Baby talk.... seriously???

*Fluffy Bunnies - posted on 03/13/2011

Sounds like we need a new thread for pacifiers so we can keep this thread on topic :)

Teresa - posted on 03/13/2011

I'm not offended. I just happen to have 2 kids that prove it's not a fact. :)

Kalie - posted on 03/13/2011

this is an oppinionated group, i didnt mean to offend you but doctors even say take it away at 6 months.

Teresa - posted on 03/13/2011

My girls had a binky (w/ limits) until they were 2. They have never had any speech problems and they have perfect teeth. Saying that a baby having a binky over six months is inappropriate is not factual. It's fine if that's your opinion, but it's definitely not a fact.

Maria - posted on 03/13/2011

yea see thats what i had learned too like i said in my previous post when my baby ( this is my first) was born i didnt even kno how to talk to her. I was like she is so small it seems weird to talk to her normal but baby talk seems silly but then i learned that if you mimick them it does encourage them to be vocal. Also when you baby talk your voice automatically goes higher and your face looks happy and babies respond to that. Now at 1 or 2 yrs old i can see how obviously that doesnt apply anymore since they should beginning to learn how to saw "real" words. however i think its a bonding thing and you can only do it for so long. So if at 1 or 2 yrs old i think that baby talk or silly voices and such used at playtime and during cuddling and is completely fine. Im not an expert but i really dont think baby talk really effects whether or not they will be able to talk correctly. I think every baby just learns to do so at their own time. so yea im ok with the baby talk but i do think teaching proper grammar is important to so if you are out and about and you notice your kid saying something wrong then correct them of course so they can learn but if your at home and playing then be silly with them. And also i dont think nick names for items is a bad thing either like i think someone had said for dog a kid may say a woof woof or whatever i mean i think thats ok its not like for the rest of their lives theyre not going to know that a woof woof is a dog. But thats just me. i think the pacifier is more "harmful" if anything i think once a child can walk then it should be taken away or if necessary then just used at night and then slowly taken away as well. I actually never heard that at 6 months it should be taken away altogether but i mean theres no exact time the earlier the better.

Christina - posted on 03/13/2011

I have heard that, while "baby talk" can be detrimental to a child's speech development (from a developmental psychological stand point), I have also been told to repeat back the coos, and babble sounds that they make as very small babies. It simulates conversation and lets them have more verbal attention, which encourages communication once they are speaking actual words.
I'm am in a Dev.Psych.class right now, and I was asking my teacher loads of questions because my nephew is 2 and bi-lingual (his mother is Japanese and father is American). My brother thought that he wasn't talking for a long time, they are separated, until I suggested that he was speaking in Japanese. Then it clicked, his English is delayed because he was primarily learning Japanese. Now he is two and he speaks both quite well.
By the way, none of us spoke baby talk to him either.

Kalie - posted on 03/12/2011

talking to a child like they are stupid is how i look at "baby talk." i mean really, just because they are babies, doesn't mean they are less than brilliant! baby talk leads to speach problems, developmental delays, and so much more. and a binky in the mouth over 6 months is inappropriate. i have a 3 month old and he never uses a binky. i have them since they were given to me at the hospital and at our baby shower, but i wont use them. not only do they affect speach, they affect teeth, jaw, and gum health and development. id like to avoid paying thousands of dollars on cosmetic dentistry as much as possible.

Teresa - posted on 03/12/2011

Missy, I think it depends. I know that some twins have a 'speech delay' cuz they use 'twin speak' w/ each other and don't really feel the need to talk to others normally (or something like that... been a long time). I know my twins didn't have any speech delays. They had more advanced speech than all the other toddlers we hung out w/ at the time.

My almost 4 year old nephew has been speaking properly and in complete sentences (minus the letter 'L' which is is starting to pick up on now) since before he was 2.

My almost 3 year old son has a LOT of words, but the pronunciation on a lot of letters is missing. We didn't/don't speak baby talk to him and when he mispronounces something we repeat it properly and work w/ him on trying to say it. He just can't get it yet.

I do think that 'baby talk' CAN inhibit a child's speech, but just because a child doesn't have the speech does not mean it's from anything a parent/caregiver has or hasn't done right. Every kid is different. :)

Missy - posted on 03/12/2011

I have twins that just turned one a few weeks ago. We don't baby talk. They are not behind in their speech. I was just wondering if you thought multiples are at a disadvantage with speaking because they are around others babies who are making baby sounds and not actually saying words?

