As a child I mean.
Depends what you mean by body language. I think that most can recognise basic facial expressions like happiness and fear before they can talk, and understand things like pointing and reaching for things to express interest etc.
I mean, I’ve known how to speak for a long time now, but I still haven’t developed the ability to read body language…
We’re more or less born being able to “read” facial expressions and tone of voice. IDK about body language.
Facial expressions, yes, that is what I was aiming at mostly (I was in a hurry, I missed it in the title).
I have memories from my entire life, my first memory is in the hospital after I was born. I feel like I understood body language instantly, like it was already in my brain. Language took a minute to speak, then even longer to read and write. But I may be imposing my learned brain on old memories, so I have no idea. And it’s not like we’ll ever get to ask kids. But I’d say body language is very deeply instinctually and baked into your brain before you’re even out of the oven.
Ummm… that’s kinda weird… it’s well established that you really can’t have permanent memories before the age of 3 (I think it was 3 🤔).
I do believe you though, there are exceptions to every rule, even in exact sciences.
More like I learned body language is too subjective, then I learned how to speak at four. My family members had all different forms of body language for the same things, I couldn’t not end up muting it out.
I work in early years. Yes babies have a great understanding of body language and facial expression long before they can talk to communicate.
Young children are actually far more intelligent than most people give them credit for. Just because they can’t communicate it the same language as us yet doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing.
If they didn’t understand body language, how would they bond with people? And people bond back with them? Not to be insulting, but it’s like with pets. We can build bonds with them because we learnt to understand each others body language even though we don’t speak the same language
Yes babies have a great understanding of body language and facial expression long before they can talk to communicate.
I knew it!
My wife is a social worker and she said the opposite and we had like a big quarel over it. I was 99% sure I was right, but I since she’s a social worker, she’s more the authority on this matter than I am (I’m an engineer) and I thought I’d double check, just to be sure.
Now I’m gonna rub this in her face 😁.
I have a niece that is not yet 2 and I can tell you she reads body language and practices it along with speaking. Her body language is a lot better then her spoken language by far.
It is, it really is. My son acted the same way when he was 2 (he’s 4 now)… so, I really have no idea why my wife said the opposite was true.
I just wanted to confirm what I already knew without giving a biased question (leading to one answer or another).
I’m autistic so for me it was speech first. Didn’t really learn to read body language until my teenage years and it was something I had to actively force myself to learn. Still can’t really do it all that well though to be honest.
