Babies make us behave … um … shall we say, differently. As soon as we see a new born the tone of our voice changes to a more sing song kind of voice. We stretch out the words and mispronounce the words as if that makes comprehension easier for the baby. “Are you feeling sh-l-e-e-p-y?” Some parents will change rules of grammar and say, “We are very hungry now, aren’t we?” We repeat some words in a sentence and will say, “Want to go walkie-walkie?”The most common baby talk style is to create new words that are supposedly more comprehensible to the baby. Parents will point to a dog and refer to it as “bow-wow” or call a cat as “meaow”. You could say that they are both referring to the sound of the animal and hence justified. How do you explain referring to food as “num-num”? That is a close approximation of the sound that is made when a toothless infant attempts to eat, a parent had explained to me. Try it out.

So why do we do baby talk?

Human beings have special relationships with their young. They need to be made to feel special and loved. Slowing down our speech while talking to the baby helps the baby grasp the nuances of the language they are being exposed to. We hold different standards for adults and kids. An adult who complains about feeling “shleepy” will be ridiculed while a baby saying that will result in a million exclamations of “so sweet”!

The effect of baby talk

The child grows up hearing wrong grammar, sing song tones and wrong descriptions of everyday objects (eg “num-num”) and then one day has to unlearn these words and pick up vocabulary that will stay throughout his or her life. The first three years are crucial for the child’s development.The number of words that the child is exposed to can significantly impact the brain development. Children from disadvantaged homes are exposed to fewer words as they are growing up. Research showed some children heard thirty million fewer words by their 4th birthdays than others. The children who heard more words were better prepared when they entered school. Enriching a child’s early language environment does not require changing cultural practices and values or idiomatic speech.But when the child grows up learning words that have to be later discarded is losing out the opportunity to build his or her vocabulary and learn the language correctly. When parents use baby talk, they are teaching the child a word that is temporary and is soon to be replaced with the correct one. The same effort would have resulted in twice the vocabulary.The study that introduced the notion of the 30-million-word gap, had found that parental tone, responsiveness and use of symbols affected a child’s IQ and vocabulary. What really impacts development of the baby is the quality as well as the quantity of conversation. The quality of time spent in talking to the child is the best way to impact development.Do you think baby talk limits the vocabulary of the child? Have you seen parents who do not use baby talk? What impact has it had on the child? Leave your answer in the comments below.——————-Join me on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduri