Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Motherese on Down the Road

Some sort of child language expert came to give a presentation to our mom’s group this morning, to answer questions about our babies’ language development.

I find most baby-related topics too tedious to think about for too long on any sort of intellectual level (any level at all other than: Tell me the quickest, most effective and painless way to get my child to sleep through the night), and language development is no exception. My child will talk when she talks. In the meantime she will gurgle and coo and cry and then eventually point and nod and grab, and all will be well. Or, alternately, she’ll have some sort of major and concerning speech delay and then we’ll consult some sort of specialist and figure out what the deal is.

Have I mentioned that as an undergraduate psych major I never once opened my Developmental Psychology text book?

Anyway, I’m in the mom’s group for the camaraderie and the snacks, so I’d planned to duck out before Language Lady began. Alas, the baby was napping contentedly when Miss Communication began her spiel, so we stuck around for a while—all the way through When your baby giggles, she’s communicating with you! past Some people like to use sign language with their babies to help them communicate! and We call it PARENTese now, not MOTHERese, up to, It’s GOOD to read to your child! By the time she got to When you read to your baby, you should point to the pictures of faces and talk about the emotions being expressed! Oooh, look at de baby’s wittle face! What a sad little faceypoo! Why is the wee wittle baby sad?!

My own wee wittle babypoo and I couldn’t take it any more and had to leave, waving bye-bye all the way out the door.

1 comment:

  1. So sorry you had to sit through all that, Maisy!

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