To find baby language really annoying

[Lerato]

I have always taught dd1 to say words properly eg dog, duck etc. Why to some people use doggy, ducky etc. I hate it!

[marenmj]

lol, I don't like other adults calling me mummy. I am not their mummy!

[lucky1979]

cuppateajanice - I don't believe that referring to yourself by a label (e.g. Mummy) blurs the line for a child between self and otherness, quite the opposite in fact.

If you are trying to teach a very small child that they are "I", but when you are referring to yourself, you are also "I", but also "Mummy" is, if anything going to confuse their sense of self. While if you start of with names/labels (e.g. Mummy, Daddy, child's name) then they establish themselves as individuals with an individual label. They can then work out more complex sentence structure later on.

[alypaly]

why do we have so many words that sound the same :
i, eye,aye,
read,reed,reid,
mine as in mine ,mine as in coalmine..english...greek is easier

[BaronessBarbaraKingstanding]

YABU.

Motherese is the tone of language, simplication, alteration of usual grammar and expansion of words to make them clearer and more lyrical to babies and chikdren.

Even if this were not te case you'd still be unreasonable imo.

My children are just so amazingly gorgeous cute and scrumptious I just want to squish thier little bottoms in both hands and mumble into thier soft necks as they giggle 'whose mummies scrumptious babypiesie?? who is? who is?' In fact writing this I now can't wait for them to come home form school to do this.They are 6 and 9yrs .

baby talk is affectionate, it's fun it's playing with language and creates shared understanding which is actually what language is about.

All this 'they'll never learn if you say quack quack..' is just utter crap. Of course they'll learn it's a duck, and eventaully you'll stop callin it a doggie/pussy cat, but hell what's they hurry? One day soon they won't be soft gorgeous creatures who squeal with delight at your silliness anymore.

Embrace thier babiness for as long as possible.babytalk is one way of expressing this.

[NaccetyMac]

Motherese is fascinating - if you look at the sound patterns, they are the same across cultures.

I work with people with profound and multiple learning difficulties and one of my favourite activities is Intensive Interaction - basically mother-baby interaction, but with older children and adults. It's unbelievable how much difference it makes to communication. Children that don't get the interaction for whatever reason don't form the neural pathways needed for being social. Rhyming words, emphasised words, songs etc are all really important parts of learning to communicate.

Talking baby talk is fine. Patronising children isn't. Fine line.

[ThePinkOne]

I agree about the tone and use of certain words that are easier to learn but can't agree with my dad who calls every type of bird from a pigeon to a swan 'dickie bird'. To me it was like calling anything with 4 legs a cow

[cantpooinpeace]

awwwwww pooor lickle Lerato....she not likey likey

Who cares

[StealthPolarBear]

"What gets on my tits is the awful singsong way my MIL talks to DS. She always 'talks' to him in an odd voice, can't really describe it, but she repeats everything she says to him with odd, random emphases - sort of: 'Oh well, are we going to put our shoes on? Our shoes yes, oh well, what a smart boy, shoes on, yes, let's put our shoes on' etc. Repeat until I want to brain her."

My mum does this to DS - "Ohhhh is that a rice cake oooh is that a lovely rice cake mmmmmm is that delicious?"
I'm going to teach him to reply "Yes, bit bland but I quite like them"

[ginnny]

I hate it when you talk to a Mum about their child and she uses "we" instead of he or she.
ie
Me: How's (dd/ds) today?
Mum: Well we had a sleep, then we woke up and had a drinky, then we played with the bbricks ...so on.

A Mum at school does it and I have to resist the urge to shake her and scream "not WE you moron. You didn't have a bloody sleep, your BABY did!!!!"
(Can you tell I'm a little premenstrual !!)

[whoisasking]

You made me do a little tear in my little eye, YES you did. You did! Come and givvus a kiss...MWAH!

[ginnny]

My MIL used to do a high pitched squeaky imitation of my ds to me.
"Ooh Mummy, I've got a dirty nappy"
"Mummy I want Nanny to hold me now!!"

[MiniMarmite]

YABU and what colditz and marenmj said

[MrsSantosisafeminist]

YABU and a bit precious tbh. Who really cares if a 2 year old says "ducky"? The point is to talk to kids, engage with them, read to them, talk about their environment all of which will help them to learn to talk and understand their world and to relate to people around them. I use baby/toddler speak but watch out for development in my kids. DC2 has just got personal pronouns so that's my guide to drop the use of the third person - but then I forget and slip back into it sometimes... doubt it will harm her and her long term development.

[CloudDragon]

just wait til they are teenagers and calling their mates 'my dogs' and you will rue the day you didnt treat them as babies when you could.

YABU btw it's good for toddlers to have as wide a range as language as possible and that means knowing that a dog is a dog and to some a doggy.

[alysonpeaches]

Some things are serious and merit worrying about eg to vaccinate or not. Motherease comes into the other category of not serious enough to worry about. So please yourself.

The people who said "piggy jacks" and "moo cows" didnt annoy me as much as "Look at the galloping horses Tilly". But each to their own. I must admit I usually use very little motherease, but did use the word "doggy" for a while. And I wasnt being rude.

[chickbean]

Fairynuff reminded me of a similar story my friend told me - she was minding a friend's child and looking at a book of animals:

Friend: Look at the doggy
Child: It's a fox

Friend: Look at the pussy cat
Child: It's a lion

Friend (having learned her lesson): Look at the lizzard
Child: It's an iguana.

[alison56]

I'm an SLT so have a special interest in this sort of thing.

Motherese is indeed the exaggerated intonation, not the words themselves.

Motherese is v important, for all the reasons others have said.

However, if you teach a child that a duck is a "quack quack" then they have to double learn because later they realise it's actually a "duck".

In most cases this isn't a problem but if a child has special needs it can make it much harder for them.

I am guilty of "ducky" and "doggy" and "pussy cat" (and others) but each of these is using the real word as the stem so there's no problem.

[zippy539]

Baby talk drives me completely daft. However I find it IMPOSSIBLE not to refer to myself in the third person - which also drives me daft. It's getting embarrassing now as DS is 8....

[claireybee]

The only thing that bothers me is when people insist on teaching babies to "say ta". No, say thank you

My auntie was offering dd a biscuit: say ta, say ta

dd just stares at her

Auntie: oh can't she speak yet, dgd (5 weeks younger than dd) can say ta

Finally hands dd the biscuit

DD: Thank you



I wouldn't mind if these were people who said ta as part of normal conversation but the only use it when speaking to babies.

[claireybee]

(I do call myself mummy and use a lot of repetition though )

[alison56]

claire I don't see your point

Ta means thanks

"Thankyou" is hard for a baby to say. "Ta" is easier.

[Ninks]

YABU, and it's interesting this has cropped up again. I'd like to be a SALT and I was reading an old thread about this very thing last night.

Moondog's yer sense-spouting woman, here

Fab post from edam too

[Ninks]

claireybee I don't like "ta" either. I'm from a very working class background but nobody I knew / know says that! Perhaps it's a northern thing in which case I might teach it.

I prefer, "good girl / boy" if the child does something nice or kind, or even if they pause whilst holding your Blackberry over the lav without dropping it

[CrankOfTheScrew]

Clairybee I was just going to write that! Why teach a child a made-up word only to then have to teach them another, longer word. They may not pronounce it properly, but babies will still "get" what thank-you means. It's been one of the first things both of my children have said.
Alison would you say "ta" as an adult?

It really grinds my gears!

[edam]

did someone call?

Why, thank you kindly ma'am.