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One of my biggest pet peeves is when people talk baby-talk to a baby, or even worse, a toddler. At 18mo, my daughter can pick up a word after hearing it
once. Kids are like sponges when it comes to learning language at this age (I was a
teacher for almost 10 years and have had a ton of early childhood development courses) and onward. Between 18mo and 6 years, kids learn an average of
nine new words
per day. It's only logical that if a child hears, "Awww, her soo cooooot," instead of, "Aww, she's so cute," of course the child is going to repeat it with that incorrect grammar and pronunciation. I have a nephew who at six was in all kinds of speech therapy at school because he talked baby-talk. Guess what, that's all his mom talked to him as he was growing up. He had to almost completely re-learn language--grammar, pronunciation, syntax, everything.
That being said, it's important to praise a child as they're learning language. Toddlers have their own pronunciation for most words...some really close to the true pronunciation, some so far off only a parent understands. When my daughter squeals "skoo-pa-paa" when I let her carry the screwdriver, I praise her, but also repeat the correct pronunciation. Instead of, "No, it's not 'skoo-pa-paa' it's 'screwdriver'," I tell her, "Yes, that's right, it
is a screwdriver!"
(June 2006) (
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