Laughter is a physiological trait that is inherent in every human being living on earth. It serves as an indicator of good mood and great emotions. A funny joke or understanding of the comical nature of an incident can provoke laughter in people. In addition, by laughing a person shows his or her good-natured attitude toward the other person in a conversation or a desire for rapprochement. It is a universal type of communicative means of communication, understandable to any person, capable of facilitating the overcoming of the language barrier in communication.
The age physiology and psychology of newborns
A person comes into this world totally unprepared for life in it. In its development, it overcomes many difficulties and undergoes huge changes, transforming itself into a radically different being. It could well be compared to the miracles of butterfly transformations. At the beginning of his journey he is just a little larva, then clumsy, but very cute caterpillar, the next step of transformation will be a cocoon and only in the end of growing up is the most beautiful butterfly – that is a man.
In addition to external changes, no less, and maybe more changes will happen to the child’s psyche when he turns into a “reasonable person.Thus a child is not prepared for this adult world twice:
First, – A banal physical discrepancy and biological immaturity. If you compare a human baby to any newborn animal, the comparison will always be in favor of the latter. It takes a whole first year of life to become more or less “settled” in one’s own body and to learn to handle it in a small way. What all animals experience in the womb, the human being experiences as soon as he enters the world. This “premature” birth allows us to surpass other species in the development and formation of the human brain, which in the future will allow humans to dominate over all others.
Second– This is the child’s perfect social mismatch. A person’s physical self is 80 percent water, but the person’s personality is 80 percent culture. A newcomer to the world knows neither language, nor social roles, nor how to behave socially. It is alien to education, much less to scientific knowledge of the world. All that has been accumulated by human civilization over millennia and of which it is justly proud, must be learned by man in the first twenty years of his life.
At the beginning of his journey, a child will have to learn how to use his body, to separate his inner sensations from the outer ones. The child will have to master his own mental apparatus. Learn to concentrate, overcome their “scattered” feelings, desires and emotions, cope with feelings of fear, learn to adequately express emotions, etc.d.
A child spends the first year of his life trying to fit into the body which was “given” to him at birth. He must learn to understand it, for example, by distinguishing the feeling of thirst from the feeling of fear, and pain in the hand from pain in the stomach. And he must learn how to use it, beginning with the locomotor apparatus and ending with the apparatus for speech and vocal articulation.
You could compare it to putting a man in a huge space suit and forcing him to live in it forever. At the same time, the child learns a lot of other necessary skills, – establishing contact with others, expressing emotions, demonstrating their condition to others, identifying the causes of their anxiety. It is a continuous learning process, which, among other things, includes such “option” as the ability to laugh.
Laughter option
Laughter is a serious matter! Laughter, in terms of physiology, is a complex act of movement involving contraction of the diaphragm muscles accompanied by the work of the vocal articulation apparatus. The cerebellum, hypothalamus, and midbrain are involved in the organization of laughter, and the laughter center itself is localized in the brain stem. Such a complicated “construction”.
After you come into the world, you are deprived of many options, and laughter is one of them. The newborn has no inborn ability to laugh, he communicates with others so far only through the usual shout. An infant signals through a cry about everything that he needs and provides the same demands, up to a certain age point, which are urgent for him based on the situations that arise.
Newborn babies have the ability to smile, it happens in an involuntary way. The baby is assiduously mastering its central and peripheral nervous systems, and the smile that may appear on its pretty face is not a reflection of positivity, but a spontaneous contraction of the facial nerves when the karapuz mastered these systems of its body.
Further stimulation of the child’s emotions associated with joy can only be based on maintaining his/her comfortable worldview, creating a peaceful environment and feeling of safety around him/her. Babies first show a conscious desire to smile at two months of age. It looks like an imitation of the mother’s actions, who smiles at him, these baby expresses his pleasure.
