Stop the goo-goo, ga-ga
While it is too cute for words, research suggests there is a time to stop the cutesy pronunciations.
Those mispronunciations and dropped letters are all too cute on a teeny tot, but what will happen if your child is still talking in misnomers when it’s time to go to school? The cute sayings that your child develops like ”sgabetti” instead of ”spaghetti” or ”blankie” instead of ”blanket” often become part of your family’s vocabulary. However, research into baby talk has suggested that this should be stopped by a certain age, as it may have an impact on your child’s long-term language development.
WHAT IS BABY TALK?
”Baby talk” is simply the shortening and simplifying of words, sometimes combined with the addition of slurred words or non-verbal utterances. Often, this creates a vocabulary of its own to particular families or is even passed down from generation to generation. This is commonly seen when it comes to family names like ”Nana” or Gogo”, which then may stay as a term of endearment for that family member for years to come.
We do tend to create, or use more of, such vocabulary to make certain words more convenient and understandable to our toddlers.
When it comes to any bodily functions or private body parts, we are more comfortable with simple words like ”pee-pee” or ”poo-poo”. Baby talk is often adapted or moulded into more adult talk as the child gets older, or they might still use these sayings to describe a certain experience. For example, for babies, ”num-num” refers to feeding time, but as they grow up, children may use it more to describe a more tasty meal that they had.
These changes in speech and word use arise due to the difficulties young children have with pronouncing certain sounds. At the age of three children still struggle with certain consonant sounds like ”w and (”wabbit” for ”rabbit) and ”d” and ”th (”dis” for ”this”, and ”den” for ”then”). You should not worry too much about these pronunciation difficulties, as they are quite normal for very young children. However, if these difficulties continue past five years of age, then assistance would be needed. Difficulties with multisyllabic words – ”sgabetti” for ”spaghetti” – are also normal but would become a concern if it still occurs past seven years of age.
THE PROBLEMS
Recent research has shown that baby talk may not be as beneficial. Children learn about communicating from us, therefore, our most important role is to help develop our children’s language skills, as these are vital for their future development.
The view surrounding baby talk is that the use of made-up words, poor pronunciation and poor grammar would be teaching children the wrong language skills.
Between three and six is the most crucial age range in terms of the way in which we speak with our children. If certain errors continue, they could result in delayed speech and language development. That initial speech pattern could also become a disorder that will cause difficulties in learning. It is suggested that we use simple, correct and concrete language but that conversations, vocabulary and sentence structure should be age appropriate.
THE BENEFITS
Research admittedly tends to be directed at the negative impact of baby talk and how it badly influences a child’s verbal development, but there still seems to be evidence of the benefits of such infantdirected speech.
Firstly, baby talk is noted to have a higher than normal and varied pitch, a slower rate of speaking, simpler vocabulary, lots of repetition, emphasis on certain words, and exaggerated and more positive facial expressions.
These factors help an infant pay closer attention to speech, especially if you’re talking while there’s background noise. When infants are then paying more attention to you and what’s being said, it is believed to assist in the emotional bonding process between the two of you. Furthermore, simplified talk helps babies figure out how language works and which words are more important to what is being said, so it helps them to learn what certain words mean.
More importantly, later in their development, it helps them to say these words. It helps a child isolate the boundaries between words, so that a stream of speech is not just a jumble of words. As words are often repeated through baby talk, infants also start to create mental representations of words that they hear.
WEIGH IT UP
Your child’s cute sayings and baby language are so sweet and adorable that you don’t correct her, right? However, it is important to say the correct words to her and emphasise the sound she is struggling with instead of just repeating her mispronunciation.
You don’t have to be harsh about her mistake; just repeat the word correctly for her to hear.
Baby talk may be perceived to be ”broken” language and made up of noises to keep your infant interested in what you have to say.
However, baby talk is not only about that but also about infant-directed speech at their level that still allows your child to learn from your speech and pronunciation.
However, what is important to remember is that cute mispronunciations are part of your child and the joys that you get from seeing your child develop her speech.
The advice is to keep a close watch on how often the baby talk happens
– and how severe it is – so that you can help your child improve speech and pronunciation.
Baby talk, when used correctly, can be helpful for speech development. If your baby and you enjoy doing it, and it brings you closer together, then don’t stop it altogether. ●