Language of the Universe . . . Maybe

Chapter 2. Performing Babies? I decided to look at the way children were brought up in their very early years, and to look for simple differences. So what does a baby do in its early months after birth? According to books on the subject, it acts and reacts to its environment. If there is no human contact, it will die. Adult responses to a baby’s needs are clearly very important. Adult responses could provide a very basic and simple difference. All babies grow up under one of two conditions. Either they are brought up by a single parent, and respond to only one adult as they grow; or they are brought up by more than one parent, or adult, and consequently respond with more than one adult as they grow. A very simple & basic difference. Careful questioning might well reveal which situation existed for a school-leaver. I visualised the two different situations. In the first case, the baby would cry and the single adult would respond with attention, food, nappy changing etc. As only the same single adult came each time, the baby would learn only to expect that one adult, when it cried, and thus would only learn to respond with one adult as it grew up. In the second case, when the baby cried, one of several adults would attend to it. The adults might include the father, grandmother, elder sister or aunts, as well as the baby’s mother. This baby would learn to expect a variety of adults, and would respond differently with each. It would also learn which cry brought the largest number of adults. After some thought, I decided that all babies were natural performers. They acted and entertained while the adults applauded. Sometimes the responses were good and sometimes they were bad. By trial and error, the babies would expand their repertoire of attention seeking performances. I classified the baby brought up by a single adult, as an individual response seeker, or I.R.S. for short. The baby brought up by more than one adult was classified as a public response seeker, or P.R.S. Individual performers or public performers. Thus all babies were either an I.R.S. or a P.R.S. and since babies grow up to become adults, this classification would apply to everybody. I was well satisfied with this basic hypothesis, as I could recall different types of children who exactly fitted these definitions. There was the sort of child who stood in the middle of a room and banged a toy drum, looking round to make sure everybody had noticed. Then there was the other sort of child who tugged at your sleeve to show you something secret - something only the two of you would know about. One child required a large audience, and knew how to get their attention; the other required an audience of one. This hypothesis left me with the problem of the day-dreamer type, or the non-response seeker, still to be explained. I thought back to my brother and I. What about my relatives, my uncles and aunts, my cousins and my friends? What were the obvious, simple, basic differences? I am older than my brother, by two years. That is one basic difference between us. Would that be too basic? No, nothing could be too basic for my hypothesis. Older or younger - that would be a difference ...or rather elder, youngest or only child. That would apply to everybody. So what is the difference between the elder children and the others? All children start off the same, in so far as they are either only children or the youngest child. They become elder children when another child is born or adopted. So what happens to an elder child in this situation? They are either an IRS or a PRS. They are used to performing and getting a response particularly from their mother. Then the next baby arrives, the mother must attend to that new baby. A mother cannot respond to both the elder child and the new baby at once. If the elder child demands first priority, it is likely to be rejected. I decided that this was the vital difference between the elder children and the others. Depending on their age difference, all elder children would feel some element of rejection. The smaller the age difference, the greater the rejection feelings. IRS’s would feel greater rejection than PBS’s. So what happened after rejection? The performer had performed am usual but the audience had not reacted. The elder child had demanded attention but the mother was too busy with the new baby to respond. I concluded that the child performer would blame either itself or the audience (mother) for its failure to get its usual response. If the elder child blamed itself - it would try to understand where its ‘act’ had gone wrong, and it would try to improve its ‘performance’. Alternatively, if the elder child blamed the audience for its failure it would try to cure the audience’s “deficiency”. The children who tried to understand their failure and improve their performance, I called knowledge seekers. The Individual Response Seekers became Individual Knowledge Seekers, or IKS‘s; while the P.R.S.’s became Public Knowledge Seekers, or P.K.S.’s. The children who tried to ‘cure’ their audience, I called cure seekers. Individual Cure Seekers and Public Sure Seekers. ICS‘s and PCS‘s. The knowledge seekers would become the natural and social scientists of the world, while the Cure Seekers would become the psychopaths of the world. Now I had a very simple hypothesis based on childhood responses to adults. Although it was very simple and basic, it had already presented me with six personality types to look for in my career prediction empirical research. I decided to rule out the cure seekers from my vocational guidance research. They would remain part of the hypothesis of course, but I hoped they would not be among the school-leavers I was to interview: This left me with four types, namely:- 1. IRS ‘s - Individual Response Seekers 2. PBS’s - Public Response Seekers 3. IKS’s - Individual Knowledge Seekers 4. PKS’s - Public Knowledge Seekers I have listed the likely career predictions for these types In Appendix A at the back of the book.