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I have two children, a daughter of almost 27 months and a son of 7 months. Now, I am under the impression that a second child often develops in the speech and movement area more quickly and this got me thinking. My younger sister has a daughter exactly the year
(bar five days) older than mine. My sister's partner is from an old-fashioned and privately educated background as an only child, with parents that didn't quite understand children, and so was always spoken to as an adult. They have carried this on with their daughter and although this has never seemed wholy natural to me, this girl has a stunning vocabulary and conversational ability. Sure, it might just be coincidence, but it must be that children can learn sentence structure and grammar more quickly if it is actually spoken to them all along.
I have been thinking about this more closely now that my son is around. Because I talk to my daughter all the time, repeating what she says and expanding on it - for example, if she says "More che-char" I reply, "Yes, I will get you some more water to drink" - I also talk to my son. Whereas my daughter tended to get a more simplified version of commentary as a baby, e.g. "Plane!" and a point to the sky, he gets the full, "Plane! Look, there's a plane up in the sky!", because that is what I would say to her now. I wonder whether it is not inevitable that he will learn quicker than she did.
Now, I haven't done any research on this, and there are other articles on her advocating ditching the baby-talk, but I believe emphasis along with a full sentence has got to be more constructive than over-simplifying things. Children learn language best at this age, so I say give them good examples to base that learning on.
(July 2006) (
