This week, on the Babies & Business podcast, Rachel and Avram talk about how learning to “speak baby” is helping them grow as leaders and in business. After reflecting on it, they noticed quite a few ways that learning to listen to Lincoln has helped them grow in communication and compassion in their business.

Show notes

1:12 An introduction to the idea that even adults aren’t always great at communicating

2:20 Rachel shares how she began to learn how to “speak baby”

3:05 Rachel shares an internal commitment she had upon becoming a mom at 35

4:47 How speaking baby begins with regulating yourself

5:58 Can you learn beyond verbal and physical cues?

9:24 Learning to read the subtle cues from your baby can help you have more nuance in communication with adults

10:37 Effective communication—who’s responsibility is it?

11:57 Rachel shares about creating space for people to show up truthfully

Mentions & Resources

Brene Brown—quote

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Below, you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Welcome back to the Babies and Business Podcast. This is your host, Avram Gonzales, joined by my fabulous and wonderful co-host, Ms. Rachel Gonzales. Today our podcast is How Speaking Baby Makes You a Better Leader, and I’m pretty excited about this topic today because you know when that baby comes out, they sure have a lot to say, and you don’t always know what it is, what they’re saying, and you start thinking about it and even when they grow much older, look at your adult friends, some of them really have a hard time communicating too, don’t they? You don’t always understand what somebody else is saying or trying to say, and that’s what today’s episode is about.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And I think some people don’t really even know what they want either, so it’s reading between the lines. I think this podcast is really about reading between the lines.

Avram Gonzales: I think so. And it’s about the verbal and the nonverbal communication. And sometimes you’ll be getting information you could, you call it verbal information, a baby.

It’s like those are all different cries, and that’s one type of communication but there’s also what is their body saying? How are they acting? What are they doing? So let’s dive into today’s topic. And Rachel is gonna be our shining star today because she’s really the one that has spoken fluent baby probably since she was about out of diapers.

This woman, just by the way, 10 siblings, 39 nieces and nephews, and counting. She’s seen it. She’s babysat quite a few people. Changed a lot of diapers. Man, I have been through a lot of firsts, but this is not about me. This is about speaking baby. Rachel, tell me a little bit about your journey and learning to speak baby and understanding the cues that our son is giving you.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, so I think it really has to start back at the time that I wanted to have kids, I wanted to have kids years ago and I was with someone that just didn’t want to have kids. I’ve always wanted to have children of my own. I just really adore children and I know that I could be a good mom. I watched my mom be a great mom.

And while I struggle with some things about my mom and my upbringing I really do admire her and cherish the things that she taught me about being a mom. And I had my first child at 35 years old, 35 and a half actually. And I just was so excited to have a baby and I had this internal commitment to not complain about anything.

I know that babies are hard. I’ve babysat babies. I’ve been an aunt to nieces and nephews and all sorts of different situations. I’ve been around children. I’ve babysat a lot of babies. But having your own baby is totally different. It is exhausting beyond measure, to say the least, and I really didn’t know all the things that I would face, like struggles with nursing and struggles with sleeping, and struggles with healing from having birthed the baby and all these different things and all the hormones thing that are going on through my body and all the personal things that are going on in addition to welcoming this beautiful baby into our home.

So when I am hearing him cry, like he could be crying at the top of his lungs, in my ears, my question to myself is, what’s going on? What is really going on? Not placing my personal needs and my agenda above his, oh my gosh. Looking at my watch and saying, it’s been five minutes. Why aren’t you asleep yet?

Or I need to get back to something, or I have other plans today. I just try to sit and ask the questions to him and find that energy that he’s coming to me with and be able to meet him where he is. Comfort him if he needs it or just sit with him. And there’ve been multiple times where I’m just really exhausted and I’m crying and he’s crying and it’s okay but we’re together. And, through the therapy that I’ve gone through talking about what we can do for our babies, just being there, like the best thing that we can do is take care of ourselves so that our baby can regulate off of us. So when we are well regulated, meaning that we’re not upset, we’re not frustrated, we’re not any of these negative feelings baby actually takes that on and they learn how to regulate that way.

Babies regulate their heat and all sorts of different things with us laying on us, feeling our skin, hearing our heartbeat, all those different things that we need to do during those first times in their life. This is how we speak baby, we try to get in tune with this new being that is learning

Avram Gonzales: Everything.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes. Everything about being a mortal person, like they just came out of being in water, in a fluid. Their entire being so far, and now they’re learning everything. And so if we just break it down instead of why can’t you just be quiet? Why can’t you just sleep? Why won’t you eat? It could be I know you’re learning how to eat.

I know you’re learning how to breathe. I know you’re learning how to sleep. I know you’re learning how to regulate your body temperature. And I’m here for you and I will continue to be here for you.

Avram Gonzales: So you made like a. Like a whole bunch of great points here I wanna stop and reflect on for just a moment.

First, I think you revealed a third type of communication that you’re tapping into. The first is verbal. Second is nonverbal in terms of like body language, but the third is your energy and energy translates and goes beyond everything else. This podcast is how speaking baby makes you a better leader.

