What exactly is Baby talk?
Parents and we adults, have had a thought from centuries that the best way to communicate with a baby is via baby talk. This gives a feel of being more innocent, immature, loving, which is very close to what babies are. Speaking slowly with some rhyming in between, varying the voice tones to attract a child seems to be okay to see a responsive & excited baby. But using not so common and strange words, developing un-real words sounding & ending with โyyโ or similar may not be the best manner to communicate with your child, is what many researches say.
“Baby talk is considered to be a very important mode of communicating with babies and toddlers. Early speech & vocabulary are directly proportional to reading, writing, spoken skills by the time they hit their schools”.
During the 1st year of the birth, babies love to coo, gurgle when someone tries to communicate in a not so adult language, which is baby talk. And the amazing part is to see babies respond to the baby talks. Baby talk takes you in the highs & lows of the words, singing out beautiful songs to your baby, focus on specific words with a musical tone. All this helps babies get more responsive, especially to the high pitched words with some funny facial expressions. But what here I wish to focus is that while baby talking, focus on speaking whole sentences with special emphasis on some words as –
“Hey baby, I have some MILK for you (focus on Milk, for baby to understand).”
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Something to remember while baby talk!ย
I hear many people around meย showing their love as โOh my coochi – – poo…you are sho sho chweetโ
Look, that doggie wants to play, Here is a cattie,ย My koochi – poochi , Lets go to poo and so on.
Well, friends, this is not at all a baby talk, what we are referring to here. These are rather a no-sense talk that we are giving to babies & toddlers which will not only confuse them with the real words, rather provoke them to use wrong vocabulary. Saying โDogโ or a โCatโ is much simpler than Doggie & Cattie, Isn’t it? Once they reach the school age, then we will start rectifying their vocabulary saying, that it is a Dog and not a Doggie. So who got kids the habit of saying Doggie? We only!ย
Why not communicate with them usingย correct phrases & words right from the beginning. Why not say, letโs go to the bathroom to do Potty, instead of calling it a poo or other peculiar and not-so-funny names? Try to use normal language as much as possible. Yes, kids might not understand complete sentences you say, but they catch on the focus words & get the meaning. This way, they get to hone their spoken skills, speech & vocabulary in a much better manner rather than listening to those no-sense baby-ish talks all day round.
When Babies go there way!
Sometimes, even infants try to invent their own version of words or sometimes even the sentences which can seem to be deformed. Donโt jump directly to rectify them. Have a balance that you donโt tend to use those words. When kids hear the right words, they will switch over to the correct versions gradually when they enter the real world.ย
The major aim of Baby talk is to establish a special communication between the baby & we – adults. And this can always go in a real-world manner. By using words as chook-chook train, doggies, birdies, we are only shifting our own speech. This will never benefit a childโs speech development rather hinder it up.
Want to get some Speech Development tips for kids? Here is all you need by Mommyinme!
Let the communication go in a much beautiful yet practical manner to help develop the speech for babies.
Happy Communicating!
I never used baby talk with my kid. I always used complete and clear sentences. I hate baby talk, lol
That’s great that u hate baby talk…it doesn’t helps babies
I always spoke normally to my kids when they were babies. I mean, sometimes I got cutesy, but for the most part I spoke to them like they were a regular person. I would talk about our day and such, and they seemed to like that. And I always called things by their proper names. For example, it was usually, “Do you need to pee?” No, “Do you need to tinkle?”
That was great Amber..but I still see so many people avoiding using proper words n just doing baby talks without knowing that it may hamper their kids speech dev later!!
I am of mixed emotions about this. I do think that we shouldn’t be infantilizing our children, encouraging them to make nonsensical words in order to keep them as children. But I also think that using those other words doesn’t necessarily hurt either. They speak to imagination and other things that we should also be encouraging in our children.
Yea that’s true, but we really need to work to stop talking those nonsense words which actually hamper the vocab
Hm, we are a bilingual family and have twins and for me, straight talking is the best way! A dog is not a woof-woof, itโs a dog! When my now 6-years olds came home from school saying โchoo choo trainโ I was like โWHAT???!!!โ Youโve gotta be joking me! Let them hear the proper words, they will eventually use them in the correct sense and be able to pronounce them!
That’s so true b this is what I wish to say here to parents…let there be direct conversation!!
Sometimes it is too funny to hear parents communicating to their kids! I agree with you Jhilmil that right Baby Talk can make a huge difference in child development!
Thanks Ana for backing this thought!!
I love your posts Jhilmil. This is a good information for new moms and very helpful too. I never spoke in baby language and thats why my girls spoke clearly from the starting.
Thank you so much, happy that a mum acknowledged a mum:)
This is interesting. I wonder what happens when strangers etc approach baby and start baby talking.
Ha ha yea it happened with me when my relatives did so..my kid used to stare at them when they spoke ..to some I had to say to express their love in a normal vocab;) rather than saying my koochi poochi
I have always spoken clearly with my child She started speaking vwry clearly at the proper age itself..But sometimes she wants to use secret words to say something in front of crowds or other people .
My daughter had a few words of her own! She liked the way they sounded and now that she’s thirteen we look back and laugh that she called a bathing suit a bathing soup! LOL No harm done … its all apart of babies learning their voice ๐
Well though I agree that we should teach children the correct vocabulary right from the beginning, but I think coochie coo stuff is more about expression of love rather than knowledge sharing.. still its an insightful article
baby talk is fun..love chatting with them in their own language.
Baby prattle is nice though but should not be encouraged .All your posts are so good !