Nikki - posted on 03/12/2011

I use baby talk, but we only use it when we are being cheeky or having fun together being silly, I don't generally label everyday words in baby talk. I don't have a problem with it as long as it is not over used or used on children.

My daughter is 16 months and she has a great vocab, she can say about 50 words and puts two words together, so I don't feel that baby talk has been detrimental to her development. If she started using baby talk all the time I would stop using it.

Meghan - posted on 03/11/2011

We still use a few "baby" words...sucky, baba, potty, pee pee...but I always tried to talk to him normally.
He is really advanced in his talking. I don't know if it's necessarily because I didn't use baby words, but because I ALWAYS talk to him and read to him. Even when he was a newborn I would have full on conversations with him. Guess it just clicked for him.

Katie - posted on 03/11/2011

baby talk drives me nuts! The farthest we have gone with my son is to refer to his little toilet as a "potty" and then instead of saying dog or cat, it's kitty or puppy. Sometimes if he gabbers (he is nearly 1.5 and doesn't do much talking , only "woof" because its what the dog says, mum, dada, stuff like that) I will repeat him because he thinks it's funny but I am not a fan of giving objects completely unreasonable names and then teaching them to someone who is just learning. It's a blanket not a baba!

Alexis - posted on 03/10/2011

I have heard that it is better to not use baby talk since your child is learning speech from listening to you, however I am guilty of talking that way to him. I don't do it on a constant bases mostly during certain times that we are playing, usually when I am snuggling or tickling him. My son is about 18 mo. The binky thing I look down upon at least when the child is old enough to talk if full sentences, then again my son has never taken to the binky and so I have not been in their shoes. I do have a funny story, when my son was about 3 months old his favorite toy was a monkey puppet. We were at the store with dad shopping and I was entertaining my son with the puppet and making all kinds of funny noise. I guess I really got into it because when my hubby asked me a serious question I turned the puppets head towards him and answered him in the same baby voice I was using for the puppets voice. I didn't even realize I had done it until afterwards, and we both just broke down laughing.

Celeste - posted on 03/10/2011

Johnny, that is an awesome post. I have three children, one of them is developmentally delayed as well as speech delayed. His twin brother was also speech delayed. I never used baby talk with them, yet, they were delayed. They aren't "advanced". It has nothing to do with my parenting that they are delayed in areas. It really bothered me for a long time when parents would brag that their child is "so advanced" and that the doctor was "amazed, etc. It sucked because I was doing the best I could yet, my children were delayed..



Anyway, with all that said, no, I'm not a fan of babytalk..

Maria - posted on 03/10/2011

My baby is seven months and when she was born i really didnt know how to talk to her. I was like baby talk seems stupid but talking to her like a normal person seems stupid too. eventually i ended up doing both she is 7 months and of course more "vocal" so i wll occasionally baby talk and i dont have a problem with it my mom does is to her too and everything. i see nothing wrong with i read that some baby talk is good because when we do that our voices naturally go higher and we have a happy look on our faces that resonates with baby making baby want to be more vocal and copy you. So yea i have nothing against it. However most of the time i talk to her right maybe in a funny voice but the words are always right. except for bottle i call it ti-ti short for te-ta short for tetera ( sorry if i spelled it wrong but thats bottle in spanish) so yea when they get to a certain age i think baby talk needs to be slowly taken away cuz you dont want to stunt your childs vocabulary. but yea i dont think anything is really wrong with it to a certain extent. Tha binky in the mouth for a kid that age probably woulda pissed me off more than the baby talk to be honest haha

Johnny - posted on 03/09/2011

Nah, Jaime, wasn't you ;-)

It is one thing to be proud of one's children for what they accomplish. It is quite another to attribute it all, or even a good portion of it to parenting skills. I've worked with some pretty amazing and talented kids who had complete failures as parents. Kids who excelled despite being raised in terrible environments and being taken from their family homes by social workers. Many kids do very well with no one to cheer them on and many fail despite loving, caring parents who do everything right.

My father always has said, "I won't take all the credit for you turning out so well, and I won't place all the blame on the parents who didn't get so lucky." It's easy to give oneself kudos when our good work succeeds. And I'm not suggesting we should not congratulate ourselves for working hard and doing a good job as parents. But one day you may find that even if you've done everything "right", something may go wrong. That doesn't always happen because of parenting practices and skills that aren't that good. Sometimes our children don't turn out quite like we've worked for. That often has little to do with their parents, despite the current trend of blaming them.

