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    Born Wise: New Knowledge That Will Change Your View on Children Forever
    Born Wise: New Knowledge That Will Change Your View on Children Forever
    Born Wise: New Knowledge That Will Change Your View on Children Forever
    Ebook182 pages1 hour

    Born Wise: New Knowledge That Will Change Your View on Children Forever

    By Lena Dyhrberg

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    About this ebook

    For generations it has been the common perception that children are inarticulate little creatures who, like empty shells, must be filled with knowledge and experiences. However, according to family health nurse Lena Dyhrberg, this is not at all the case. Your child arrives in this world with a highly developed intuition and knowledge, and your child understands everything you say.

    In this book she gives numerous examples of how she, by talking with children, has helped families eradicate everything from colic to chronic colds in addition to helping them through difficult life crises.

    Born Wise also tackles todays tendency to turn children into projects and parenting into a science. Lena Dyhrberg takes us by the hand and lovingly shows us how simply it can be done.
    Mette Moellevang, journalist

    This is an absolutely brilliant book. The author, Lena Dyhrberg, has the eyes of a psychologist, anthropologist, nurse, and experienced mother.
    Hikaru Suzuki, mother of twin boys
    PhD, Harvard University, MBA, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    The guidelines in this book helped to create our healthy, happy, and fantastic family.
    Carl Johan Collins; MBA, INSEAD &
    Helle Collins; LLM, University of London
    Parents of two children

    After reading this book I now see my son in a wholly new lightas an independent human being who possesses far greater mental awareness.
    Mille Kirk, mother of one son

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBalboa Press
    Release dateJun 3, 2014
    ISBN9781452514505
    Born Wise: New Knowledge That Will Change Your View on Children Forever
    Author

    Lena Dyhrberg

    Lena Dyhrberg was born in 1948 in Fredericia, Denmark. Lena has an educational background as a bank assistant, nurse, health care nurse, and kinesiologist. Lena owns a private family health care company and has participated in several radio and TV programs. She is the author and writer of several books, articles, and papers. Lena is married, and has three children and four grandchildren.

