These are the sort of threads I find fascinating!
For background, I have two boys, 3 and 7, English mother (me) Japanese father, being raised in Japan.
Do I talk baby talk? Yes I confess I do! We have rhyming names which are now so far distorted that no-one has any clue where they originated. I talk to my kids constantly but it varies from in depth complicated conversations about abstract things, to silly word games. I think you need ALL aspects of conversation. Faced with a baby it is very hard not to do the baby talk thing - the baby coos at you and you coo back! I never thought I would but my babies and I thrived on it, and it was all baby-led.
My husband does not use kid-talk. Our family language is English (that is also kid-led, as my oldest boy always chose to speak to his Dad in English from the very earliest days.) but as he learned English as an adult, he doesn’t know kid-talk.
Will kids read to more talk earlier? / When did my kids start to talk?
Who knows? But if your baby likes books then you won’t be able to escape from them anyway! My older boy loved books and talk and all things communicative from the moment he was home from the hospital, and certainly had preferences by the time he was 3 months old. He talked early, at about 7 months saying “moo” etc for animals he saw. His first proper words came at about 10 months.
My second boy was a real floppy “baby” baby who did little other than eat and sleep for the first six months. He is still fairly quiet and very emotionally independent. He was like Tanookie’s daughter, and did not want books to be read to him. He preferred to read it himself. Now at three and a half, he likes books but not with the insatiable appetite of his brother. He started speaking very late. He was two and a half before any clear words came out, and another six months went by before they started to be linked into phrases. But by three years and three months he was WRITING! (In English and Japanese!)This kid can write phonetically fairly clear phrases, and he can read simple words that can be sounded out. All this with no teaching on my part. (He copies his brother at homework time.) He still isn’t a great talker.
ESL parents experiences…
Well, I am a JSL I suppose. I speak fluent but choppy Japanese, can understand virtually anything said and can make myself understood all the time these days. My older boy never had “baby” Japanese, with me being his main carer. He got regular contact with his Japanese grandmother, enough for him to speak bilingually from the beginning. But Japanese adults found him offputting when he would talk, as it was adult style conversation that came out. Two examples that made people laugh were when he was trying to butt into a conversation, he’d say “Sumimasen” (Pardon me) instead of the more normal kid-like “Ano nee” (Umm, or some attention-getting noise…) And when he wanted to be picked up, he’d say “Motte” (mottsu is the verb for carrying an object.) instead of “Dakko” (cuddle me). His grandfather used to oblige by hoiking him up by his clothes and dangling him, which became a great joke.
The younger kid started speaking when we were in England for three months, and by the time we came home he was really doing well in English. He was horrified when we got back here and he couldn’t understand people. He seems to have approached Japanese language learning from the same standpoint as a second language learner, and will often ask me for a word, or translate something literally, which doesn’t work well between English and Japanese. He went through a phase of using English with a heavy Japanese accent (at 3 and a half that still happens most days.) but quickly realised that when fighting with a friend at playgroup, “Getto Offu” wasn’t doing it!
I could go on and on, I find the way kids aquire language to be fascinating, especially watching my kids figure out two languages simultaneously, and never seem to be too stressed out about it.
The bottom line is if you love your baby and chat to him or her in the normal line of life, which you will if your baby is anything more than a cabbage (and none of them are, they are all intensely complex and fascinating beings right from the moment they pop out,) then your baby will lead you into chatting away in the manner which most suits your personalities. And in your desire to show your baby the world, reading, singing, word and hand games will follow. Your baby will show you which games/songs/stories they like best, and so it goes on.
And now I have to stop and go and read bedtime stories. “Bam and Kero” (brilliant Japanese picture books about a dog and a delinquent toddler frog) to little one, and Arthur Ransome to the older one!
