Sunday, February 5, 2012
Ready to Talk by Jennifer Marshall
The other night I was babysitting and the child I was caring for was cooing and babbling. I decided to start to him in a high pitch tone and in a happy tone. He began to smile and startin laughing. After that he kept on cooing and babbling at me, so I kept on talking to him but would never talk to him like he was an adult. In my mind I believed he knew what I was saying if i spoked to him like that. In the first weeks of class we have learned that if you speak to a child like you do an adult, they will lose interest in you. So speaking in a high pitch happy tone will excite them and keep them interested. It is not only to keep them interested in you but it develops their communication skills. Babies are first exposed to communication through eye contact. With children that have a hearing impairments, the communication skills are greatly delayed. And if they are not expose to sign language, they stop babbling and cooin all together. If they are exposed to sign language from the time the parents find out, the children with the hearing impairment will develop discovery and have development in communication skills. So the child I babysit will have good communication skills and if his family keeps working with him and his communication skills, he may develop faster than they expected.
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I never believed in talking "baby talk" to children. I still do not totally buy into it. We talked to our children when they were infants with actual words. We did not babble or coo back at them. Consequently, both of our girls spoke at an early age. Our oldest daughter was saying words at 9 - 10 months. They are both adopted. Maybe it is nature. Maybe it is nurture. I am not sure. My granddaughter was also spoken to in words, not babble or cooing. She spoke at an early age as well. She spoke in sentences by the time she was a year and a half old. She is now three and a half and uses fairly large words for age and uses them correctly. I feel like children need to be talked to with words, not babbling.
ReplyDeleteSusan Davis