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    Reviews for Born Wise

    4/5

    382 ratings27 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I loved this book right from the beginning! The last Angela Carter book I read before this was "The Passion of New Eve," which wasn't as easy to get into for me, and the wonderfully different, witty tone of "Wise Children" was a total delight. The novel is filled with fascinating characters and intrigues, and I was entertained right to the very end -- in fact, I was sad to reach the end of Dora's tale and say goodbye to the Chance twins. One of my favorite reads this year!
    • 3/5
      Having not much liked Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, I was a little reluctant to read this. However, I am glad that I did - I found this book much more to my taste than Nights at the Circus. I found the story of Dora and Nora quite interesting & loved the references to the 30's and 40's musical stars.
    • 4/5
      I should have made a note of where it was I saw this novel mentioned, only a few weeks ago, because of course I've forgotten. But it was somewhere online probably and must've been a trusted source, because I put it right on my public library list, even though I usually think of Angela Carter's work, what little I've read of it, as kind of tiresomely laden with lots of symbols and fairy-taley things. (A personal dislike.)I also tend not to flock to books about the smell of the crowd and the roar of the greasepaint, nor ones which are too "comic", both of which this one pretty much is, but nevermind, I got it, I read it, I was entirely engrossed and charmed, it was heaps of fun.It's a first-person account of the life of a woman now in her semi-spry 70s who, with her identical twin sister, was a song-and-dance girl in music hall in London in the first half of the 20th century. She's also the unacknowledged and illegitimate daughter of Britain's greatest living Shakespearian actor. The story she tells takes in the music hall childhood in Brixton, a chance to be in a Hollywood film spearheaded by the famous father, and, as the final set-piece (Carter's wonderful at big set-pieces), the 100th birthday of the great man, at which party all his family, both legit and illegit, cast-off or retained, gathers, and much mayhem ensues.Carter's themes are of love and loyalty--the twin sisters never find relationships more important to them than they are to each other; the family that surrounds them is seldom directly biological. It's about life lived with great gusto, chances taken (Dora and her sister are surnamed Chance, and performed as the Lucky Chances), nostalgia, and keeping on keeping on.This would make a smashing mini-series.
    • 4/5
      There is still magic in this novel even though it is a more realistic story than some of Angela Carter's others; it is filled with the glamour of show business and the magic of the theatre. Dora and Nora are identical twins, the illegitimate offspring of a famous Shakespearean actor whose family contains an abundance of twins, both identical and fraternal. On the 100th birthday of the father who has never acknowledged them, letting it be believed that they are the daughter's of his own twin brother, Dora looks back over their eventful lives, during which they were always on the disreputable side of show business as well as having been born on the wrong side of the blanket. And even at this late stage in the story of the Hazards and the Chances there are still family secrets to be revealed, as they discover at the birthday party!
    • 2/5
      Oh, so that's why I haven't read Angela Carter before now.Definitely not my cuppa. I know a lot of people love Carter's plotting and her style, but I thought this was terribly tedious - trying much too hard to be funny. Different likes for different types, indeed.
    • 4/5
      Wise Children is narrated by Dora Chance on her 80th birthday as she reflects back on the helter-skelter life she and her twin sister Nora lived - from being orphaned at birth and raised by a nonconventional woman to getting into show business in the London theater world to arriving in Hollywood for a chaotic timespan to film a Shakespearean-based musical.This book is an enjoyable read, filled with an undertone of witty, tongue-in-cheek humor along with a lot of ribald innuendo (and not so innuendo) as well as some occasional slapstick-style comedy. The pacing is quick, speeding the novel along even though not a ton happens in terms of succinct plotting. In my opinion, starting the story with the birthday, going back in time and then moving forward chronologically to eventually end up back on the birthday was actually a disservice because in the beginning it was more difficult to see how all these characters relate and interact with each other, whereas by the end, it was all much clearer. But that's a small personal grievance that others may find perfectly acceptable.The bigger issue I found was the climactic scene of the big family birthday party. There's an element of the absurd throughout the novel, which works quite well for the comedic aspect. But the birthday party takes it to a whole new level of ridiculousness that felt like it undermined the book a bit. The final ending was a bit bizarre on a couple of levels, highlighting just how dysfunctional this family really is. Still, the book did explore the interesting overall theme about what makes up a family, as well as various subthemes about show business excesses, love and relationships, getting older, loss, etc. Despite all the undercurrent of humor, it touches on very heavy issues including death, World War II, abandonment by spouses and parents, etc. All in all, I enjoyed this book but I think I'm missing what makes it such a classic and I'm not sure that I feel compelled to run out and pick up some more Carter to read any time in the near future.
    • 5/5
      Everything Angela Carter wrote was interesting, but for me, this last novel was her best. Full of humour and imagination, this Gothic theatrical tale is a book I must read again some day.
    • 3/5
      Sat on my to-read pile for about seven years. When I finally finished it, I was honestly a little disappointed. It's all a little too crafted, full of structural patterning and surface references to Shakespeare (the sort of book that provides English undergraduates love to mine) but ultimately it felt a little emotionally shallow. Deeper engagement with C20th British light entertainment, and a bit less of the Magical Realism-lite family history, would have fixed it. Gorgeous George deserved a whole book to himself. Given it extra points for being probably the only novel ever to reference Leigham Court Road in Streatham.
    • 4/5
      I think if I knew what I know about Shakespeare now when I read it, I might have got even more out of it. A great novel about twins and legitimacy.
    • 5/5
      Talk about colorful language! Even a bit challenging for a non-native English speaker, but worth every trip to the dictionary...great story.
    • 2/5
      Old English twins of a theatrical family, their 1/2 brother by a much younger woman, their father's first wife.....their Goddaughter....

