Babytalk vs Adult Conversation

This is my first ILP-M thread. The debate has begun elsewhere but I'm eager to flesh it out into a full discussion.

I posited that it'd be best if children were spoken to like adults throughout their development, and Christine concurred, stating there was evidence that babytalk holds back development. Then, n/a chimed in with this article: http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=7160 which claims that babytalk is perhaps better for, well, babies (albeit based on entirely unnatural experiments).

I'd like to see more research for each side of the argument, and whether one should adopt a nuanced approach (such as keeping it simple during very early development but speaking to them like adults after they reach a certain level of comprehension).

How were you spoken to as a kid? How do you speak to your kids?

My main problem with the research reported in that irishtimes article is that rational adult conversation refers to actual things, observable things - it has recognisable cadence that ingrains with repetition and it has logic that humans intuitively pick up. Fluently garbling nonsense words at a child then repeating them more slowly? Well of course the child's going to remember more if it's slow - it's like hearing a foreign language for the first time! However, if the fluent speech had genuine meaning, would the results be similar?

and when is the lucky lady due?

there's plenty of research on the pro-babytalk side, I just googled "benefits of babytalk" and that was one of the first things that popped up.

Ultimately I don't know that it really matters that much. Even if you don't address them in adult language, they're going to hear adult language around them all the time, and they'll absorb it. I think it's just important for them to be around language, it doesn't really matter if it's directed at them or not. I don't really talk to my baby like I would to an adult but she also hears me and my wife talk to each other all the time.

I'll also say that you can make plans for how you're going to do these things like use adult language to address your baby to boost their mental/language powers but then once you actually have a baby things can change very quickly. I'd planned to do a lot more reading to the baby as an infant but then she gets here and I'm exhausted and she's just a baby with a little baby face and you just want to say "WHO'S A BABY? WHO'S A BABY?" in a high-pitched voice and then you try to read to them and you realize they don't care and they just want to eat and squirm around.

haha :D

obviously I am not proposing we unemotionally rear our children as intellectual scions, but the balance between exposing them PERSONALLY to adult conversation and merely allowing them to hear it is one I'm keen to explore. you're probably right that affection is more important than linguistic training.

i can't recall hearing anyone actually speak to a children using nonsense syllables and i am around a lot of parents \(OO)/

if by "babytalk" you mean big emphasized talkin about simple matters well you have to remember that babies don't understand words real good. so you have to make them really clear. and exciting to listen to. frankly i think adults could do this more often with each other - inject a little pizzaz

What I have beef with, more than making words big and happy and exciting and wow, is that adults will often conflate this tone with the removal of adult logic - they treat their children not just as people who need to learn words, but as idiots. That's what really gets me, when they play stupid discipline games and what have you, all in that exasperated babytone.

i had a college roomate who talked in baby-voice to me, usually about wanting to get drunk, or sodomize me. it was an important signal, because i could then know he was already drunk, and wasn't going to sodomize me. it was a different kind of communication.

I hope I wasn't all "YOU can't UNDERSTAND until you HAVE a baby" upthread. I was just trying to say some things you plan for and other things just happen.

I've been repeating words Little Man says to me. He'll be in the back seat and go "Hya!" and I'll respond with my own "Hya!". We go back and forth until Beeps tells us to be quiet.

But it's communication, and that's the novel part of where we are right now.

Beeps is at the age where she's like a kid saying the darndest things. I'll spare you the details (suffice to say, she's happy that a Dinosaurus Rex doesn't live in the house), but catching little bits of my speech and SS's speech in what she says proves that even if you don't talk to your kids in an adult voice, they'll still pick up on it. Little furbys, basically.

I remember reading that there's a certain age before which babies, in fact, DON'T pick up on adult speech purely between other adults (this was actually used as an explanation for why babies can't learn from television before a certain age). I think it probably matters less whether you use "baby voice" or "adult voice" and more whether you make an effort to actually communicate with a baby, since it seems like there's some link between that kind of interaction and language development. Seems like some of this should just be common sense though. I mean the right answer is probably somewhere in between a constant stream of "goo goo ga ga booby doopy" and a lecture on federal monetary policy.

n/a it didn't come across like that at all! But I wouldn't have minded if it had, really - I'm going entirely on personal instinct, with a teeny bit of experience, none of which involves being a parent.

