After completing my clinicals with infants, I was thinking about how talking to babies comes naturally for most of us. The term "motherese" refers to how we talk to the babies in a certain high-pitched and comforting tone of voice, usually with words that the baby might not even understand quiet yet. I was also thinking about how ridiculous we sound when we do this!!! Sometimes I wanted to stop and laugh at myself when I was talking to some of the infants in the daycare setting I was in. I found myself saying things in such a way that I've never heard myself speak before! But it never mattered because the infants were always eager to look at me or listen to what I was saying. I even talked some of them to sleep while they were fussing in my arms because they were tired but fighting having to take a nap. Even though the infants might not have always understood what I was talking about, I was happy to talk to them because I am aware of the importance of exposure to language. Infants and toddlers go through critical periods in their lives in which it is so important to expose them to language in order to help them develop it. So, talk to those babies - no matter how ridiculous you sound!!!
Check out another blogger's post from years past on how he feels about "motherese" as well:
http://www.slcd.org/blog/index.php/tag/motherese-language-development-early-childhood-conver/
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I know that I remember my first attempts at Motherese as a young adult. I felt like such a geek! It wasn't something that came naturally and I found that there seemed a long gap between being a kid and having babies around to being a young adult and being exposed to them. It seemed so foreign.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out how important it is to just speak to the babies in motherese no matter how ridiculous you sound :)