Woof woof vs dog

[Tonicandgin]

Mil is teaching dd that a dog is a woof woof, clock is tick tok and cat is meow etc etc

Pet hate of mine but before we tackle it I wondered the 'real' reason it's a no no (other than it annoys the hell out of me).

Just need to be armed.

Well I'm with your mil actually- babies pick up words like these as they are easy to say, and easy to remember as they sound like what they are. This gets them on the road to learning language and the proper words can come later. After all, how many adults do you know who still call a sheep a baa baa?

None. I know absolutely no people that refer to sheep as baa baas.

Ms bug.... Woof woof is easier than dog? Get a grip! Dog is a really easy word and w sounds can be difficult for some dc.

Talking down to children is a habit which starts when they are babies. It does not help them to become articulate children who express themselves confidently.

Children who can't express themselves get frustrated.

Good luck challenging this one op!

She signs, so it's not like she can't communicate. And babbles. And can say about 40 words so is getting there, I don't get why we'd teach a child that a dog is a woof woof. Rather than 'what does a dog say?'

V odd

I have no issue with her saying woof etc just that she's being taught it's the wrong thing

YABU all the babies I know make the noises to start with and no reason to fall out with your MIL about this.

There are studies that show that communicating with babies like this actually facilitates language development, that's why "baby talk" comes easily to most people.

My two both started with animal noises but by the age of 2-3 were using the correct words.

I called it a doggie, not a woof, woof. I don't think I ever called things by their sound - it's a bit silly really

"Woof Woof" would not come naturally to me - seems a bit overly complicated and forced. But I am a big fan of baby talk - doggie, duckie, kitty, dink dink (drink), malkie (milk) and bic bic are all used daily in this house (by me , my 2 and 5 year olds speak perfectly normally )

My 13 month old can say dog bear cat and then will say noises they make think it's silly teaching them doggy when it's just as simple to say dog

The 'baby talk' idea is about using expressive facial expressions and intonation, as far as I am aware, not using these kinds of baby words for things.

This is obviously not statistically significant, but I didn't use any of these baby words with my DS and he was an early fluent speaker. He didn't seem to have any issues with saying dog, cat, cow etc over woof-woof and so on.

I don't care for that either, OP, but ther probably isn't anything really wrong with it.

Our family pets wer introduced by their names, not their kind ( I know, animal mad family ). Then when the kids heard the dog bark, we'd say " that's right ds, Tara the dog says woof woof".

Therefore reinforcing, the dogs name, that she is a dog and that dog go woof. Can't promise we did it each time, but that's what we tried most of the time.

I asked a few weeks/months back about when baby talk would end.

There's nothing wrong with it, it's just words, let her talk whatever you want, an expressive vocabulary is certainly more useful than demanding that a dog is a dog (rather than a woof woof or a Labrador, or a Poodle, or an Alsation, or a Mutt, or a Hound, or Chien, or ... )

Use of baby talk - both simplified language as well as intonations etc. - is nearly, but not quite universal in human speech, so it certainly seems pretty useful but not essential.

You can talk normally, even if MIL doesn't.

My sample of one indicates there's no problem with this - we used lots of these types of words with dd, and she's always had fluent speech and a wide vocabulary for her age (at two year check, HV indicated two years ahead of expected speech).
I just wouldn't worry too much. Use the language you want to, but you can't hope to police the language your dmil uses when alone with the dc, even if you wanted to. All will be fine.m

IME it usually goes like this:

Adult: look, there's a cat, she says 'meow meow', hasn't she got lovely soft fur, blah blah blah'
Baby: (points at cat) meow meow!

I don't think people are deliberately calling the cat a meow meow, that's just the part that babies pick up on.

You might find you don't have much influence either way. My parents felt the same as you and would ask "can you see the cow?" To which I would always reply "yes, moo cow" much to their dismay!

I wouldn't worry about it. Let mil use woof woof, you use dog & wait with glee for the day mil says "oooh, look at that woof woof" & your child looks up at her & says "but it's a dog/greyhound/daschund grandma".

Woof woof is just madness. Everyone knows a dog is a bow wow- not a woof woof.

SquareStarfish You have brightened up my grey Monday morning with a good belly laugh - thank you!

Well given that your mil is not the only influence in your dc's life does it matter?

You just tell you DC what it is.

I don't think it matters. My dc are bilingual so they have 2 words for everything, I'm sure your dc will manage to deprecate out that mummy and the rest of the world call the hairy friends on leads dogs but grandma calls the woof-woofs.

Does your dp still call them woof-woofs?

Glad to be of service catwithkittens.
while we are on the subject- don't be confused by bark bark which is the name for a chicken in this house