Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi everyone. I'm Melissa. Welcome back to CloudMom. This video is about baby talk or
parentese, the practice of speaking to your baby in short and simple sentences when you
highly enunciate the words, you elongate the vowels, and you have a very animated sort
of expression and contact with your baby. Something like this, "It's time to change
your diaper. Okay baby?" That sort of thing that we all do with our babies, our parents
did it with us, our grandparents did it with their children, and it's something that gets
handed down from generation to generation. I'm not talking about going coochie coochie
coochie coochie coo, or all the stuff that the Bernstein Bears do with their little baby,
where you just invent sort of little babyish sounds. I'm talking about using actual language
but make it simpler, and more sort of fun, and hopefully accessible for the baby. Is
this a good idea to do with your baby or not? I was really interested to read about this,
and the lowdown is as follows: in fact, yes. It is actually good for your child's language
development for you to speak to them in this type of parentese or baby talk, because it
allows them to start to really grapple with the meaning of words. If you're going through
your day with your baby and you're saying simple words, you're really enunciating the
vowels of those words and you're doing this in a highly animated way, it's very good for
your baby's sound and language development. That is what the experts say. Okay? And, hold
on I've got to check my notes, make sure I didn't, here's one thing I read online, I'll
link to this resource. The elongated vowels, high pitch, exaggerated facial expressions
and short, simple sentences actually help infants learn language in a way that gets
their attention and helps them to learn to speak and understand language. Isn't that
fascinating? And another resource I read said that babies will actually respond to baby
talk or parentese in a foreign language that they don't speak. Very, very, or that they
will not speak, that their parents don't speak. So, you know, I just thought that was so fascinating.
Okay. At the same time, many experts will say that as your baby grows and matures you
should start to speak to them more as you would to any other person, with more complex
vocabulary and more elaborate sentence structure. And there's been a lot of studies done that
say that the more words children are exposed to at a younger age, the better. And that's
why it's so important to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and to read, read, read, read,
read. And from day one with your baby, you should be talking to your baby. When you're
feeding your baby, you're changing your baby's diaper, you're putting your baby to sleep,
just narrate what you're doing. You're saying, "Oh, I'm changing your diaper. Look at this
pretty blue shirt. I'm putting you down in the crib. Now it's time for your swaddle.
Oh time for night night." All of those things you should talk to your baby. Even if you
feel that your baby doesn't understand, they're actually hearing the sounds and language.
It's very, very important for their development. And as time goes on, you should start to speak
to them in more and more complex ways, because it's very good for their language development.
So anyway, this is what I've learned. I've tried to do this with my own kids. I want
to hear what you moms have done. Did you do this? Did you speak a lot? Did you use baby
talk? Did you use parentese? Do you think it was something that came naturally to you,
because that is what the experts are saying. It's almost innate within us to do this. And
I thought that was such a fascinating and actually very lovely thing. So anyway, that's
it from CloudMom with this video today. Thank you so so much for watching. Please weigh
in, and I really look forward to seeing you next time.