Jaime - posted on 03/09/2011

I sure hope that didn't come across in my post, because I will be the first to tell you that my son is exactly average...and I'm perfectly okay with that. He does speak well and I'm glad for that, but I haven't done anything to encourage his speech development aside from what you ladies are talking about (reading, speaking in proper English, getting involved in play groups and such). My cousin offered to lend me the "your baby can read" series that she ordered for her daughter and I told her no, that I was happy to let Gray advance at his own pace.

Anyway, don't meant to ramble, just want to clarify.

Kristy - posted on 03/09/2011

I dont know if its congratulating ourselves really (well, I take that back, I do know what you mean and have seen many parents take full responsibility for their childrens success.) I look at it as a proud Momma moment :) Everyone loves to brag on their babies, but at the end of the day, it is our children who are the ones doing these things (but never fully alone), but I will definatly pat myself on the back for encouraging my son to learn and me being his teacher instead of a tv screen or letting him "just figure it out", more than anyone though I thank God for my sons intelligence and desire to learn and excell. Every once in a while moms do need to congratulate themselves, we are doing a great job of raising our kids to the best of our abilities and only wanting what is best for them... While I believe that there are definatly better parenting skills and methods than others we all should be able to have our chests stuck out as far as they can go swelled with pride, no child does anything on their own when they have a supportive parent standing behind them cheering them on. :)

Krista - posted on 03/09/2011

I'm really glad you mentioned that, Johnny. As I mentioned, I do all the "right" things with my son. I read to him. We look at picture books and I tell him the names of things. We label EVERYTHING. When he babbles, I listen intently and make encouraging noises so that he knows I'm listening to him. We "talk" in the car during our commute.

But he only has 5 words.

The doctor's not worried. And my husband's not worried. And I'm not really all that worried.

However, when I see these mothers saying, "Oh, I didn't baby-talk my son, and he had 40 words by the time he was 15 months old," well...it makes me wonder if some people look at my son, hear his evident lack of vocabulary (paired with the fact that he's three fricking feet tall, which makes him look older than he is), and think, "Oh, that poor boy isn't even talking. His mother must not read to him (or talk properly to him, or what-have-you.)"

Johnny - posted on 03/09/2011

And personally, I really think parents need to stop congratulating themselves for all their children's successes. Your child doesn't talk well simply because you made it happen. My daughter, as I said, has always been very verbally advanced. I'm not silly enough to believe that it's entirely because of how we spoke and read to her. That just augmented what was already her strongest area of development. I didn't make it happen by parenting well, it's just where she happens to excel.

At the same time, if she's not as strong in other areas, it doesn't mean that I failed to parent well in those aspects. She may not be a great athlete, she didn't walk early and took a long time to start crawling. She's still not much of a runner. We've walked with her every day, always encouraged lots of playground and playgym time, and have her enrolled in lots of fun physical activities. I've just got the feeling that it may not be her forté. Which is just fine.

I really tire of reading posts all over online mom's groups where people say, well I did things A, B, and C and that is why my kid is so fantastic. Partially perhaps, but certainly not entirely.

Krista - posted on 03/09/2011

Hell, I might wind up doing the same thing, Johnny. Nothing makes fate laugh as much as a mother saying, "I'll never..."

Johnny - posted on 03/09/2011

So its a bad thing that I keep encouraging my daughter to continue pronouncing the word vehicle as vechiel? It sounds so cute and aside from fire "eggstingisher" its her last mispronounced word. I want to hold on to it, lol. Truthfully, I'll now probably call them vechiels for the rest of my life just to hold on to the memory.

Krista - posted on 03/09/2011

April, I wish you could meet my brother. You have so much in common. He was born with roughly the same level of hearing that you developed at age 3, due to my stepmom having had rubella when pregnant. And she was the same as your mom -- she worked her ass off to make sure that he learned how to enunciate properly. (She's a teacher for the deaf, actually...weird, no?) She never, ever used baby talk with him, and would get him to pronounce words over and over again to make sure he was enunciating clearly and not using that sort of nasally-throat sound that many deaf people wind up using.