      A mish-mash of family & bad feelings....all very erudite sounding narration, i suppose attempting to be dramatic as only theater people can be......
    • 4/5
      Angela Carter is one of my favourite authors. I love her fantasies, the twists and turns in her stories and her wonderful sense of humour. I love her use of metaphor and the universality of her themes. So of course I loved this book.
    • 5/5
      Definitely held up to the reread. Just as fantastic as I remembered! I love this book!
    • 5/5
      A book for lovers of Shakespeare who enjoy seeing the bard being taken on a roller coaster romp that rewrites expectations!The book plays on the common "green space" trope used by Shakespeare (we start in the normal world, enter the forest (green space) and everything goes topsy turvy, only to be restored in the end when the characters emerge from the forest and re-enter society) but completely inverts it and embraces the chaos of the carnavalesque. We start with chaos, enter a more sedate time in Hollywood, and then emerge once again into the topsy turvy. Angela Carter's subversion of expectation and not so gentle prodding at the world of so called high art, is a masterpiece and must read for anyone who enjoys a humouristic romp through literary history!One of my all time favourites.
    • 2/5
      I had to read this for AS Level English Lit and hated almost all of it. I couldn't get on with the style of writing and I felt at times it was being too obviously outrageous or weird without really saying anything important. However it did have some funny moments and the characters were nicely formed.
    • 3/5
      All right, so the ending is a bit far fetched and the writing meanders, but the latter is due to unreliable narrator. I enjoyed this book, as Dora is quite an entertaining narrator for all her faults, and part of the appeal is that she holds nothing back. She tells everything as she sees it, though perhaps embellishing a bit, and we can see, especially at the end, the family as it truly is.

      Maybe it was just me, but despite the fact the book had a happy (and incredulous) ending, I found myself depressed. Weird.
    • 4/5
      Where do I start? This book is irreverent, humorous, tongue in cheek, witty, sarcastic, definitely NOT politically correct, & can be a bit confusing. It has more plot twists & turns than two snakes tied in a knot. The narrator is Dora Chance, one of a set of identical twins born "on the wrong side of the tracks", the product of an all but nameless showgirl & a successful stage star, who is himself a twin. The family intrigues will leave you a little sad, but not for long, as the whole concept of family in this book ends up being not who is there biologically, but who is there for you in all other ways. I loved it :)
    • 3/5
      I love Angela Carter's prose: the sentences dance together, perfectly matched, creating a sinuous harmony of prose that's almost poetry. Wise Children is no different. In telling the story of the Misses Dora and Leonora Chance, the "Chance Sisters" whose rhythmically clicking heels have lighted up many a music hall stage, Ms. Carter has not spared any expense, choosing to spread the paint in loud, garish brushstrokes. For are they not the twin daughters (albeit born on the other side of the blanket) of the great Shakespearean actor Melchior Hazard?

      Dora tells the story-and does it in such a bawdy style reminiscent of the music hall that you get carried away. It is a wildly improbable story, full of clandestine affairs, terrible disasters and great revelations-yet somehow unreal, as though we are watching a burlesque play. The girls are bastards of the great Melchior, born during the first world war, abandoned by their mother and brought up by Grandma Chance and their father's twin brother Peregrine. Even though their father do not accept them publicly, their story is always entwined with the story of the Hazard family, as Melchior moves from the drama stage to Hollywood and back again, picking up three and discarding two wives in the process. He has twin daughters from his first wife and twin sons from his third, and they all interact in wildly improbable ways throughout this kaleidoscopic novel.

      It would not make any sense to describe the plot, so I will not attempt it-even if I were able to do so! Suffice it to say that there are artifices and deceptions aplenty, and nothing is what it seems to be...rather like a Shakespear play... In fact, the spirit of the great bard, especially the bawdiness of his comedies, is present throughout the narrative. This novel could be Angela Carter's tribute to him. Also, the vulgar light of the music hall makes itself felt on each page.

