AIBU to hate baby language

[PorridgeLove]

DS is 2 years old . We have just talked to him in a normal way and his language has developed very well. At nursery, they talk to the kids in a normal way, too. It drives me bonkers when someone talks to him in a baby voice or uses baby language. He does not enjoy it either because, frankly, I think he does not understand what they are trying to get at.

AIBU to be annoyed when family and friends try baby language on him?

The thing is he wasn't (at that point) taught the rhyme - none of the various toddler groups we went to did it, it's not in either of the nursery rhyme books we had and I wasn't familiar with it. Out of the context of the rhyme the names lack meaning and preschool were using them in hand washing, finger painting etc.

When I was at college we studied this, it's called 'mother ease'. It's proven that babies respond better to the sing song voice rather than an adult tone?! I didn't do this with my own children tho, I always spoke to them like children but not complete idiots lol. This is why in the night gardens tombliboos talk the way they do, it's how children naturally learn to speak and follows patterns of speech of that makes sense.

*Out of the context of the rhyme the names lack meaning.

No they don’t. The names show him that language can be used in a figurative way, alluding to function (pointer). Also I thought it was the rhyme you had a problem with?

I still absolutely fail to see any issue with him being taught that a) functional objects can be described in figurative language and b) the same object can be referred to by different terms.

I’m surprised, given your background that you have a problem with any of this, but you’ve clearly got a bee in your bonnet over this particular incident.

I found it annoying until I heard it actually is better for kids to pick up language as it engages them more. It was covered in the BBC documentary about babies that was on last year, worth a watch!

When he first referred to Peter Pointer I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about and thought it might be a weird penis euphemism! Baby talk to me should come before the real words. At three he knew the real words and stopped using them in favour of the baby talk because that's what his "teachers" were using. I do hate the rhyme but no my actual grievance was with his speech effectively taking a step backwards because in this case baby talk was replacing use of the actual proper names. I have never had an issue with figurative language or with things have multiple names I actively encouraged both from birth. I had a niggle, an annoyance yep if you like a bee in my bonnet about a child that I could previously understand suddenly making no sense at all.

I do hate the rhyme but no my actual grievance was with his speech effectively taking a step backwards because in this case baby talk was replacing use of the actual proper names

I don't see it like that at all.

Firstly, Peter Pointer isn't baby talk. It's a figurative/metaphorical term for the finger. Secondly, it doesn't strike me as a backwards step at all, rather stretching and developing his understanding of what language can do and convey.

But we've been on this little side road for a while now and I don't see us coming any closer to agreement so happy to leave it there.

You'd have hated the way my MIL spoke to my DDs then! She used to put on a little girl's voice as if SHE was also a child! Drove me barmy!