For ourselves, we never talked baby talk with Sam. It's just not our style. The most babyish I get with him is calling a cat "kitty" or a dog "doggie". Everything else is proper English. Mind you, it hasn't advanced his speech thus far. He's 18 months old, and only says mama, dada, there, that, and uh-oh (the latter of which is usually accompanied by him clapping his hands to his cheeks, Home Alone-style, much to our amusement.) But, he's always wanting to know the names of things, so at least once he DOES start speaking more, he'll be using the proper words.

And I'm not going to put up with people encouraging him to mispronounce stuff. My nephew used to pronounce "table" with a short A, so it sounded like "Tah-ble". My parents thought it was cute, and repeated it often. It took him YEARS to learn to pronounce it properly. And my folks still pronounce it "tah-ble", because they think it's amusing, much to my irritation.

Corena - posted on 03/09/2011

We did not use baby talk in the way I think you mean...made up words for things, etc...
We did, however, repeat noises that he made and encourage him to make certain noises that we knew would develop the muscles in his mouth and tongue and teach him how to move his mouth.
Our older daughter spent years in speech therapy because she was neglected by her birth mom and her mouth muscles didn't develop properly. She is 17 now and still has speech issues.
So...I guess I think certain kinds of baby talk are beneficial.

Christina - posted on 03/09/2011

My son is six and I never used baby talk. I think he had a pacifier while we were at the hospital (about a week and a half, there were complications) but I never bought him one at home. I remember, my mom took him to one of his well baby check-ups, the pediatrician asked her if he could say 30-40 words; Lucas looked up at her and said, :"Probably more than that..." I think he was just over a year. He could carry on normal adult conversations at about 21 months old.
Conversely, I know a boy, everyone of his baby pictures he has a binki in his mouth, years old and he still sucks his thumb...

Kristy - posted on 03/09/2011

@Allie, trust me, my husband was SHOCKED!! I am not typically the "hold your tongue" type of person when I am being attacked for an opinion... But with my 1 year old son sitting in the buggy was all I could think about, had he not been there I may have said something back, but because of her child there too, I more than likely wouldnt have... I believe that we are our childrens first teachers, so not only was she talking down to him (IMO to speak ignorantly to a child is speaking down to them) she was also causing a huge scene! How are we to expect that our children behave properly in public when the parents dont? The woman was nuts!!! And for her to act that way (so defensive) I think she knew how crazy she sounded... I have realized now as a mother more than ever that people never cease to amaze me either!!! LOL!!!!

Allie - posted on 03/09/2011

This really made me laugh! I can just see it happening! I would love to give you a pat on the back for holding your tongue because I don't think I could've done that in a crazy situation like that!

WOW... people amaze me....

Jaime - posted on 03/09/2011

I understand that it's difficult not to judge. I'm not perfect at it, but motherhood has made me take a step back and really consider things before I launch a full-on judgment of a situation. I also said that not everything on the surface is as it seems. Sometimes, even though something looks off, (like the 5-year-old with a soother in her mouth) there might be a reason for it. I know that in other conversations I've had and read, sometimes children with autism or children with sensory issues use a soother past what we might consider the 'norm'. I'm sure that it might seem abhorrent that a 5-yo without any developmental incapacities would still be using a soother, but that could be a lack of education or support on the part of the parent. Either way, I don't know that the situation requires judgment...I would say empathy more than anything. I am an educated but struggling single mother and there are some days when I know I'm not in peak parental mode, so my son might leave the house with his soother because he's had a horrible night's sleep, or he's cutting teeth and just needs that extra bit of comfort and calm. I very well might get judgmental stares from other moms/parents, but all I can do is focus on my situation and what my son needs in that moment. I get that there are lots of frustrating things that we see other parents do...but again, that falls mostly under the 'unfamiliar situation' category, where we mostly fear/detach from the unknown, rather than seek to understand it. It's cultural relitivism that we forget about because even though NA is multi-cultural to the core, we still seem to operate off of one specific, westernized set of ideals when it comes to anything social. I'm not suggesting that we're all assholes for being judgmental at times...we're human and it's pretty much habitual to judge first and ask questions later. My point was only to say that even in moments of judgment, we should recognize that our first reaction might decieve us when we dig a bit deeper into a situation we're not familiar with.

