The Importance of Using Loving Language With Children
Speak to me nicely. Without raising your voice, but with the firmness of someone who can convince me of everything I’m capable of. Talk to me with a smile once more. This way, I may learn quickly that love is what governs in this world, and not fear. Give me words of affection whenever you can so that the language of emotions may dominate as soon as possible…
Vivette Glover, a perinatal psycho-biologist from the Imperial College of London, indicates that emotional education begins within the maternal womb. This might seem a bit surprising or even difficult to believe. Throughout the third trimester, the baby is very sensitive to the voices that reach him from the outside world. The amniotic fluid is a great conductor of sound. The tiny fetus cannot understand the language. Yet, it has a great ability of sensing the emotional load that certain tones and words carry.
“It is easier to raise strong children than to repair broken adults.”
-Frederick Douglas-
When we come into the world, we are intimately bonded to our mother’s voice and to the emotional world which accompanied that sound throughout the months of our delicate gestation. Therefore, we are not foreigners in a strange land. Babies can already see the great power that affective language holds. In fact, Michel Odent, the prestigious French obstetrician, reminds us that it is equally as important to understand the emotional world of the pregnant woman as it is to worry about her getting the regular checkups.
The same applies to children of 2, 3 or 5 years of age. We can give them the best. Provide good clothes, a balanced nutrition, toys that will boost an early stimulation… However, if you don’t nurture them with affection, confidence and trust through a language that is wise in emotions, that child won’t grow as it should. Their brain will develop deficiencies and experiment voids that they will fill in other ways once they reach adolescence or maturity.