Forms of communication

There's a cute You Tube video of two babies having an unintelligible conversation. They seem to have their own language and understand one another. Maybe. It appears to me that one is telling the other he wants his sock back and then they mimic one anothers' babbling. All things are possible, perhaps this is a true language.

The first conversation is between mother and newborn. Infants identify their mother's smell and voice. Mothers can detect their baby's wail out of a dozen other newborns in the nursery.

Communication is two-way, even if it is non-verbal, and can be as simple as a smile, frown, nod, raised or knitted eyebrows, a caress, a posture, a smack. You get the picture.

I try not to overtalk in the classroom. After I state an instruction and repeat it once, I then use non-verbal communication. If I need a distracted child to sit, I will point to the chair, and if I have to say a name, I will. But no more. If I need children to be quiet, I look at the child, dramatically fold my hands and PLOP my hands in my lap, until I get a like response. It works! Children need to read non-verbal cues. It is difficult for children on the autism spectrum to understand non-verbal communication, but I use it just the same, and they eventually respond.

When I was a little girl my parents learned that they couldn't spell in front of me, so they spoke pig latin, that silly 'language' where you move the first letter of a word (or syllable) to the end and add the long "A" sound. My name would sound like Indalay. I caught on and responded fluently to their conversations.

My dad thought he could out-smart me, so he developed Chicken-Latin. Same principle but he added ca-hae-ckle instead of the long A sound. Cat would sound like "at-ca-haekle". I mastered that in a New York minute. Too bad I didn't do as well in French when I was in high school.

So my brother and I, at about age 9-10, developed what we considered our own language and we called it OP. We spelled words and added OP to every consonant and spoke the vowels. My name would be "Lop-I-Nop-Dop-A" We became proficient spellers and drove our parents crazy.

I think the most profound form of communication existed between my late mom and me, and also between me and my late friend. My husband and I have the knack. To be able to speak with our eyes, head movements and grunts and to be understood ... it's incredible when the other person GETS IT!

A nudge in the side or a gentle kick in the shin under the table usually garners the response, "Hey! What'd you do that for?" But not with Mom, Rose or Bill. We understood each another.

I've been out with some people who are brilliant but very literal instead of interpretive and intuitive. If I whisper, "Over there," and shift my eyes in the direction of a suspicious person or just a freak, they will flip their head around and loudly say, "Who? What? Where?" and then I must smile deflated and say, "Huh? Nothing. Nevermind."

I think you either have it or you don't. What do you think?