Before detailing Tom’s cross-motivation in touching his toes, let’s first look at how a mono-motivated baby learns to move.
All babies desire to explore themselves and their surroundings, but within a range of comfort and safety. Babies do not “pull” their muscles, nor do they “stretch” or “warm up” to prevent such pulling. Why? Conventional wisdom points to their suppler muscles, yet the materialistic explanation only goes so far. Babies are fully capable of forcing themselves into soreness; they simply don’t do it.
Consider the following video.
This little girl clearly wants to roll over and goes for it with all her might (as her cries make known), but the moment she feels uncomfortable, she lets go. She does not go to the extreme and hold it for a “count of ten”. She does not know how far she’ll go, nor how long she’ll stay there. She simply follows her own motivation, constantly in flux. Reaching, resting. Reaching, resting. Exploration, comfort. Exploration, comfort.
Furthermore, with each attempt, she organizes herself in new ways. Sometimes she reaches more with her head and eyes, other times more with her pelvis and legs. Sometimes she rolls back all the way, other times she holds her head looking to the side. At no point does she judge, analyze or attempt to repeat the previous move, nor does she plan or control the move to come. In fact, she doesn’t think of ‘moves’ at all. Again, she simply follows her motivation from one moment to the next, no particular moment more or less important to her than any other.
In the short term, this behavior might seem chaotic, but in the long run it follows an orderly, predictable and even universal script. Before we can touch our toes, we must first roll over, crawl, sit, stand and walk. And before we can roll over, we must first swing our eyes, head and pelvis, and push the floor with our arms and legs. We only differ in the details. You might roll your head first, while I roll my pelvis. You might reach to the left, while I reach to the right.
The miracle is that we do this all on our own, more or less perfectly, without instruction. Yes, as babies, we see other people crawl, walk and the like, but we have no idea how they got there; yet, due to our shared design and environment, by simply following our own motivation, we get there too. That is, unless other people interfere with our learning, which brings us back to Tom.
In next week’s blog, we’ll specify how Tom’s parents crossed his motivation through reward, thereby preventing him from touching his toes.
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