Not sure why this triggered a snarky response unless Ted is just waving a monkey puppet for internet points. Talking normally to kids is not rocket science, and it’s not stereotypical yuppies desperate to get their gifted darlings into AP class. It’s very simple - little kids can handle normal speech just fine, so why use baby talk?
It really depends on the kid and the complexity of the message. Young kids are still learning the intricacies of the language and building a vocabulary. Not talking down to them helps build those skills up. But at the end of the day, if the message is not getting across, it’s the fault of the communicator.
Plus it’s an annoying flex to say “see how amazing my kid is? It’s all because of me!” Some kids just pick up language easier, some kids sleep all the way through the night earlier, some kids toilet train easier, etc. Usually it’s better for parents to quietly take the little victory rather than treat it as a reflection of their amazing parenting skills.
regardless of a child’s inherent language skills I would argue that it’s a detriment to baby talk to them. surely the earlier they receive regular communication the sooner they are going to learn it.
I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure, it’s not that simple.
For one, you might not have much to chat about with your baby, so doing baby talk might actually get in more language training.
But then baby talk is also very emotionally charged. So, it might help with emotional development, or simply make the baby pay attention for longer and therefore actually help the language development.
Well, and then it also still depends on the baby. For example, this research suggests that babies with autism react differently to baby talk: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2022/toddlers-responses-to-baby-talk-linked-to-social-cognitive-language-abilities
Exactly, there’s a difference between baby talk and using age reasonable vocabulary.
You don’t need to ask a 3 year old why they are being disobedient. But it’s perfectly reasonable to ask why they “aren’t doing what you asked them to do”.
Those are all different from why u no lissen bebe
Because there’s a ton of research that we adapted to do it for good reasons:
Infants between 6 and 8 months of age displayed a robust and distinct preference for speech with resonances specifying a vocal tract that is similar in size and length to their own. This finding, together with data indicating that this preference is not present in younger infants and appears to increase with age, suggests that nascent knowledge of the motor schema of the vocal tract may play a role in shaping this perceptual bias, lending support to current models of speech development.
Stanford psychologist Michael Frank and collaborators conducted the largest ever experimental study of baby talk and found that infants respond better to baby talk versus normal adult chatter.
TL;DR: Top parents are actually harming their kids’ developmental process by being snobs about it.