      This is show business, and after some time, we start asking ourselves: is anything for real? As Nora asks Dora towards the end-does their father really exist? Or is he a pasteboard creation of their imaginations?

      The other persistent theme is that of twins. One active, one passive: one quiet, one sprightly: one good, one evil... Even the city of London, split by the river into "twins": the North, respectable and the South, vulgar. Diametrical opposites permanently linked together. The novel aptly ends with the arrival of a new set of twins.

      The question then arises: for such a many-layered story, why only three stars? Well...the book had a bit too much of vulgarity in it for me. Maybe Ms. Carter did it on purpose, but the constant references to semen (especially on one occasion, the presence of it on a young man's moustache after he has oral sex with another man) put me off. Also the numerous instances of incest didn't help. But I confess it is entirely a matter of personal taste.

      So the verdict: a well-written, fast-paced literary novel, but perhaps not everybody's cup of tea.

    • 4/5
      Aside from being a lot of fun, I thought this book was really well constructed. It's supposedly just the rambling life story of an old lady, but the plot is like clockwork.
    • 2/5
      This took me forever to read--I maxed out renewals and had to re-request, and wait, and finally got it again.I am lost as to why this is on the 1001 books list. It is nothing special, and I found it exhausting to read. It's not exactly stream of consciousness, but is narrated by Dora Chance, identical twin about age 80, discussing her showbiz (stage mostly, first half 20th century) life with her twin sis, her extended complicated family of foundlings, cheaters, divorces, and many half siblings of different ages. Not funny, just very tiring. Also , very long chapters.Not for me at all. But it's done!
    • 4/5
      I agree that this is a book that enchants! I was delighted when it came out. I still remember the etymology of hazard and chance, the maniacal host with the catchphrase >, and the winter party scene.
    • 5/5
      This is a completely over the top, coincidences and bullshit galore story, and I loved it. Probably helped that the intro gave me a strong sense of what to expect from the story, as it is outside the genres I normally read in, and I wold have missed a lot without that. The narrative voice of Dora Chance is so matter of fact and practical and I adored her.
    • 3/5
      *SPOILER ALERT*