PP that sounds lovely and I guess where I'm confusing things is that if the tone is encouraging and allows for imaginative, then the child can grow - but if the tone is antagonistic then the child will react against it, instinctively - and it's nice to know that they slowly pick up adult conversation in their own impressionable, flighty way!

lol hurting :D

it's nice to know that they slowly pick up adult conversation in their own impressionable, flighty way!

Look how far along you've come!

lord I am being hardzung today

One month dudes, and I will be addressing this question irl.

My mom, with infants, "Ahh bah bah bah bah. Grba grba grbl grbl." But while she says nonsense, she makes her eyes really big and her voice soft and intense and she leans in and when they grab her hand she moves it in a rhythm with her words, and if they put fingers in her mouth, she leaves them there while she enunciates, and so on. There's MASSIVE interaction and like, face-reading training, and the beginnings of cadence and rhythm, and other stuff going on. Would be a mistake to think this is somehow holding them back.

Otoh if to some people "babytalk" means, like, "Wooood da baybee likeee foody-woody?" or whatever at age 4, do I really need to finish?

Otoh if to some people "babytalk" means, like, "Wooood da baybee likeee foody-woody?" or whatever at age 4, do I really need to finish?

This was what I and probably LJ was referring to.

they treat their children not just as people who need to learn words, but as idiots

well, they ARE idiots. i mean, my son can't even tie his own shoes.

http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~arobic/funny/babies.html

Babytalk is awesome and important - think about why this thing just happened to happen? Laurel's right, facial expression and engagement is v. important too.

It probably doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference as long as babies are getting spoken to at all, but the "always speak like an adult" thing, when done as a deliberate program - I mean if you're just not comfortable talking goo goo then so be it, good luck with that - it reeks of playing Mozart 24/7 and having all visual stimuli in black and white for first 6 months. Whatever, no big deal, but this is really about sucker parents not child development.

Pretty sure Sunny and Hank speak Xhosa with each other when they don't want me to know what they're talking about.

Pretty sure Sunny and Hank speak Xhosa with each other when they don't want me to know what they're talking about.

(Makes obligatory Sugar and Spike reference)

The way I speak to my daughter is constantly morphing based on her cognitive development. It's instinct to talk in a high-pitched, sing-songy way to infants because that's how they best respond to your voice. Now that Chloe is a year old I actually "talk" to her since I'm pretty sure she gets about 25% or more of what I'm saying. At this point, she sort of dictates how our communication progresses.

^^Noodle Vague and Laurel both OTM. Babies like silly voices and stupid noises and funny faces, it makes them laugh so why wouldn't you do it? As they get older it just becomes more natural to progress to more of a normal 'conversation' as they become more capable of chatting with you. They all seem to end up being able to talk.

they treat their children not just as people who need to learn words, but as idiots

well, they ARE idiots. i mean, my son can't even tie his own shoes.

They're also jerks because you know even if they could tie their own shoes they'd still make you do it

Also Laurel totally OTM as she always is with the babbies

One month dudes, and I will be addressing this question irl.

― hypo ilxa/hermes ban (kkvgz), Tuesday, September 14, 2010 1:49 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

Before my daughter was born, I thought I was all going to read her Aeschylus in Scooby-Doo voices for all the titans and gods. When she was about two weeks old, I realized that wasn't going to last, and decided that Bulfinch's Mythology would suffice. These days, I just go "buh-buh-buh-buh-buh?"

ha that's how I talk to my baby too, just BEE BEE BEEE BEEE BAAA BAAA BAAA BAAAA BUH BUH BUH BUH BUH, she thinks it's funny. to mix it up, I sing the beginning of "shutterbugg": BUH BUH, BUH BUH BUH, BUH BUHBUH BUH. BUH BUH, BUH BUH BUH, BUH BUHBUH BUH.