Is baby talk beneficial or harmful for language development in children?

Question

I have heard conflicting opinions about the effects of "baby talking" on a child's language development. Some say it is helpful, while others claim it can hinder their progress. What are your thoughts on this matter?

Answer 1

I often say, "Baby talk is fine as long as baby doesn't talk!" Research indicates that baby talk with exaggerated intonation and facial expression is beneficial to infants and children with normal and delayed speech development. The key is to stay one step ahead of baby! In other words, model just one step above your child's level. If no babbling or words, use sing-song, repetitive utterances with exaggerated facial expression to keep the child's interest and allow the child to hear the rhythm and patterns of speech. Once the child is babbling, emphasize single easy to say words frequently. When the child is using single words, up your words to 2-3 word phrases to model for them where they will be moving to next. The challenge for us parents and caregivers is to keep moving and stay only one step ahead of baby!!!

Answer 2

I know of no firm evidence indicating that baby talk is either helpful or detrimental in language development. From my own experience, however, I can say that infants learn from facial expressions and tone of voice as much as they do from words. They are learning these things long before they can imitate them.

Infants can detect differences in volume and tone earlier than they can discern words, especially when volume and tone are exaggerated (as in baby talk). I see no problem with it and have encountered no problems with it so far with my children.

However, baby talk is not the only form of communication we use with our children. While it gets the best reactions early on, we also talk to, sing to, and sign to our children at a very young age--younger than they can understand or mimic. As they grow older we adapt our communication to their maturity level, eventually cutting out the baby talk. This worked wonderfully for our first child, although it's too early to tell whether this is because of our method or whether we just got lucky with a bright kid!