By Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.

"I love my baby. She's mine. Don't take her. I love my baby."

The tearful mother pleaded. Her child, a 5-year-old girl, was in the hospital with severe injuries inflicted by this abusive mother.

The word 'love' used by this mother confuses us. Clearly, the word has different meaning to her than to most parents. How is it that words come to have meaning? When does the sound become the word?

The Invention of Language

We humans have a remarkable brain-mediated capacity to make sounds and let them act as symbolic representations of other things. Two hundred thousand years ago, the first word was spoken. In the arms of an adoring mother, the babbling 'mamam' of an infant became the spoken representation of safety, warmth, nourishment and, the person who provided all of this, mother. Since then we have been able to sequence, structure, and sort the roughly 40 sounds we are capable of making into thousands of complex languages with millions of unique "words."

Language Is Born in Relationships

Yet while words are our most amazing invention, human communication starts when words have no meaning. It starts by gazing, rocking, stroking, kissing, humming, the sight, sound, smell, and touch of a loved one, a bath of physical sensations - the somatosensory bath. It is in these first nonverbal interactions that one human becomes connected to another and the back and forth of communication begins. The infant's cry means, "I'm hungry or scared or cold or tired." The responsive caregiver's actions mean, "It's safe. Eat now. I bring warmth, comfort and pleasure. You are loved." To the newborn, the sounds of "I love you" are, at first, meaningless. But over time, by holding, rocking, gazing and gently stroking - as the sounds "I love you" are whispered over and over - the baby learns the meaning in the word. The sound becomes a word. To the lucky infant, love is the responsive, safe, and warm rhythmic touch - the smile, the hum and the adoring gaze.

When language does not develop in the context of caring relationships, we lose the beauty and meaning that words can convey. This abusive mother was neglected as a child. With no real primary caregiver, she lived in several shelter placements over the first years of her life and then entered the foster care system. For this mother, there were no loving attentive early relationships; rather, she learned that the word love was associated with possessions. "I love my toy. I love this food. I love these shoes." With no adult to ever hold, treasure, and respond to her needs, she never had love and never learned the meaning in the word love. And in this is a lesson for us all. Language is born in relationships.

For each newborn, exposure to repetitive spoken language in a relationship provides the stimulus for neural organization that will allow that child to develop complex language capabilities - the capacity to understand and to communicate using "words." This learning process requires that language be derived from social-emotional communication. The face, not the voice, is the major organ of human communication. Words have become our shortcuts.

Read the entire article here.

Other articles of interest:

Family Therapy and Resistant Parents: The Child Cannot Wait

by Leon Rosenberg

When do we shift from trying to work within the parent-child relationship to seeing the child as a separate entity needing to cope with a destructive parent?

Psychotherapy for Oppositional-Defiant Kids with Low Frustration Tolerance (and How to Help Their Parents, Too)

by David Rice

Dr. Rice offers a new perspective on oppositional-defiant children based on temperament, and suggests effective therapeutic interventions for both parent and child.