Baby talk is bad

What seems cute, may not necessarily be good. One such example is baby talk. We tend to use it when we’re interacting with babies out of affection and tend to dote when babies baby talk. But doing so frequently we might be hampering a child’s language learning skills. According to a recent study, researchers says that speaking more slowly, using a sing-song voice, and using strange words may not, in fact, be the best way to communicate with a child. In fact, they say parents should just speak clearly and not smother kids with baby talk. We asked experts to shed light on the matter.  

Why baby talk is bad?
Young babies can make and hear all kinds sounds. There are about 150 sounds across 6,500 languages. However, no language utilises all 150 sounds. The sounds a language uses are called phonemes and the English language has around 44. Some languages have more and some lesser. Babies learn which phonemes belong to a language they are learning and which don’t. Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognise and produce those sounds, which is crucial for children learning to read. In this  stage, children basically learn how the sounds in a language fuse together to make meaning. For instance, babies learn that the sounds m, ah, and ee refer to that something that cuddles and feeds them i.e. the mother. That’s a significant step because everything we say is actually just a stream of sounds. In order to make sense of those sounds, a child must be able to recognise where one word ends and another begins.

Case in point
Shreya Kumar (name changed) was a six-year-old who would talk like a two-year-old in baby language. Her mother would also talk to her like that all the time. She thought that she was connecting with the child in her language. Subsequently, the child only picked up what was spoken to her. The child blocked herself mentally and would refuse to learn different modulation of speech language when she started growing up. As result, she was teased by her classmates and friends, who would refuse to  interact with her, recounts clinical psychologist and author Seema Hingorrany. “With Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy sessions, I started slowly processing the patterns stuck with her, and taught her to learn new patterns of speaking with confidence and clarity, which was lacking earlier. She also took speech therapy. The mother was counselled how to talk and teach her various methods of speech modulation and Shreya showed 100 per cent improvement,” she adds.

Expert speak
“I think it’s not correct to use baby talk very frequently with kids as kids emulate parents in every domain, be it language, behaviour or gestures. Baby talk can be used during fun times, very sparingly. The purpose it serves is the parent is perceived as fun, humorous and babies do connect with this comic element sometimes,” opines Hingorrany.

Audiologist and speech therapist Devangi Dalal disapproves of baby talk saying, “According to me, baby talk should not be there at all. When we come into this world, we learn language, speech, listening, confidence, personality, attitude everything from the environment in which we grow. Today, parents have one or two kids and their total concentration is on them. If they indulge in baby talk and encourage that, the child might have hearing loss. Also, the child may have other difficulties like slow  motor coordination or attention seeking behaviour or delay in understanding, which the parents may miss out on. Zero to five years is the best time for a child to learn language and develop good thinking skills. Baby talk may hamper the progress or may become habit which is not considered normal by society.”

Coping
In the case of growing children who are still baby talking, Dalal says that they have a software where they record the voice and speech of a child and make him/her aware of how different they sound from normal speaking persons. Also, they show them ways to correct it. Before doing so, they also rule out that the child doesn’t have hearing or understanding or difficulty in comprehension.

Tips
Always talk with your child in normal adult language. Never tease the child or undermine his/her talking methods. Children reflect parents’ personality and talking methods. Speak slowly, clearly and gently with your child. Use baby talk but ensure that the child knows it’s just for fun and for a very limited time, advises Hingorrany.