Now it’s been loads of fun wagging my fat fingers at all the insane, malicious and otherwise retarded things I see other children do in my suburban microcosm. But it’s only fair to own up to the fact that my own kids also do things to put bugs up my ass. The peeve of the week here is my son’s habit of using baby talk. In all honesty it’s the peeve of the last three years, grating my nerves more than anything else he does. He’s about to turn six and he still gets all into his baby blather like it’s the coolest thing on Earth: chirping & gurgling for his grandparents; mewling and lisping among friends; blowing raspberries and poopy poopy pooing in grocery stores. I’ve tried ignoring it and I’ve tried treating him like an infant when he starts in on it but it doesn’t seem to be abating. Part of what makes me nuts is that he was an exceptionally verbal, well spoken lad from an early age. Another factor is how his pals and adults give him weird stares when he gets going and he doesn’t pick up on it. I suppose in the end I just need to ride it out. He’ll either outgrow it in however many fucking years it takes or some kids at school will finally start making fun of him and he’ll get it at last.
But Jesus Christ, there are mornings when the doo-doo ga-ga routine sets off a blistering rage inside me. I get consumed by images of slapping him in the head, mashing his face into his Froot Loops and calling the DSS on myself…
There you go, buddy – they’re coming to take you away. How would wittle Jacko wike to wiv wif stwaaangers? Maybe baby’s new fosther pawents will think this shit is cute. Goo fucking goo goo goo!!!
Yeah, yeah, keep right on crying. That’ll make you real popular at the orphanage.
Anyhow – a recent article in the NY Times Science section dealt with how we talk to our kids as infants. The essential idea was how the digital age has affected the interactions between parents and children, particularly in communication. Parents/caretakers are too often engaged with mobile phones, text devices and laptops (possibly writing sniveling blogs…) to sufficiently engage their kids. Children get short changed on learning solid communication skills such as eye contact and addressing someone directly.
For those folks who do pay attention to their tykes there was a caveat about overuse of “baby talk” – if we use real language with infants, rather than a constant flow of loving gibberish, they will develop stronger language skills early on. Regardless of how early an infant starts speaking it’s the understanding of language which is important. Silly nonsense words and mimicking your kid’s babble are indeed good things. Goofy sounds make tots happy and let them know you’re engaged. But making baby talk your primary language is only going to confuse them as they become aware of real language coming to their ears from the rest of their environment.
This may have been one of the first things I’d grasped about parenthood, years before ever becoming a parent. I had a couple of married friends who each had a baby girl around the same time. One friend spoke to his daughter like she was his drinking buddy and the other only talked to his baby like she was an orangutan and he was a mongoloid pigeon with a hair-lip. By the time the girls were four years old the first was frighteningly verbal with a scathing sense of sarcasm. The other girl barely spoke at all and her dad was still using a pretty freaky amount of baby talk with her.
Now here’s the kicker: Both girls are now in college and neither one seems any more intelligent than the other. The funny part is that the one who wasn’t up to speed speech-wise at four is now pretty talented in expressive arts – visual, performing and….language. Go fucking figure. I guess the communication lesson here is not how intelligent your kids will be in the long run but just how long you want to put up with their blank-faced goo-ga-doo crap while they’re young.
Now E & I followed the big-people-talk path with Jack and he turned out to be conversational and grammatically in tune by the time he was 18 months old. But he went on to louse up our early language and communication ambitions for Elsie. Even though he was just a tyke himself, he’d caught on to the cooing and gabbling people tend to do around babies. Can’t fault him for that – Even though we’d coax him to show her how well he could talk he was just trying to connect with his new little sister. Since she responded in the same language there wasn’t much reason for him to complicate the discussions with actual words. The stimulus of getting giggles out of her with nonsense words might be what’s made it all so cool in his mind ever since. Nevertheless, she received plenty of real language interactions and though she got her whole verbal package running later than Jack had it was always apparent that she knew what people were saying to her.
Funny thing is that Elsie is now writing a couple of years ahead of Jack. In its turn that, along with Kindergarten, has set off Jack’s own desire to write.
In keeping with the idea that we should always end these screeds with a moral, a chuckle or a nice thought, here’s this: I’m learning to accept that the problem with Jack and his baby talk isn’t his. It’s mine and I guess I’ll choke on that bone for as long as my sanity holds out. And Jacko is starting to write. Though able to write his name for a couple of years now, occasionally scribbling out Mom, Dad, or Poppie, he didn’t have a hell of a lot interest in making words until lately. He’s getting taught writing in kindergarten, but mostly single letters and copying/tracing words on mimeographs**. But at home? The little dude has been writing sentences from memory on the kitchen blackboard wall and wherever else the moment hit him. And last night he took a piece of paper and wrote “Hi Mom I Love You.” Like the little notes she sticks in his backpack or pockets he wanted her to take it to work with her. Not a dry eye in the house after that…
Next Up – Pulled pork with Khatsa BBQ and my time in prison…
For the first couple of days everything was just ducks & bunnies. We’d gotten our Mommy/Daddy magical/wistful moments of wonder, including our first encounters with bus-drivin’ ladies. The AM driver was kinda rough looking, seemingly chafed over us taking a few extra seconds to take snaps of the boys climbing aboard. The afternoon driver was classic bus lady, probably came from the same generation of cantankerous bats who coughed out invectives over their cigarettes when I rode the Yellow #9. Luke’s driveway was populated by giddy family, neighbors and extra kids that first afternoon and when the #408 (The “Frog” bus) pulled up she opened the doors and barked in a boiling gin and Lucky Strike voice,