«Your baby speaks to you! Let me help you understand»

To­day I spoke to Ka­rin Pat­ton about Dun­stan Baby Lan­guage. Lis­tening to Ka­rin was truly a treat as she is one of these wo­men that have end­less power. She star­ted her career as a nurse and ad­ded many other jobs along the way. To­day she works as part-time as nurse (in times when thes shortage is sim­ply too big), owns a beer bre­wery, and te­a­ches par­ents to un­der­stand their babies.

Our dis­cus­sion ob­viously was mainly around the Baby Lan­guage. Ka­rin took the time to ex­plain the con­cept of Dun­stan Baby lan­guage and the work­shop she is of­fe­ring. There she te­a­ches about to be par­ents to un­der­stand the sounds of their baby and to re­spond accordingly.

My first re­ac­tion to Dun­stan was: Never he­ard! I have to ad­mit I did not read all the books, but one or two even I came across. Dun­stan Baby Lan­guage un­fort­u­na­tely was not one of them. I am more sorry about this fact the more I learn.

Mental checklist becomes obsolete

Af­ter we came home from the hos­pi­tal, we au­to­ma­ti­cally went th­rough the men­tal check­list every time our daugh­ter star­ted to cry: 1. is she hun­gry? 2. new dia­per? 3. tired? …

Ka­rin who li­ves with her hus­band and two boys of 11 and 14 ex­plain that there is also an­o­ther way than the check­list. Dun­stan Baby Lan­guage was de­ve­lo­ped by the Aus­tra­lian Pri­scilla Dun­stan. As a trai­ned opera sin­ger with ab­so­lute pitch, she re­co­gni­zed the sounds and her fa­ther, a pro­fes­sor of early child de­ve­lo­p­ment, was able to sup­port the dis­co­very with sci­en­ti­fic re­se­arch. Fi­nally, Dun­stan Baby Lan­guage be­came known glo­bally with her ap­pearance on Op­rah Win­frey in 2006.

5 reflexive sounds indicate the need of the child

Every child, no mat­ter what con­ti­nent they are born, makes the same 5 re­flex sounds in re­sponse to their needs at that spe­ci­fic mo­ment. Most of the time, child­ren un­learn these re­fle­xes af­ter four months, espe­ci­ally if the par­ents do not re­spond to it.

To avoid that, Ka­rin pre­fers to teach par­ents be­fore the baby ar­ri­ves. This way, start­ing at day 1, the par­ents have a chance to be­gin com­mu­ni­ca­ting with their baby. Du­ring the work­shops, Ka­rin in­ten­si­vely trains the new par­ents to re­co­g­nise the five sounds. You mus con­cen­trate to re­co­g­nise the dif­fe­rence, espe­ci­ally in the beginning.

Next to re­co­g­nis­ing the cries, Ka­rin makes an ef­fort to ex­plain the new par­ents how to re­spond. It is im­portant to un­der­stand that to 4 out of 5 cries, a fa­ther can re­spond to equally com­pe­tent than a mo­ther. This know­ledge will have a si­gni­fi­cant im­pact on the mother’s re­co­very time.

The most va­luable aspect for new par­ents, Ka­rin ex­plains, is the fact that they can un­der­stand what the child needs be­fore it has to start crying. On average, a baby in­di­ca­tes 30 mi­nu­tes in ad­vance when it is ti­red with the help of the “ti­red” cry. This way, new par­ents, do not have to wait un­til the baby is show­ing other si­gns, such as rub­bing their eyes, to com­mu­ni­cate to their par­ents that they are tried and want to sleep.

Understand the baby’s needs before it start crying

If you then put the baby down, it will not yet be over­ti­red and you aill have a ea­sier time get­ting it to sleep. Ka­rin sta­tes: “It is re­ally funny to see that the childs cha­rac­ter can al­re­ady be de­fi­ned in these days. There are some that ex­plain very carefully and pa­tio­nally to their par­ents and other start to cry al­re­ady af­ter 1–2 warnings.”

The talk with Ka­rin was a lot of fun and I am very gra­teful to have met such a great per­son again and that I am able to share this story & tips& tricks with you.

The five cries of the Dunstan Baby language

• «Neh» = «I am hungry»
• «Eh» = «Burp me»
• «Eairh or earggghh» = «Gassy or need to poop»
• «Heh» phy­si­cally un­com­for­ta­ble (hot, cold or wet)
• «Owh or oah» «I am tired»

How can I learn the Dunstan Baby Language?

Ea­siest is to reach out ot Ka­rin di­rectly here: karin@swissmonkey.com. She of­fers pri­vat work­shops and group work shops. Pri­vate work­shops are CHF200 + tra­vel and Groups is CHF90 or CHF130 per couple.

And it really works?

There are ple­nty of re­se­arch that par­ents iden­ti­fied their child­ren sounds cor­rectly. In ad­di­tion it lo­wers the stress le­vel of new par­ents as they feel more pre­pared to deal with the new baby than wi­t­hout his class. 

• https://www.uerm.edu.ph/Forms/research/HSJ%205.1%20Jan.%20June%202016.pdf#page=6
• https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742–6596/1528/1/012019/meta

Where do I find further information?

In ger­man:

In eng­lisch;