Parenting Pointers with Dr. Claudia - Episode 262

Topic - Teethy Smiles. Millions of years ago, as now, animals show their canine teeth to scare enemies. We human used to do that, too. But, about 7 million years ago, we started developing tools, began cooking our food and our brains grew. We learned to posture and scare off threatening people with rocks and sticks. Now what do we do with those big, scary canine teeth? We don’t need them to tear food like when we were living in caves, so, what’s the story? Over the millions of years, those huge canines flattened out and got smaller, balanced out our mouths and made us more attractive. As our human language skills developed, attention was focused on the mouth. Facial expressions became important and the teeth and smile combination was born. Facial expressions seem to be the “music” behind the “lyrics” of language. Pay attention to your own communication style. Make it easier for people to understand you by adding more “music” to your interactions.