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Chapter 4
YOGA FOR PRELINGUISTIC
COMMUNICATION
In order to develop normally, a child requires progressively
more complex joint activity with one or more adults who
have an irrational emotional relationship with the child.
Somebody’s got to be crazy about that kid. That’s number
one. First, last, and always.
Urie BronfenbrennerIntroduction to prelinguistic communication
Communication is the process of sharing information among
individuals. As introduced in Chapter 2, the prelinguistic stage of
language development can be subdivided into the preintentional
and intentional stages. In the first preintentional stage, which
lasts from birth to about eight months, adults frequently interpret
babies’ behaviors such as smiling or crying as if they were
purposeful, intentional acts before infants have actually developed
the capacity to communicate intentionally, which emerges at
about seven to eight months. In order to understand infants’
prelinguistic development, their concurrent social-emotional
growth must be considered. Greenspan’s (1985) model of the stages
of social-emotional development provides a useful theoretical
framework in which the stages of language development can be
considered in broader developmental perspectives. He noted that