Crying and Laughing

[Michelle11]

A question popped up in my head today and I want to see what you all think. Why do you think we are born crying, knowing how to cry instinctively yet we have to learn how to smile and laugh? Those aren't things we do from the start, we learn them, as well as most of our other behaviors by mimicking our parents but do you think there is a reason for that when we are born with no problems knowing how to cry? I realize from a survival standpoint crying is necessary so our needs can be met but why do we not instinctively know how to emote the other emotions? Just a question that popped in my head today.

[FallingLeaves]

I'm framing this as babies learning to be unauthentic, as we all do in a myriad of ways. The baby comes in doing what is natural but quickly gives it up for a ride on the boat.

In my mind babies crying is one of many things you can look to and if you become honest for a moment and quit buying the 'but everyone knows this is the best way' stuff you can start seeing the 'rathers'.

That is my $2c.

[Dargor]

There isn't any answer to this, babies only communicate through unintelligible gibber and weeping. Because of that it should come to no surprise that I prefer puppies over human babies anytime.

[Brucely]

Because it would hurt. Blinding light youve never seen. Using your mouth for the first time... What if doctors were tickle monsters? I bet we would smile then

[Mr Interesting]

An interesting question and my ideas are that we don't learn, per se, how to laugh so much we are beginning to understand and modulate feeling. Initially, as in birth, but whether it's programmed or not I wouldn't know, but simply shock of so many feelings may mean the only response is crying where the breath, quick and rushed, must make that bawling noise to regulate itself into a calm as the feeling subside... or we are put on the breast. As we age then we acclimatise to our feeling and the difference between the feel of a need and the fulfillment of that need, joy, and within that contentment a natural sense of happiness and laughter, again as a response to breath and makin' a noise.

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by Michelle11

A question popped up in my head today and I want to see what you all think. Why do you think we are born crying, knowing how to cry instinctively yet we have to learn how to smile and laugh? Those aren't things we do from the start, we learn them, as well as most of our other behaviors by mimicking our parents but do you think there is a reason for that when we are born with no problems knowing how to cry? I realize from a survival standpoint crying is necessary so our needs can be met but why do we not instinctively know how to emote the other emotions? Just a question that popped in my head today.

If babies were born already able to smile and laugh, there would not be the all important, process and development of loving another, social interaction and the natural care and tenderness associated through its own mother. The modelling of the mother/child relationship determines our ability to adapt and live in "close" proximity to others. We accept others and adapt to being social critters... So it is the very important relationship of self to others.. A mother and baby are not separate, they are like a joint entity moving as one. When it can naturally, be this way,just as nature intended, a baby cared and loved for by its mother, responds to her modelling, which then opens the door for the child to engage and socialize in other relationships as it matures......So its not so much the smile and the laugh as it is the "whole" nurturing and care shared as one source, modelling how to trust in life and others when the mother is no longer the primary carer.

Of course I am speaking of the "ideal" mother child loving relationship. As we know and can see in this world, there are children who do not have this all important "ideal" early beginning, which is very sad and leads to the world as we know it..

Heal your mumma issues, heal your life, heal your relationships.

[Michelle11]

Originally Posted by naturesflow

If babies were born already able to smile and laugh, there would not be the all important, process and development of loving another, social interaction and the natural care and tenderness associated through its own mother. The modelling of the mother/child relationship determines our ability to adapt and live in "close" proximity to others. We accept others and adapt to being social critters... So it is the very important relationship of self to others.. A mother and baby are not separate, they are like a joint entity moving as one. When it can naturally, be this way,just as nature intended, a baby cared and loved for by its mother, responds to her modelling, which then opens the door for the child to engage and socialize in other relationships as it matures......So its not so much the smile and the laugh as it is the "whole" nurturing and care shared as one source, modelling how to trust in life and others when the mother is no longer the primary carer.

Of course I am speaking of the "ideal" mother child loving relationship. As we know and can see in this world, there are children who do not have this all important "ideal" early beginning, which is very sad and leads to the world as we know it..

Heal your mumma issues, heal your life, heal your relationships.

