the biggest one: no, he can't be crying with emotion. As I explained in his day, a few years ago, the baby's brain does not look too much like that of adults because it is at a very early stage of its development. Babies are born with the reptilian brain, the one that dominates the survival actions, the instincts, developed, but with the very immature mammal and rational brains. At birth the two begin to develop, the mammal, that of emotions and the rational, the superior, the one that makes us think and ration.
Obviously, development is very slow, so much so that at seven or eight months is when a baby begins to suffer the anguish of separation, which is the crying and discomfort that the baby lives when his mother moves away from him or when another person takes him, because he knows that that other person is not a mother or a father, or because he does not transmit confidence. Until then babies cry if they are alone, but are able to be in the arms of unknown people if they have their basic needs covered (they are not hungry ... basically, and therefore do not need mom's breast).
It takes many more "shots" to cry with the music
If until seven or eight months do not begin to feel that, and if until that age do not even say dad or mom with meaning, because most say dad and mom by imitation, but without knowing what they say, I think amazing (hard to believe) e impossible for a baby of almost 10 months to cry to hear a beautiful tune. Music can offer emotions, it is true, it can even make a child calm down, if he likes it, or that he cries, if he dislikes or seems an annoying noise, but generate emotion, from that you get the creeps , of that the tears appear because you value the beauty of what you are hearing, with ten months of age, well no.
That takes many more "shots." You need to hear a lot of music, many good songs and many bad songs. That you hear people sing very well and people sing badly, that you hear people sing in a tuned way and people who are defining, that you hear people who sing well but have an ugly voice and people who sing well with a beautiful voice. And when you have heard all this and are able to admire good music, you need to give in a voice so beautiful, so different and so special, that you feel that your hair is on end. And this, only this, without the need to release a single tear, not everyone lives, because not everyone has the same musical sensitivity.
Six years ago Joshua Bell, a renowned American violinist, lent himself to do an experiment playing in a Washington subway, incognito, several masterpieces. He played for 43 minutes and raised just over $ 37 from the 1,097 people who passed by him (you can watch a video of the experiment here).
Three days before he had offered a concert at the Boston Symphony Hall for which they paid an average of $ 100 per ticket, leaving the show without free seats. The conclusion reached is that the beauty of music was not able to attract others if it was in a place and at an inappropriate time. My conclusion was different, because what I saw clearly is that most people are not (or are) able to value the beauty of music, of certain music, and if we pay 100 dollars for a ticket it is because we know that it is good music, and not because we know how to value it. That is why only 7 people stopped to listen to him, because the rest would only have valued his music paying entrance, seeing him well dressed, going well dressed and clapping like the others.
By this I mean that It is necessary to know a lot of music and it is necessary to have a special musical sensibility to get to drop a tear with the beautiful music, and a 10-month-old baby can't know much about music or have that musical sensibility. And he doesn't know why, as I said, his brain is so immature that music can, or calm him down by listening to it and being aware of the noises (who knows if trying to discern whether they are dangerous noises or not) or make him cry for being at such a high volume, or of such characteristics that it perceives it as a threat.
How we apply adult emotions in children
In the video we can see two main elements: a girl, still a baby, and her emotions. I am surprised that people have made a dissociation of both elements and remained only with emotion. If in the video we saw an adult person making the same faces while listening to the same song everyone, including me, would say that he is crying with emotion, it is the most logical thing. However, he is not an adult, he is a baby, and then the most logical thing is not that, the most logical thing is not that I cry with emotion, but that I cry for something else, and this is where I realized that it is very likely that many adults do not understand the crying of babies.
We have, even today, to explain that babies are not able to manipulate their parents, that when they cry they do it because they suffer, that they cry to be taken care of, but that they have no malice, that they do not have a double intention, that they do not have enough intelligence to control us, but just to let us know in the best way they can what they need.
It is true, at ten months they are very capable of asking for things without crying and even asking for things from those who know they will give them, but that's not malice, that's logical. Adults also prefer people who treat us well than those who treat us worse and we also choose the people we know will offer us a better service (be it the doctor, the hairdresser or the carnicera). However, it is far from being an intelligence capable of interpreting something as complex as music and generating a pleasant emotion.
But the girl cries, and also smiles
Many people watch the video and confirm that it is true, that the girl feels emotion, because there are times when he cries and there are times when he laughs. It is logical, the mother is not making a constant sound and is probably gesturing and moving differently in each sentence or in each syllable, perhaps it is even possible to look into her eyes in the parts of the song in which she sings lower tones and perhaps turn your gaze upward toward the ceiling to reach the sharpest tones. This can make the girl smile when she looks at him and stop when she doesn't. It may also be that the girl looks good when she sings softly and scares her when she makes certain notes. Come on, that in general, the girl is smiling when it seems that her mother is going to listen to her and crying when her mother, erre that err, continues singing, believing that she is excited.
Perhaps the subject, what binds us, what makes us believe that there is emotion is that duality, that crying and laughing, that laughing crying. The adults who cry when we laugh show a beautiful emotion. In this case the girl laughs after crying, which is very different.
Concluding
In conclusion, to say that in the end it is not important, that is, the girl takes the bad ratillo crying because she does not like it when her mother sings that way, or at least she does not like it in many of the phases of the song, but then surely the mother takes him in her arms, gives him four kisses for being so emotional and so magical and all so happy. It is one more video that nobody will remember soon. The important thing, what has made me write this post is the comment, the fact that probably very few adults understand children, their way of being, feeling and thinking and in a way it is a problem, because if the elders are not able to do an exercise of empathy with the children and we are not able to get up to their level and think a little like Children, they will continue to have it very difficult for us to see them as emotionally immature beings that we have to pamper, love, love, kiss, hug and accompany as much as we can and want. No, I'm not talking about overprotecting, i talk about loving, nothing more, and in that love is trying to understand them and trying not to harm them if we can avoid it, especially if they are so small and do not understand why mom or dad make such strange noises with their mouths, that both They scare them.