Toni - posted on 03/09/2011

Candi your post made me laugh, Ethan says nanner all the time, every single day in fact when he asks for his banana - I guess that is what he hears when I say Banana - I am working on emphasizing the BA part of the word so he picks it up.

I realised that when he was little I did sometimes call it a nanner in the same way I say tayta in stead of potato - they are just the slang we use where I live - I had to really focus myself to stop doing it on both of the words (like I focused on not using slang when I worked because it makes you sound more professional to use full words).

April - posted on 03/09/2011

Sometimes it is hard not to judge! We go to a music group and there is a girl there that is at least 4 years old and has a soother in her mouth the whole time. She MIGHT even be 5. She is tall and towers over all the other little kids. Maybe she is the world's tallest 2 year old? Maybe there is a divorce going on in the family or some event like that? I'd like to give her parents the benefit of the doubt, because you never know what is going on in that child's life. It's the nice thing to do, but today it irritated the heck out of me. Some things just irritate you and for a lot of people baby talk is on that list of things!

Jaime - posted on 03/09/2011

I'm with you Johnny! :P



I don't think that baby talk is the evil inhibitor of speech development in children. I think there is a very clear, negative stigma surrounding baby talk though because it does sound silly and babies don't even understand us when we speak that way to them. Babies have their own language and we try to duplicate the sounds for them, but it all comes out greek anyway! I don't use baby talk with my son, but others in my family have done it and it's never been an issue. I was at play group today and another mom was there with her 2-year-old and was amazed at how well Gray could talk. She immediately felt like her son was below average. I felt badly that she instantly worried that her son might need speech therapy and assured her that some kids don't talk before age 4...but it does NOT mean that they don't have the beginnings of speech patterning or ennunciation cues. I think that parents worry far too much because the social ideal of raising super toddlers to be crazy counters and super spellers before they hit elementary school is absurd! When I see something out of the ordinary, I am not as quick to judge the situation before realizing that the situation I'm unfamiliar with, is not part of my lifestyle, and I can't judge it negatively based solely on the fact that it's not something I would do. I suppose that's what becoming a mother has taught me, because before I had my son, I was very quick to come to conclusions about things before taking a closer look or considering the reasons for what I was seeing/hearing. It's not as cut and dry as it might seem at first glance, and I just wish that moms would take a second to realize that before passing their unfounded judgments onto others. As for the soother in the mouth...my son is 2 and he still uses a soother at nap time and bed time. We began weaning at age 1 and it's going to be a very slow, positive process...and I'm pefectly okay with that.

Johnny - posted on 03/09/2011

My parents nor any of our family ever used baby talk when I was growing up. Due to improper lower jaw growth, my diction was terrible and many people could not understand me, even into elementary school. I was able to read and write already in grade 1, but I couldn't speak the words properly.

Though, I can see in the case of a hearing impairment that it could be very important to be able to watch the words being pronounced correctly in the mouth to learn to form them. It wouldn't be the same trial and error by sound that most children use.

Amber - posted on 03/09/2011

No baby talk in our house either. Full, proper language in different tones and volumes.
Our son had a slightly better vocabulary than other kids his age, but what our doctor always commented on was how good his diction was. He was able to speak very clearly at a young age. I don't know if that is from not using baby talk or if that's all him though :)

April - posted on 03/09/2011

I never used baby talk with my son because my mother never used it with me (or my sister). I ended up losing my hearing when I was 3. My mother was told that if she can continuously used baby talk with me, I may have never learned to speak clearly and correctly. I have a 90% loss in my left ear and a 100% loss in my right. Most children/teens/adults with a loss as significant as mine are nearly unintelligible. Upon meeting me for the first time, most people do not even realize I am deaf. They will ask me what country I am from, because I do have a slight accent (I've been told that I sound slightly nasal). I really thank my Mom for working so hard to make sure every word I heard was a real word...she wouldn't even let friends and relatives use baby talk! I really feel that her diligence made a difference in how I speak TODAY, at 29. That's why I never used baby talk with my son! It is paying off for him as well. He isn't deaf, but he can speak in full sentences and has a huge vocabulary of around 300 (or more) words. He just turned 2.

Candi - posted on 03/09/2011

I got so mad at my mom when my oldest was a little one. We went to her house one day and asked my son "want a nanner?" (banana) i said "mom, its a banana. He has no clue what a nanner is...neither do i." She got so mad! Then she heard my son call it a Banna and she said "well thats worse than Nanner!" I said "well he's 1!! In his mind, he is saying Banana!" Some people!!

