Stay in one spot for five minutes. Do not talk to anyone, do not look at your phone.

Listen. What do you hear?

The busy sounds of traffic — a car zooming past; a loud engine release “chi-suuuu” of the bus as it comes to a stop; a lorry going over a hump “klong-klong”.

Or perhaps, the little sparrow chirping; the bigger crow cawing; the rustling sounds of leaves as the wind touches and leaves.

When was the last time you stopped to listen?

Our sense of hearing is developed from approximately 16 weeks in gestation. The ear of a foetus develops fully by 24 to 26 weeks in utero.

Hearing is also often thought of as the last sense to go when a person passes on. Yet, human beings hardly appreciate our sense of hearing.

The most obvious form of appreciation for our ears is probably music. But we forget that music is made up of sounds. We forget that sounds are perceived through vibrations. We forget that vibrations allow us to enjoy music.

Our babies have not forgotten this.

I am a musician. I identify as an experimental improviser. My main instrument is the guzheng. I use electronic effects to experiment with different sounds.

I play sounds, like a young child or a baby. My journey as a musician, researcher and mother has led me through creative explorations of my many roles — to realise that one role supports and develops the other.

As someone who improvises a lot in my work, I became curious about my practices that I found highly similar to child’s play.

As a musician-improviser, I play music. And at the heart of improvisation, we often play with our consciousness — thinking about which string to strike next to produce a desired sound; other times simply letting our bodies react and respond to the sounds heard and created.

Most of the time, we are “in between” the two types of consciousness.

At the heart of a child’s being is play.

Children play to make sense of the world around them. The late British paediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott wrote that playing is “the precariousness of the interplay of personal psychic reality and the experience of control of actual objects”.

In other words, children play to make sense of the “in-between” — where their imaginations and the real world coincide, and they create meaning beyond their lived experiences.

One example would be pretend play.

My 20-month-old boy holds a ukulele, calling it a guitar, and strums and vocalises along, singing “ah~, ah~, ah~”.

He imitates his father, who creates sounds by strumming the guitar and singing. Yet, he is not maturely developed to conduct the technical endeavour of playing the instrument. Thus, he negotiates through play, accomplishing the “in between”.

After becoming a mother 20 months ago, I started to create and test arts experiences with parents and babies 36 months and under, that culminated in my first of many baby performances “Nadam”.

I was reminded through this experience of how much sound perception adults had lost.

We no longer play with objects that create sound; we no longer explore to discover different ways to create sounds on one object.

On the other hand, sound perception is very much alive in our babies’ beings. An egg shaker is not merely an egg shaker that we shake.

Babies hit shakers together, roll them over, throw them at a distance, flap their arms while holding them — creating distinct, unique sounds from the mere act of shaking.

Babies up to two years old construct meanings of the physical world through a combination of their senses and physical abilities such as hitting, shaking, and tasting.

This is why babies’ experiences matter. While the popular belief is that listening to Mozart may boost your baby’s IQ, I believe it is more important to afford your child the opportunities to experience, explore and experiment with different kinds of sonic objects through play.

Such sonic play is not limited to the passive hearing of externally created sounds. More importantly, the act of creating a sound through one’s own actions - such as babies hitting an object - yields further benefits in terms of discovery through play.

Our babies will realise that hitting objects in different ways creates a variety of sounds — thereby learning about timbre - the tonal quality of a sound; and pitch — the frequency (high or low) of a sound. They will realise that hitting something harder or more gently will result in a change in dynamics — the loudness or softness of a sound.

As they grow older, becoming more confident players with better motor skills, our children will soon realise that hitting an object faster or slower will create different tempo — which results in the steady beats or rhythmic grooves of what we know more commonly as the elements of music.

Additionally, in line with attachment theories, findings from my own doctoral research suggest that parents’ positive involvement in playing with their babies is crucial for their exploration.

Almost everything we can find at home is a sonic object capable of producing sound. Empty bottles can sound; egg cartons can sound; tables and chairs can sound.

If only we as adults, as parents, stop to listen and embrace that play is in our beings as much as our children’s. Then perhaps we may be better able to relate to our babies and be present with them in the shared consciousness of improvisation and play.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Natalie Tse, a mother of a two-year-old boy, is pursuing a doctorate degree at the National Institute of Education. She is also founder and resident artist of local arts group LittleCr3tures.