You’re supposed to use baby talk with them from about 15 years old and until they’re 18, to really piss them off.
The little shits have almost certainly done something to deserve it
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?
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.
You can also just talk normally to your kids without being a snob about anything.
I have taught my kids to communicate with me solely via email, or via their lawyers.
The secret ingredient is unchecked alcoholism and rampant psychological abuse.
(/s, I don’t even have kids)
Denying their existence is totally on-brand
I have taught my kids to communicate with me entirely in Morse code via blinking.
It’s perfect as it’s nigh impossible to be interrupted, and back-talk doesn’t matter because they look too stupid to even get upset about.
We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o’clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
I avoid the baby talk with my nieces and nephews after they get past one year old. My oldest nephew said I’m his favorite because I don’t talk down to him
laughs in condescending to children at a level they just don’t comprehend
If you treat your kids like an adult they grow up to be one. We see plenty of example of people who are of legal age acting like children. Now you know why.
It definitely works. They’ll grow up way faster. Like they’ll be out of your life 15 YEARS faster!
When my toddler son hit his sister, instead of giving him a ‘talking to’ like the parinting book suggested, I just called the cops. Now he’s in federal prison all on his own! I’m so proud of him. 🥰
Two notes from my actual coursework in education and psych; first, baby talk exists for a reason but it’s the singasong voice that matters most, especially when they’re picking up sounds. The funny thing there is you can say absolutely terrible things in a singasong voice and they will love it and remember it better.
Second, the arse in the example isn’t actually all the way wrong, using vocabulary is important especially in that second and third year. I forget the author but there’s some studies that show preschool vocabulary is directly related to parental education and they found it’s because of the vocab the parents use. We’re taking tens of thousands more words learned. Too bad I can’t remember the author, just that it was four letters (and since leaving academia, my zotero is long gone).
As with most advice regarding early childhood development, your mileage may vary.
My cousin does the “no baby talk” things and it has pretty good results. Their kids are sharp, but of course not in a Twittiot way. Just in a “get good grades and communicate coherently” way.
My wife and I do the same, and the results have been great. An old friend of mine met my daughter for the first time when she was two and a half, and she just walked right up to him and says, “Hello. My name is _____. It’s very nice to meet you.”
When my current two-year-old is in a bad mood, we’ll ask him if he’s being a curmudgeon, and he’ll say “No, I’m not being a curmudgeon.” They speak in full sentences because my wife and I speak in full sentences. They use big words because we use big words.
On the other hand my daughter is five now and still thinks it’s pronounced “breafixt” instead of “breakfast”, and we don’t correct her because it’s adorable. So we still have fun with it.
I don’t think any of this means they’re geniuses or are guaranteed success later in life or anything. They’re probably both gifted, but that just means they’re a couple years ahead. A four-year-old who talks like a six-year-old is a great parlor trick, but a twenty-year-old talking like a twenty-two-year-old isn’t going to give them a big leg up. That’s why I like to get all my bragging in now.
Well, I’m 42, and talking outloud exhausts me.
I’m in Malaysia. Our politicians and a good segment of our adults encourage this kind of chat, esp during the lockdown, for fear of offending the spouse. They call it the ‘doraemon voice’ and it’s as annoying as it sounds.
Damn
I baby talked my kids (now it’s Brain Rot). I also talk to them like an adult. I’ve always encouraged them to ask questions when they don’t understand something. My 9-year-old is not shy about stopping mid-conversation and asking what a word or phrase means.
ted was triggered
Once they become teenagers, they mostly communicate through grunts and whines regardless.