Think about your team members. . Think about the members of your community. Think about the members of the rest of your family who are looking to you. Do you feel calm, cool, and collected when your leader is freaking the F out? You don’t. You don’t. And so the part that you said that just really stuck out to me was the baby is regulating and taking cues off of you for so many of these other things, and they depend on you for that.

Every part of your community. Is really important. So it’s that verbal, the non-verbal and the energy. There was something else that you said, I wish I would’ve stopped you earlier because it was so much good stuff. Maybe it’ll come back to me, but I would love for you to talk a little bit about, about, just maybe if it’s, even if it’s just really quickly some of the verbal things that you had noticed early on or I know how things change pretty quickly.

You see the first verbal signs before things escalate, then things change. And it’s almost like you can’t tell what’s going on. Yeah. Once they do talk about that. Let me see if I can recollect what I was hearing from you earlier.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Some of the verbal things are like a baby is going to let you know that they’re hungry 30 minutes before they’re actually needing food, because that is what lets them live, is that they eat.

And so as we take care of them, like I would notice from him, he would just make a certain kind of noise, and that told me that he was hungry. He would make another certain kind of noise and it told me that he was uncomfortable, that he was like too warm. He was born in the summer and I was dressing him pretty warm for a while cause I thought he’s not used to this atmosphere and then the changes, but I was wrong. He was uncomfortable. So he was letting me know those things. And just recognizing that it could be just babies don’t really make a lot of noises. They’re not as nuanced maybe as you might think, but sometimes it’s just the gestures like they’ll turn away. That’s a lot later in life than just right when they’re born.

But he would make some noises and I knew that was a hungry cry or that was a tired cry, or that was I’m poopy or I’m wet, cry. And so I really tuned into that. Because that’s what you have. That’s the only communication you have with them.

Avram Gonzales: Basically everything that you’re sharing is trying to get inside the mind of this child to see what they’re doing.

And you’re exercising a lot of compassion in doing that as. How do you think that translates into leadership and building a business and building a team?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, I think of this quote, it’s believe people when they tell you who they are, and I think of, your teammates believe them when they tell you that they need your help.

Sometimes we think, oh, you need to do things on your own. I’ve given you enough information or something like that that I think that we could actually be a little bit more patient with people and more forgiving and just yes, of course, I would help you. Like we had a teammate a couple weeks ago say, I’m not really sure what my priorities are right now.

And I took that. I was like, oh my gosh, that is an invitation to help her know exactly what the priorities are. Let’s reset that and let’s go. And they were just, she was just for that help. And when we can approach things as helpfulness, I want to be helpful, then it’s received that way instead of with a judgment or oh my gosh, how come she didn’t know the priorities?

We’ve communicated that. , but have we really?

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. I think there’s some taking ownership of the communication as well. One of the things that I’ve always thought about for a long time is, That communication really is the two-way street, and it’s on the communicator’s shoulders that communication is effectively received and understood. It’s not actually about the receiver as much as we think it should be, or that we would like to blame them for not hearing and not understanding, and so on. Everything is in our control to be a better communicator, and oftentimes as we grow older, we are having to read between the lines.

Yeah. Frequently we are having to deal with situations where people don’t want to speak the truth or share what’s really on their mind because of a lot of different reasons.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: And we have to have that compassionate and patient perspective in order to pull it out of them.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: So as we have to be more assertive to figure out what’s going on, noticing it all the time with Lincoln, sometimes we have to troubleshoot for quite a long time. Especially when he was first born. To figure out what it was that was actually making him uncomfortable or sometimes I think he just wanted to be heard just to make noise. And it wasn’t about I’m hungry, I’m sad, or I’m tired. Yeah. So just hearing himself speak and I think there’s a lot of Truth and evidence of that as we get older as well,

Rachel Gonzales: I think there’s also an element of allowing people, giving them the permission to actually show up truthfully.

If someone knows that they’re gonna be ridiculed or punished for being honest about maybe a mistake or something, they’re not gonna come forth and say something. But if they know that it’s gonna be received with, oh my gosh, wow, how can we help? Just giving them that permission. Like I’ve given Lincoln permission to have needs and to speak up for those needs.

He has every right to let us know that we’re, that he’s hungry or thirsty or needs to have his diaper changed or he’s tired, whatever that might be. And I think a teammate, letting them know that the first step to letting us know what they need is them knowing what they need.

Get in touch with what you need and let us know that I just think of my very favorite quote by Brene Brown, and that is, Clear is kind, unclear, is unkind. When we are clear with people about our needs, about our boundaries, about whatever it might be, we actually state those things. We get what we need, and then we show up more genuinely.

Avram Gonzales: I think it’s a perfect place to leave off with today’s topic on how speaking baby makes you a better leader. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. If you have some tips, some tricks, some things that you think would help other entrepreneurial parents who are trying to find their own way. Please let us know.

Hit us up on social media. Connect with us in all those places. If you got questions, comments, or a topic suggestion, you can hit us up at hello@babiesandbiz.com. And of course, make sure to subscribe and leave us a rating on iTunes, on Spotify. Give us those five stars. Let other people know about the podcast and spread the good word.

So we appreciate you listening in today. We will catch you on the next one. Bye for now.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.