ABSTRACT
Talking to a baby is part of the process of helping him learn to speak; but it is not just about language, it also gives voice to his emotions and to parents' own, helping him understand himself and others. Parents perhaps first show on their own faces the expression on their baby's face, the baby seeing this gets an idea of what the feeling inside him looks like. The most amazing communication between babies and their parents in the first weeks is the smile. An innate, or very early expressing, hunger for contingency was observed in the research of Murray and Trevarthen (1985), where disturbances in contingency are contrived. Babies learn to make sense of the world by their parents putting into words not just emotions but also sequences of activity. Parents' tone of voice is as important as their words in letting a baby know that they are in touch with his feelings.