Toni - posted on 03/09/2011

I agree with Carol, not using baby talk doesn't necessarily mean that children will be advanced with their speech. Ethan certainly isn't, I think he is about average for his age, and I know he is lazy with his speech, if he doesn't want to speak he just grunts even when he knows the word (and uses it every other day), I just encourage him to use his words not to grunt at me. He also will only speak if he wants to tell you something, he will not speak just for the sake of it like some children do - he is just like his daddy for that :-)

Talking about people using baby talk, my MIL used to with him, she called dogs bow wows it drove me mad and everytime I hear her say it I correct her, they are dogs and I do not want my son calling them bow wows!

April - posted on 03/09/2011

Like most of the mothers have already stated i always use proper english with a cheery tone. The only two things in the world that i ever "who's - a - widdle - boo - boo - face" to are my dogs (they died before my first child was born). I had them since i was 9 and i couldn't help it. They were never going to talk anyway LOL

Johnny - posted on 03/08/2011

We've never done baby talk. Softer voices, perhaps a slightly higher pitch, but always proper english. We do use the word "mum-mum" for food sometimes, but my husband is Russian and that's just a common thing they say in families. We use it mostly because that's always what we used to call the cats for dinner. But that's pretty much the only "baby" type word we've ever used. I'd feel very silly talking gibberish to a human, regardless of their age.

I'm not sure it has all that much connection to speech development though. Obviously the increased exposure to proper speech will mean that children will learn the proper words to use. However, I haven't seen much evidence to support that what you say either encourages a child to speak earlier or more. One of my cousins, who is now a successful attorney, did not begin to talk until she was 4. Her parents spoke clear, adult English to her, read to her, took her to speech therapy as she got older, but she just wasn't into talking. Kids do things at the pace that is right for them. Baby talk may lead them to sound silly when they do start talking, but I do not think that it retards their speech development otherwise.

Our daughter has always been very verbal. Developmentally, that has been the area in which she has excelled. But despite our use of "mum-mum" around the house, she still knows that it also means food or dinner. It is entirely possible that if we have a second child, they may not speak as early or as well, and it will probably not have all that much to do with how we speak to them.

Brittany - posted on 03/08/2011

I never did baby talk... I would say that my daughter changes how many words she says on a regular basis. I get really pissed at my husband's grandparents when they repeat something that my daughter has said back to her.

I can't count how many times I've heard a 5 year old call a car a "beep beep" or a cow/milk "moo moo". It drives me nuts.

Lacye - posted on 03/08/2011

I never baby talked my daughter even when she was a newborn. I talked softly to her yes but I didn't do the whole baba thing. Now my bf does and it grates on my nerves. I want to choke him every time he does it.

Medic - posted on 03/08/2011

I don't baby talk to my kids. On the flip side of that my older one has an amazing vocab but really didn't speak until his second birthday. My now almost 14 month old seems to be going along the same path as she refuses to speak but can understand complex directions. Now I don't think that anyone does any favors by speaking like that to children. Like I tell my mom he's 4 not stupid!! I do correct my son though; when he says," We wented to the store" I just say," went you went." I am however ok with my kids waiting to talk, they seem to be on the more laid back observant side...atleast for now.

Teresa - posted on 03/08/2011

I think the fact that you didn't say anything and yet she went off on you 'throwing a tantrum' speaks volumes... and not about you. ;)

Tah - posted on 03/08/2011

There is a absolute terror in toddlers and tiaras and at about 5 she still throws tantrums for her binky, I would throw it out the car window if she acted like that on the way home because she wouldn't be competing acting the way she does. Moms pregnant, dealing with both will be fun times indeed....

Kristy - posted on 03/08/2011

@Candi, thats hilarious!!! So you can understand my disapointment!! (I had to read that twice btw to understand what the woman was getting at!) If an adult has trouble understanding what on earth makes these mothers (and fathers) think that a child is going to understand... Not only that, they get used to hearing words spoken like that and then grow up thinking its the correct way :( And Im right there with you!! When other children are having trouble pronouncing words, our kids are going to be the ones excelling in class and helping them learn.. A lesson that should have been taught by their parents... I feel for your friends daughter, age 6 with a binky is so heartbreaking.. My husbands young cousins do the same thing, you can actually understand part of what they say with the binky in their mouths, but when its out (which is rare) you cant understand a word they say :( Its so sad.

