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Once Upon a Time: How Parents Have Used Shhhhing in
Other Times and Cultures
Do you remember when your grade-school librarian shushed you? All
humans go “shhhh” (or “ssss”) to say “Be quiet” to each other. This
sound is one of the very few vocalizations understood by all humans, in
every corner of the globe. And in many unrelated languages it’s the root
of the word asking for silence:
“chut” (Urdu)
“shuu” (Vietnamese)
“chutee” (Serbian)
“soos” (Armenian)
“tzrch” (Eritrean)
“teeshina (Slovenian)
“hush,” “silence” (English)
“toosst” (Swedish)
“hushket” (Arabic)
“chupraho” (Hindi)
“sheket” (Hebrew)
“shuh-shuh” (Chinese)
“stille” (German)

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Even the Japanese use shhhh as the root of their request for quiet:
“shizukani” (although as a lover of Japanese food I might have guessed
it would be “shu-shi”).
As strange as it may seem, I believe that the calming effect of shhhh is
something that babies taught us. If it were not for the immediate
reaction cave babies had to shushing, parents would never have noticed
its tremendous value. I’m sure that once a Stone Age mom learned this
great trick, she couldn’t wait to share it with her friends. And through
the centuries, the discovery and teaching of this technique was probably
repeated in every village and tribe around the world.
Unfortunately, most of us today haven’t had much experience
watching women with their babies. That’s one of the reasons why so
many parents and grandparents have forgotten this age-old, effective
technique.
The Story of Shhhh: The Calming Sound That Babies
Taught … Us
How did mothers from the Alaskan tundra to the swamps of Albania
discover that this strange sound soothes screaming babies? No one is
absolutely sure, but my guess is that it happened something like
this:
About fifty thousand years ago, two Stone Age mothers were
eating lunch together when one woman’s baby started to shriek. Her
mom immediately leaned over her “cave” baby’s cradle and tried to
calm her by squawking in her ear—the way she had seen a mother
pterodactyl sucessfully calm her young. But the baby continued to
cry.
When the poor child had just about wailed to the point of

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“Neanderthal-mania,” her mom’s friend asked if she could try
something she had once seen another mom do to soothe her frantic
baby. The “cave” mother handed her wild little “infantasaurus rex”
over and watched in amazement as her friend held her tightly and
made a harsh, shhhhing sound right in her infant’s ear. Like magic,
the baby suddenly became calm!