Sound to Babies

One of my favorite things to do is watch a baby hear something.

Every sound – WHIP – their head is flying in that direction.

I could always see Ivy’s, and now Sage’s, internal thinking:

**Sound of a *click

**head whip, internal thought – “What the heck was that???”

It’s awesome.

It made me realize something recently. Why don’t adults react that way to noises? The answer is obvious and simple. We’ve often heard the noise before. The sound of the air conditioning powering on, we’ve heard it before. The sound of the dishwasher starting, we’ve heard that before. The sound of the refrigerator being shut, we’ve heard that before. No need to look in that direction. Noises we haven’t heard before (few) or ones that catch us off guard (like a knock at the door, who knocks at doors anymore??) will get our attention.

Ivy on the other hand – amazement.

I think the advice from Christ to be like little children has many facets to it. Humility is the one we always talk about. I think this is another way we should be like little children: our amazement of the world should never cease. We should always be fascinated by the little sounds and movements around us. We have become numb to the miraculous world we live in.

This led me to another thought: how much our attention is sought after and how noisy the world is, how we’re relentlessly attacked by noise.

Billboards, neon signs, sounds, graphics, excitement. It’s no wonder we don’t wonder at small noises when the world is screaming at us with loud ads all day every day.

Kind of wish I could go back to that innocence and truly marvel at every sound like Ivy and Sage do. Their curiosity is a beautiful thing to see. I just hope as they get older they seek after the beautiful noises, occurrences, and moments around them, and can tune out the loud, noisy, and obnoxious noises the world wants them to focus on.