This is more in line with what I am talking about. It's not about the rightness or wrongness of crying and laughing just about how we are hardwired to cry but not to laugh. That laughing and smiling is more learned behavior while crying is instinctual. Trust as well is also learned. I read up on personality not long ago and basically it stated that the first year of life is where we learn or not learn to trust people based on how much we are nurtured and cared for. Yet as we grow other experiences can affect how we view the world and ourselves while still holding to that trust factor. I suspect it is how people get taken advantage of even if they have a certain amount of street smarts. But it isn't like we are really saps just that most of our behavior is learned and becomes the subconscious programming that affects our behavior and responses to life that we have little control over. We can feel we were born that way but it isn't the case. Obviously there are those who are born with brains that don't operate properly but I just find it fascinating how our personality is developed more from experience than anything else. I think I always thought we brought it with us. But maybe the challenge of life is more about learning to manage the programming we acquire from our early upbringing.

Well anyways, I find it interesting that we are born crying and most of us are taught to unlearn it while we need to be taught how to laugh and smile. I've always been on a search to figure life out and this was just something that caught my attention wondering if it ties into the big picture of what we are trying to learn as humans. I'm probably just trying to simplify life too much but our personalities really do color our experience but they are something that develops here, not necessarily what we come into life with. They say we can be predisposed to a certain temperament but I'm not convinced. Anyways, just wondering if smiling and laughing speak to a general challenge in life to learn how to be joyful despite it not being an innate trait. It is something we need to learn, at least from a human perspective. Our experiences teach us to learn and unlearn human behavior all with their subsequent consequences positive and negative on our experience while here.

[Michelle11]

Originally Posted by FallingLeaves

I'm framing this as babies learning to be unauthentic, as we all do in a myriad of ways. The baby comes in doing what is natural but quickly gives it up for a ride on the boat.

In my mind babies crying is one of many things you can look to and if you become honest for a moment and quit buying the 'but everyone knows this is the best way' stuff you can start seeing the 'rathers'.

That is my $2c.

It is a shame that most of us are taught to squash the natural inclination to release our upsets with crying. It is actually to our detriment but generations pass down the idea that we need to be tough and not cry I suspect with the intention of ensuring we can survive in the world maybe from back in the day when survival was much harder. But those upset feelings don't just disappear because we refuse to acknowledge them. They stay within our energy field and turn into illness and emotional unease. They become buried hurts that are much more difficult to weed out then they would be if we dealt with our feelings in the moment. As babies we really have no way to decipher what is healthy and unhealthy for us and so as adults we really are a byproduct of our caregivers more than we realize whether we like it or not.

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by Michelle11

This is more in line with what I am talking about. It's not about the rightness or wrongness of crying and laughing just about how we are hardwired to cry but not to laugh. That laughing and smiling is more learned behavior while crying is instinctual. Trust as well is also learned. I read up on personality not long ago and basically it stated that the first year of life is where we learn or not learn to trust people based on how much we are nurtured and cared for. Yet as we grow other experiences can affect how we view the world and ourselves while still holding to that trust factor. I suspect it is how people get taken advantage of even if they have a certain amount of street smarts. But it isn't like we are really saps just that most of our behavior is learned and becomes the subconscious programming that affects our behavior and responses to life that we have little control over. We can feel we were born that way but it isn't the case. Obviously there are those who are born with brains that don't operate properly but I just find it fascinating how our personality is developed more from experience than anything else. I think I always thought we brought it with us. But maybe the challenge of life is more about learning to manage the programming we acquire from our early upbringing.

If babies didn't cry they wouldn't survive. Life is continuous and that seed for continued life is part of "survival", keeping the species alive. Of course most humans are alive, but so many are not "thriving" which comes from being a product of their environment. So what your noticing is really about the development of a child from infancy and how important the process of attentive care and love is, to build a more resilient and aware child, not only to itself but to the nature of life and how to survive in life as a socially connected species more balanced and content. I think mothers can easily take for granted the amount of responsibility they are modelling to their child in everyway their child is developing. Of course we are influenced by our other roles in our life, but that first important introduction/foundation from newborn/infancy/toddler/preschool stage is sets the "mood" so to speak.
We are a product of our primary carers and society, so it makes much sense to the nature of life and being born into a life as to how we are in "everyway we are" ... Many people look outside of themselves to build a greater picture beyond the human aspects because of dysfunction within that framework of life in this way. It has become necessary, because the family system is failing children in a big way, which is sad, but its just how life is now. When and what we create in dysfunction, we have to then create models that match in some way to bring about balance in another form. It seems to be the nature of creation to bring change and healing to what has been lost. We find what we need one way or another.