Kristy - posted on 03/08/2011

@ Alyssa, I never "said" anything to her, however I can definatly understand where she understood how I felt, (it was more of a shocked/confused look) or at least I think it was... I dont think it matters who the woman was in relation to the child because anyone who speaks to a child like that doesnt do anything good for a childs vocabulary or speech :(

@Toni, I do the same thing with my son! Encouraging him to speak clearly and properly. My one year old has a better vocabulary and is more understandable than his two and three year old cousins... I know its because we spoke to him correctly. Children have so many more advantages in life when they can speak properly, not to mention throw less tantrums because they can actually tell you what they want/need. Great job!! :)))

Candi - posted on 03/08/2011

We never baby talked to my kids! Honestly I didn't chnage my pitch either, although sometimes I spoke a little softer. My kids have perfect speech. They never used binkies either. My friend's daughter was close to 6 when she got rid of her binky and her speech was terrible! She learned to talk around it and when it wasn't in her mouth, you couldn't understand a word she was saying! I was in a store one day in the kids section looking at games and heard a woman on the phone using such clear speech and noticed her toddler in a cart and I was thinking, wow his mother's speech is great, he must have clear speech too (its weird what mothers think of). Well, she hung up the phone, looked at her child and said "does da baby want a cwackle?" and it was in a sing song type of speech. She was offering her child a cracker. I was thinking, Are you serious? What is wrong with you?Some people are rediculous, but they will be the ones sitting in school mispronouncing words, not my kid

Laura - posted on 03/08/2011

We never used "baby talk" with my daughter, though like some of the other moms here, I used a different tone or pitch to my voice when she was an infant. By the time she was one, we were using conversational tones and language with her. As others have mentioned, she developed her language skills early and had a pretty advanced vocabulary, too, for her respective age. That happens with kids when you don't treat them like they are inanimate objects and actually take a bit of time to teach them new words! I don't think my husband or I "goo-goo"ed or "gaa-gaa"ed at our daughter once!

As for pacifiers, we only used one when she was an infant and then only at bedtime. The binky was gone by the time she was 9 months old! She used it more as a chew toy for teething anyway. Pacifiers are tools used to help a baby self-comfort but should not be used indefinitely. As the child grows new methods of self-comforting should be taught with new tools being used. IMO, binkies shoud be phased out between 18 month to two years; the earlier the better. That's just my opinion though.

Toni - posted on 03/08/2011

We never used baby talk with Ethan - I just find it a bit tedious tbh and would rather use real words because I find it easier and it is better for the child. Although like Jodi and Holly, I did and still do sometimes talk to him in a different tone, rather than the one I use to talk to adults.

Ethan has a friend whose mom often mimics his speech so if he has been naughty he says whachudun? and so does she, I don't think that helps him learn to speak properly, when Ethan says a word that is close but not quite what he is trying to say for example cat he says ca I say yes there's a c..a..t (emphasizing the sound of the word) so he can here the sound of the word he should be saying (he was saying 'aa', now he says 'ca' so we are working on adding the 't' sound).

I too have never used a dummy with my child, it started because I wanted to BF and even after my milk dried up we just couldn't see the need to use one, so we didn't.

Alyssa - posted on 03/08/2011

Sounds to me like you made your thoughts pretty clear for her to go off like that. How do you know she was even the Mum?? She could have been the aunty who doesn't have kids, maybe they were singing a song or maybe they were following reccomendations from a speech therapist?

I probably would have reacted in the same way, why are some people so judgemental? What is right for your kid isn't necessarily right for everyone elses.

Those who judge are judged the most.

Holly - posted on 03/07/2011

I'm with Jodi. I used a different tone (higher pitched, more "happy" sounding, etc.), but I used real words. My 3 year-old and my 2 year-old always talk tot he speech pathologist at the pediatrician's office - not because they have speech delays, but because she just can't get over how advanced their vocabulary is (yes, that was a bit of a brag... lol). I partially credit that to the fact that I didn't use baby talk (and I also credit the fact that there are a lot of really smart people in our families - like so smart that my FIL was offered the highest intelligence job in the military at 18 because he could learn ANY language in 2 weeks and be totally fluent in not only the language, but the customs and rituals of the people who speak that language - he's crazy smart...).