      I love Angela Carter's writing style and voice. I would give a higher ranking, but I really dislike the incest that keeps happening in this novel. That threw me off too much.
    • 4/5
      Last novel by Angela Carter. She was diagnosed with lung cancer when she wrote this book.I listened to the audio read by Tracy Ullman. She did such a fantastic job. The story is engaging. Twin chorus girls, Dora and Nora Chance are celebrating their 75th birthday. The date is 4/23 and it is also the birthday of Mechior Hazard and his twin Peregrine. It is also the supposed birthday of Shakespeare. Dora is the narrator. It is packed full of humor. It also has many allusions, magical realism and carnivalesque in the mix. Nora and Dora are unacknowledged and illegitimate daughters of an icon of the British Stage, Sir Melchior Hazard.They were raised by their mother's landlady,Grandma Chance,after the mother died. It probes and pokes at our expectations of reality and society and the subversive nature of fatherhood. The story is full of references, allusions to Shakespeare. The book has 5 chapters and most plays of Shakespeare had 5 acts. The Grandfather clock symbolizes the absent father, phallic symbol and is flawed as it rarely strikes the correct time. Another aspect is pairings of opposites; sets of twins; Chance and Hazard. Superficial nature of differences. Illegitimacy vs legitimacy. Nora and Dora live on the wrong side of the Thames. Born out of wedlock. They play in dance halls, father is in the legitimate theater. Incest; 1/2 brother/sister, pantomine goose with gosling, sister share the blond tenor, Uncle Perry with Dora.
    • 5/5
      Wise Children is my favorite novel. In the world. That I've ever read. Ever. Which actually makes it a little hard for me to speak about it rationally. It's the story of a (mostly) English show business dynasty as told by elderly former chorine Dora Chance (the rest of the family possess the surname Hazard, of course!). In the true Shakespearean tradition the book is full of twins (I think there are FIVE sets), it's besotted with Shakespeare from top to bottom (intended). Dora and Nora Chance are (probably) the illegitimate twin daughters of the great stage star and Shakespearean, Melchior Hazard. As Dora says at one point, being illegitimate, she and her twin go on the halls. And that's really the meat of the book. It's about art and entertainment high and low and everything between. And about family. About parents and children and people who are parents in name only and about the people who raise and love them. The cast is enormous, and nearly everyone in the book is "family" in some way or another to the two Chance sisters, either by marriage, blood, adoption or coercion. Their father, Melchior, never acknowledges them officially - his American brother, Perry, steps up, puts his name on the birth certificate and becomes their adored and adoring uncle.I mean it when I say nearly every sort of enterprise that might hire an actor makes an appearance: Shakespeare (of course), music hall, vaudeville, burlesque, English pantomime, Hollywood movies, game shows, commercials, children's television, cooking shows, and on and on. The Chance sisters are raised in a theatrical boarding house by their beloved Grandma Chance (vegetarian, pacifist, nudist and drinker of créme de menthe). The appearances by real life luminaries are blessedly few and far between. Famous people are mentioned occasionally, but they remain off stage. There's a lovely description of a Fred and Adele Astaire routine - the girls' first show, and the first time they see their father in the flesh. There is also a whole Dan Leno routine in a seaside theater in Brighton, and he becomes an actual character in the book, playing Bottom in a disastrous movie version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I had no idea that Dan Leno was a real person until I read my always charming inamorato's book on vaudeville (No applause, Just Throw Money). I may have even said out loud, "Oh! He's real!" to an entire subway car.One of the most wonderful things about the book is Dora's voice. She's a smart, working class dame who learned how to write from her former boyfriend, just referred to by his nickname, Irish. He's clearly drawn from a mixture of Fitzgerald and Faulkner in their Hollywood years. She's by turns hard boiled and sentimental, and the set pieces are wondrous: the winter orgy outside of a burning mansion, the set of the aforementioned film of Dream, the entire Brighton sequence. The last line of the book, after a raucous party filled with centenarians, butterflies and incest, is "what a joy it is to dance and sing".Wise Children is cast pretty much entirely with people who until fairly recently wouldn't have been allowed to be buried in cemeteries along side so-called decent people. Self-invented actors and performers and impresarios. That is to say, my kind of people.
    • 4/5
      Wise Children was written by Angela Carter in 1991, the last of her nine novels, published before her death in 1992. The story is a complex tale – set on the day of identical twins Dora (the narrator) and Nora Chance’s 75th birthday, it is a memoir of their personal lives as illegitimate twin daughters of Sir Melchior Hazard, a British theatrical legend, and their professional lives as vaudeville ‘hoofers’ – the Lucky Chances. All of the vignettes recollected by Dora lead towards the dénouement set at their father’s centennial party.Central to the theme of the book – emphasised by the choice of quotations used at the outset of the novel – is the relationship between mothers and daughters ("Father is a hypothesis but mother is a fact"), and there is a very matriarchal slant to the story. This is very in keeping with Carter’s other works, which emphasise the power held by women in determining their own destinies.At times the thread of the narrative is difficult to follow – the timeline jumps around incessantly and there is (fittingly for a novel about theatric types) a large cast of supporting characters – but Carter’s clever use of language to describe situations and events and her talent in bringing the principals to life make this a joy to read. Wise Children requires one to suspend belief at times due to its use of magical realism, but if you can get to grips with the multiple pairs of twins, the numerous illegitimacies and the constant Shakespearian motif, then the highs and lows in the book will really tug at your heart strings. There’s also plenty of bawdy humour to keep the pace up.
    • 3/5
      This is a tale of showbiz and ambiguous paternity was interesting for a few chapters but gradually lost me in a tangle of complicated family relationships and discarded tights. It did convey a strong sense of nostalgia for the high-kicking Dutch cap-wearing luvvie luvvie days of the characters’ youth, and though I wasn’t around in the first half of the last century it brought that time to life in an admirable way. I did lose the plot during the Hollywood section, however, and never completely got it back. I wanted it to teach me something and yet it was so daft (the final plot surprise was perhaps the daftest of the daft) that anything it did teach me was going to be hard to believe.