A baby is a helpless being, crying triggers an external response" to meet its needs to not only "survive but to thrive" So how we thrive, smile, grump and slump is often an ingrained trigger and response to our earliest creations and foundations laid...I think it is easy to forget we are part of nature and humans especially are very dependent upon the mother, main carer/child role in how we thrive in those all important developmental years.

So definitely our learned behaviours and emotional reaction to ingrained patterns can be changed more readily if one choose to do so. Making peace with that chorded connected, makes much sense to what I know in myself towards my own mother and how I healed my own separation in this way.

Well anyways, I find it interesting that we are born crying and most of us are taught to unlearn it while we need to be taught how to laugh and smile. I've always been on a search to figure life out and this was just something that caught my attention wondering if it ties into the big picture of what we are trying to learn as humans. I'm probably just trying to simplify life too much but our personalities really do color our experience but they are something that develops here, not necessarily what we come into life with. They say we can be predisposed to a certain temperament but I'm not convinced. Anyways, just wondering if smiling and laughing speak to a general challenge in life to learn how to be joyful despite it not being an innate trait. It is something we need to learn, at least from a human perspective. Our experiences teach us to learn and unlearn human behavior all with their subsequent consequences positive and negative on our experience while here.

I supposing the unlearning is because of skewed parental projections and others who didn't allow you as a child to feel what "YOU" felt but skewed it with their own projections which is what sets up separation. So I learned as adult to be open to cry more freely. This was a point of recognising that all those other skewed emotional binds where confining my natural inbuilt relationship to let go more readily. Now of course its about "letting go" as an adult. Letting go to let life support me, show me more, open me to life. Open clear feeling is just clear to be itself. Contained and constrained skewed models defined the patterns and reactions. So for example when a child knocks over a carton of milk and laughs because it was funny to their feeling space, (they found amusement in the process and the result) an angry mother in reaction to that, immediately changes that natural reaction in the child to something more, which sets the skewed pattern in both feeling and reaction. Patterns begin to form separate to the natural self not attached to its own feeling and process in all that. If we go back to infancy where a child is not shown tenderness and loving care that too sets the bar of human connection. We may have been fed and changed, but the "how" is what supports and enriches a child's natural tenderness that I believe is hardwired in them also as part of our survival. And we see the results of that also in life as it is today..

Babies have a "voice" so their basics needs are taken care of. Their tenderness is what stirs us to love them, stirs us "to feel" they are our own reminder of our own tenderness we have within most naturally, they remind us what is important for our survival more complete together. They teach us how to get back in touch with our most natural and necessary essential requirements of life


So as I know it to be now days, it doesn't matter what happens with children and what mistakes and issues arise, those early formative years are the "telling" point of pretty much of what has and hasn't been acknowledged. And consequently we have a large mass of the world closed to themselves, not listening to themselves, but to the voices of others and the emotions of others ingrained in them as themselves. The minds taken over and their lives being lived as the shadow of their upbringing. They have lost "touch" with that tenderness, lost touch with how to care and manage their most basic needs and have them met...

[Sojourner2013]

Originally Posted by Michelle11

A question popped up in my head today and I want to see what you all think. Why do you think we are born crying, knowing how to cry instinctively yet we have to learn how to smile and laugh? Those aren't things we do from the start, we learn them, as well as most of our other behaviors by mimicking our parents but do you think there is a reason for that when we are born with no problems knowing how to cry? I realize from a survival standpoint crying is necessary so our needs can be met but why do we not instinctively know how to emote the other emotions? Just a question that popped in my head today.

Hi Michelle11,

Crying is the only form of self-preservation that a baby knows innately. It can not control the body or communicate its needs through language, so crying is its only tool to let others know it is in need. Self-preservation is innate and helps us want to survive this arduous thing called Life.

The smiling and laughing come later because those are the bonuses of living self-preservation.