The first harbingers of children’s laughter are the appearance of an energetic smile. Practice in mastering laughter should appear in the child as soon as the conscious smile reaction appears, somewhere between two and two and a half months. Often these sounds resemble “clucking,” and parents don’t notice them. The more so because the baby is learning his or her vocal articulation apparatus when he or she is playing, and the cacophony of sounds that comes from an infant at this age has a wide enough range of. At about 3-4 months of age, parents will hear the ringing bell of the baby’s fervent laughter.
Laughter, in early infancy, is the main proof of the harmonious formation of the psyche in children and their nervous activity. This laughter usually leaves few people indifferent. The resounding laughter of children who have not even mastered speech sounds especially sincere and touching.
In the process of growing up, the accumulation of information and impressions occurs in the baby, this can be the reason for his/her laughter during sleep. Fear not, the child still lives in a world where he and the world are one, and sleep and wakefulness have no clear boundaries in the mind. This laughter is the next stage in the formation of the emotional and mental development of children.
Sometimes there is such a phenomenon as the occurrence of hiccups after a child has laughed. This phenomenon is within the normal range, as the respiratory organs work in this process, and the child’s diaphragm is still weak and is exposed to a previously unknown to it similar to spasms. They are what cause these hiccups, when the child has laughed heartily.
The study of laughter is no joke
The nature of children’s laughter has been the subject of study by scientists from various countries since ancient times. Charles Darwin, author of the famous theory of evolution, observed his laughing son. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, considered laughter an expression of feelings of superiority.
The famous Swiss psychologist and founder of genetic psychology, Jean Piaget, who spent most of his life researching child thinking, argued that children’s laughter is a portal through which to view the world around them from a child’s perspective. He believed that funny can be that thing or event, which on the one hand is unexpected, and on the other – in spite of this fit into a familiar picture of the perception of the world. He made his observations in 1940, but they were not taken up in scientific circles.
Cognitive psychologist at Birkbeck College, University of London, Caspar Eddimen went further than others on this issue. He followed Jean Piaget with the theory that a detailed study of the mental mechanisms affecting a child’s laughter would provide an opportunity to ascertain exactly how a child becomes aware of the outside world.
He conducted the most exhaustive study in years of research on this subject, examining in detail what makes young children laugh. In 2014, he presented the first papers based on his observations at an international conference. For his research, he used a survey of more than a thousand parents around the world, asking them when, where, and under what circumstances their babies’ laughter occurred.
The work in this direction continues, but from what has already been published for the article, the scientist’s conclusion that the time of appearance of the first smiles in the infant at about six weeks, and laughter as such from 3.5 to almost 10 months may be of interest. So parents don’t have to worry if their infant hasn’t already giggled by this age.
The most important thing about the study, however, is that any child begins to laugh as long as there is an attempt by an adult to make him or her laugh, and as a result of establishing communication in a community of society.
The very sensation of being tickled, the sight of a thing suddenly disappearing from view and appearing is not enough of a basis for a child to laugh. It only makes them laugh if an adult performs these actions for a toddler.
The psychologist cites this observation as evidence of the high level of need for socialization of the child, since this need for communication arises in the young person long before he or she begins to walk or talk.
What makes a baby laugh
This research, in addition to theoretical deductions, summarized and derived several universal ways to cheer up a baby:
A game of “peek-a-boo.”. Everyone knows the fun – closing your face with his hands, then opening it with a surprised face to ask – exclaim “CU – CUU” or “Who’s here??”.
Laughing. Touching the baby’s belly with your lips, snorting at it. One of the best ways to make a child laugh.
Make a face. Being face to face with the child, make the most cheerful grimace.
Tickle.Good old fashioned way well known from ancient times and in all nations.
Kind disposition and a smile of close adults, playing together with children, taking the child in the arms, nursery rhymes and songs, cheerful music and expressive images will arouse emotions of joy, happy smiles and carefree infectious laughter. Learn to smile and laugh with your children, and it will bring happiness to all!
This article is based on: the book by Andrei Kurpatov “Happy Child. Universal Rules,” websites /, / and materials from the work of teachers and educational practices of the staff of the Children’s Home “Solnyshko” RK domsolnyshko.kz/o-nas/o-detskom-dome/
