The dos and don'ts of baby talk

0:00Lulu Garcia-Navarro:New shows, new music, new movies, keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels like a full-time job. Thankfully, over at Pop Culture Happy Hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to, and pretending you already knew about. So the next time someone says, did you see that? You can say, yeah, obviously. Follow NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, Andy. Hey, Mariel. I was just talking to my nephew. We FaceTime a few times a week. He always grabs the phone and he does this thing where he communicates his glee by shaking his head like this.

0:42Lulu Garcia-Navarro:Like, I'm so happy to see you. Yeah, I think that's our signal to each other. Like, we're excited to see each other because it's hard to know how to talk to a baby, really, before they're talking. Right. It's like, how do you have conversations? How do you know if you're connecting in some way? What it sounds like is something called serve and return. And so it means when you're interacting with a baby, you're serving them some form of communication. Hi, baby. How are you? And you're letting them return communication. You're giving them space to coo at you or to babble, to basically tell you, I received that thing, that communication back.

1:25And, you know, they often understand a lot more than we think. All right.

1:30Lulu Garcia-Navarro:Well, coming up on this episode of Life Kit, I'm going to keep talking to Life Kit reporter Andy Tegel about how to talk to your baby. If you have a baby in your life who's a year old or younger, this episode is for you. We're going to walk through how to communicate, how to leave space for them to respond, and how important it is to have one-on-one in-person interaction with them. All of these things help them learn and hopefully foster that love of language in them. That's coming up after the break.

2:08Lulu Garcia-Navarro:So, Andy, I have heard that babies can actually hear when they're in the womb. Is that true? Yeah, that's a real thing. So by about the third trimester, a fetus can hear sounds outside the womb. And studies have shown that within moments of birth, babies are able to identify their birth parents' voice and their birth parents' language, which on its own I think is pretty awesome. I've been trying to do this for like my friends' kids and any kids in my family. I'm trying to get in there, you know, to be known by baby. So I talk to the belly. I love that. What about playing music? I feel like there's this idea I've heard that if you play classical music for baby in the womb, they will end up super smart or maybe turn into baby Mozart.

2:51Maybe you could try song because research has shown that there's a lot of overlap between the brain pathways for language processing and music processing. So, for instance, research found that interactive musical experiences can also boost an infant's language learning. So what that means is get those bills on the bus going round and round earlier rather than later. Because babies love music and they have an enormous capacity for language. One expert I spoke to, her name's Amelia Baclida, you'll hear from her a little later, she told me that babies' brains are wired to want to be a part of the conversation.

3:25She even called them little linguistic geniuses.

3:28Lulu Garcia-Navarro:I love that, linguistic geniuses. I have heard that they can pick up languages much faster than older kids or adults. Yeah, way faster. Are you ready for this? Science shows that when babies are born, they're able to tell the difference between the sounds of every language in the world. