Photo Credit Jomphong
Lets face it parents, babies have to be the cutest creatures to walk the planet, with their little feet, hands, fingers, noses, ears and everything connected to them ever so tiny. Almost anything they do from sneezing, coughing and sometimes farting gives the biggest adult a tickle and giggle. It is almost instinct to want to use the same cute words and expressions they use to communicate with them. Before we do this though we should ask ourselves should we? Is it Helpful for the child to use Baby Talk?
Let’s take a look at 6 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Baby Talk below and then decide for ourselves if it is still necessary and healthy for our children.
1.) You Make No Sense
If someone was to record everything you say in a baby voice or in the mumbo jumbo that we think babies like, you would be sent into chuckles and laughter ( I should know I was caught off guard and recorded before lol). It’s funny how as adults we believe that the baby finds us entertaining and any laugh or giggle means they are happy. In reality I’m pretty sure they are just laughing at how confusing we are with the crazy faces we accompany these crazy sounds with.
2.) Creates Confusion
Baby talk isn’t just funny sounds and faces, it is confusion that results in the baby becoming even more confused as to what is going on. After 4 babies I can personally say by the time I got to my 4th baby the baby talk was out the window and down the street. I noticed my children were always so confused as to what I wanted them to do when I tried to use baby words or expressions they used.
3.) Creates Speech Delays
In many parents opinions it is okay to do Baby Talk until the baby actually starts to talk, but using made up words and words pronounced incorrectly can lead to speech delays. There is no 100% scientific evidence of this but there is the worry that teaching a baby how to do something incorrectly over time can create hardships in the future where they will have to unlearn these habits.
Photo Credit photostock
4.) There Are Better Ways To Connect With Your Baby/Toddler
As cute as Baby Talk is there are other ways to connect with your little one that involve imaginative play and learning. These types of activities encourage learning development and imaginative play which foster your child’s ever growing need to learn and grow.
5.) Use The Tone Of Your Voice To Your Advantage
Baby’s detect the feeling in your voice and associate it with levels on importance in what you say. For example you could try an exercise with your little one and see how they react to you saying the same phrase either in a Happy tone or an Angry tone. As you can see your little one reacts to the words you say depending on your tone, now that you know this you can use it to your advantage.
6.) Babies Are Smarter Than You Think
We should really give babies more credit and understand that they understand way more than we think they do. If you would like the baby to learn to throw their unwanted snacks in the trash we should say “put it in the trash” vs “trash, trash”. I am very guilty of doing that with my first 2 boys whom I always used baby talk with. I found out on my 3rd baby that there was no need to shorten my sentences or words to help them understand. As a matter of fact they learned and understood me better when I used regular sentences and words when speaking to them.
What do you think? How do you feel about Baby Talk?
Amanda says
I so agree! I never used baby talk and my boys had huge vocabularies and spoke in sentences at a very young age! I feel the same about talking about yourself in 3rd person. Mommy can’t cuddle right now, mommy has to do the dishes, or, Daddy will be right there. UGH. I hate, hate, hate it! It’s sort of a spin off of baby talk and drives me nuts.
Brooke says
An excerpt from a RESEARCH based expert: Renate Zangle
Use Baby Talk: There is a mountain of research on Baby Talk, or what science
calls ‘infant-directed’ or ‘child-directed’ speech and the message is clear. Baby
Talk acts like a fortifier or fertilizer for the young child’s developing brain, word
and language learning. Baby talk has a slew of advantages for the youngest
learners – it holds the attention of very young infants better than regular adult-talk
does, which means that they can learn more from what they see and hear. It
helps infants to discern and tune into the speech sounds more quickly, it helps to
understand first words better, and it allows toddlers to build vocabularies more
quickly. Why are some parents then adamant about not using baby talk? Likely,
because baby talk has unfortunately gotten a bad reputation and is often
perceived as some kind of ‘dumbed down’, silly speech, with silly words and
sounds. Baby Talk could not be further from this preconceived notion. It is normal
speech with certain exaggerated qualities, such as a more sing-songy tone,
longer, stretched out vowels, longer and stressed key words, longer pauses
between words, shorter sentences, and lots of repetition. These are all speech
qualities that help the developing brain process and make sense of information
more easily. Baby Talk makes information
Amanda says
Yes, using a sing song voice and what most people perceive as “baby talk” are two very different things, but most people do indeed perceive “baby talk” as using dumbed down silly speech, and is what the article seems to be referring to, and what drives me absolutely mad, and most certainly DOES delay language development. If you don’t pronounce words correctly when speaking to your child, how are they going to learn proper pronunciation?
Looking back through the article, laymen’s term “baby talk” is indeed what the author is referring to. From #3…
“but using made up words and words pronounced incorrectly can lead to speech delay”
#5
“Use The Tone Of Your Voice To Your Advantage”
and #6 sums it up
“If you would like the baby to learn to throw their unwanted snacks in the trash we should say “put it in the trash” vs “trash, trash”.”
“Trash, trash” would be what most people consider “baby talk.” “Put it in the trash” can be said with a sing song voice to capture their attention without using incorrect grammar. This article is written for the masses, not for the scientific community, and therefore uses terminology that most people would associate properly.