Serve and Return

Babies absorb conversation and human interaction like a vacuum, starting before birth. Serve and Return is the scholarly term describing a infant’s efforts to engage those around them in brain-stimulating conversation. Even though actual words are months away, babies study relational level messages, e.g. tones of voice, pace of talk, investment, emotions, and physical gestures like arm movements and hugs.

This viral video, along with this gripping scene from the movie Grosse Pointe Blank, both adorable, provide excellent demonstrations of Serve and Return.

Much deep brain growth arises from these “babble” conversations between parent and baby, who is learning dynamics such as affirmation, collaboration, patience and respect long before words convey them.

Note how, in the graph above, the X axis is skewed. The 8 months leading up to birth and the 12 months after birth take up the first half of the graph, where they next 20 years take up the second half. The human brain continues to grow through about year 25 or so, but never more rapidly than in the 3 months prior and 12 months after birth. Specialists widely concur that even before birth babies hear and react to dad’s voice, even singing, (though they appear to react more fondly to mom’s) in the womb.

The engaged back-and-forth of Serve and Return contributes pivotally to this immediate, immense brain growth.

Particularly noteworthy on this graph is how growth in the area of language specifically rises dramatically long before a baby speaks their first words.

This dynamic is found to be so important that research from Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child concludes that much harm can come from not responding a baby engaging in Serve and Return. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to healthy Serve and Return is parental use of cell-phones, as explored in this bracing article in the Atlantic Monthly.

Check out Stuff I Don’t Tell Expectant Dads but they should know for other articles like:

• What else dad should bring to the hospital

• Strategizing parental leave

• How to keep your lives (interests, hobbies, goals) after the baby arrives.

• Bringing babies and pets together - review of other articles and additional thoughts