    Book preview

    Born Wise - Lena Dyhrberg

    Copyright © 2009, 2014 Lena Dyhrberg.

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

    Balboa Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

    Balboa Press

    A Division of Hay House

    1663 Liberty Drive

    Bloomington, IN 47403

    www.balboapress.com

    1 (877) 407-4847

    Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

    The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

    Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

    Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

    ISBN: 978-1-4525-1449-9 (sc)

    ISBN: 978-1-4525-1679-0 (hc)

    ISBN: 978-1-4525-1450-5 (e)

    Library of Congress Control Number: 2014908577

    Balboa Press rev. date: 06/10/2014

    Contents

    Foreword

    Introduction

    Chapter 1    Your Little Child Understands What You Say

    Respect And Love

    Your Wise And Responsible Child

    Crying And Other Reactions

    Speak With Respect

    Say What You Mean

    I’ll Return

    Chapter 2    Love And Closeness

    Spoil Your Child With Love And Caring

    Closeness

    The Beginning Of Life

    Acknowledge Your Child’s Feelings

    Love As A Need

    Children Who Bite

    Accommodating A Child

    Love Without Words

    Being Seen And Heard Gives Strength

    Chapter 3    Your Child’s Intuition

    The Wisdom Of Intuition

    Preserve Your Child’s Intuition

    The Intuition Of Children In Day Care

    Speak From The Heart

    Children Can Sense The Atmosphere

    Slow Down And Listen

    Children’s Intuition

    Children’s Mutual Language

    Chapter 4    Crying Is The Language Of Children

    The Vulnerable Mother

    Tolerating The Crying

    Nobody’s Perfect

    Born To Cooperate

    Children’s Crying

    Colic And Emotions

    Chapter 5    Food For Body And Soul

    What Is Mother’s Milk?

    Breastfeeding Is More Than Feeding

    Breastfeeding And Prestige

    Breastfeeding Is Demanding

    The People Around The Mother Have To Support Her

    Can All Mothers Breastfeed?

    Prevent Mastitis

    How Long Should You Breastfeed?

    Communication While Breastfeeding

    Intolerance And Allergies

    Should Children Like Everything?

    Children’s Way Of Saying No Thank You

    Little Gourmands

    Sensitive Children And Delicate Stomachs

    Chapter 6    Wise Body, Wise Soul

    The Sense Of Balance

    Feel The Heart Beating

    Care And Challenges

    Good Motor Skills And Inner Harmony

    Children Show What They Need

    Body And Concentration

    Swings And Carousels

    Check The Eye Movement

    Slings And Scarves

    Advantages Of Slings And Scarves

    Active Boys

    Motor Skills Of Older Children

    Chapter 7    From Generation To Generation

    Why Do We Have Children?

    You Learn From Your Child - Your Child Learns From You

    Feel The Calm Of The Child

    The Busy New Mother

    Show Your Children The Way

    No User’s Manual

    You Reflect Yourself In Your Child

    Reliving Childhood

    The Creation Of Patterns

    The Family’s Circumstances

    Family Togetherness

    Chapter 8 Just Little Human Beings

    Children Understand

    Children Communicate

    Love For The Child

    Expectations Of The Child

    Nourishment And Closeness

    Children Are Just Little Humans

    About The Author

    Lena’s Career

    Children And Sorrow

    Finally, Lena Became A Mother

    Family Health Nurse In Private Practice

    Foreword

    My dream has become a reality.

    I have put my message in writing; a message, which is intended to increase the respect for newborns and small children. I have gathered my many thoughts and experiences from over the years in this book: Born Wise.

    I have chosen to call the book Born Wise based upon my extensive experience with newborn children. By wise I primarily mean mental wisdom. I see that children observe us adults and their older siblings. Newborn children mimic us and sense moods and feelings, and in addition, they understand what we say.

    I am convinced that little children, in addition to moods and voice ranges, also understand the spoken word. Through the years, I have met much disagreement on this point upon my first contact with a new family. But during subsequent visits with the same families, the parents have told me that they have experienced their child responding to their spoken language.

    I wish to pass on this knowledge to create greater respect around newborn and small children. This book is centered on small children from birth to about the age of four, because it is during these years that children’s intuition and mental capacity are the strongest.

    I would like to thank those of you, without whom this book would not have been possible: Thank you to all the lovely families who allowed me in as a family health nurse - both into your homes and into your hearts. Thank you for the beautiful, exciting, and educational experiences with your wise children - children who understood me, children with whom I communicated. Thank you to my family, for everything you have taught me, which made this book a reality. Thank you to my husband Jørgen, my three children and in-laws for practical help and moral support. Thank you to my friends for believing in me and for your positive support. Without you Born Wise would never have been a reality beyond Denmark’s borders.

    I am also very grateful for being able to illustrate and strengthen my statements through photos of my four beloved grandchildren; Frederik, Alberte, Leonora and Cornelius.

    With deep gratitude,

    Lena Dyhrberg

    Introduction

    My basic purpose with this book is to give the reader insight into children, and an understanding of them and their development, from the standpoint and assumption that children are born wise.

    It is my experience and conviction that there is more to newborn little humans than what I have seen described previously, and more to them than what I believe is generally acknowledged and recounted by people. Newborn children have an inborn ability to communicate, to understand, to feel, and to act immediately without preconception.

    In addition to taking an in-depth look at children’s inborn wisdom, I will also use the following chapters to describe how parents can use this knowledge to communicate with, and better understand their children. As a direct extension of this, adults can also learn much from the mutual non-verbal communication among children.

    Today, it is widely accepted that giving children a good upbringing is not just about giving them food and changing their diapers, but that love and intimacy have at least as great an impact on their well-being and development. I will illustrate this from several angles in the first two chapters. In Chapter 3, I describe children’s extremely well-developed intuition, and how adults can exploit this knowledge to better understand themselves and their children. I follow this with a description of how children use crying as a means of communication. Then I take an in-depth look at children’s physical development as a result of breastfeeding and of training their motor skills. This leads to a discussion of the various generations’ roles and how feelings and behavior are passed on through the generations. Parents can use their knowledge and awareness about these roles as tools in their work as parents.

    Born Wise is based on my experiences working with children, parents, and future parents as a nurse, and as a Family health nurse in public and private practice throughout the past 35 years. In Born Wise I use concrete examples to illustrate the many interesting facets of children’s development, and their parents’ attempts to understand them and support them in their development toward becoming adults themselves.

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    CHAPTER 1

    Your Little Child Understands What You Say

    I have no doubt that children, from the moment they are born, understand what we say. In my job as a family health nurse I have had many experiences with new families that have convinced me that children understand right from the outset. It is often evident, that there is such a close connection between the feelings of mother and child that the child reacts to the mother’s feelings. The same goes for the words that she says.

    The Newborn is Listening

    The child, who was only a few weeks old, was crying, and the mother was upset because she couldn’t figure out the reason. So we talked about how the birth had gone and how the pregnancy had been. Looking at the child while we were talking, I saw an observant and responsive child. The child stopped crying and whimpering, and instead she became quiet and started to listen. It turned out that the birth had not lived up to expectations, so we talked our way through it. The mother told me about the circumstances surrounding the birth about which she was unhappy. In the meantime, the child was in her mother’s arms listening. When the mother spoke about the circumstances that had hurt her emotionally, and which had been burdensome to her, the child cried. And when we were done talking about what had

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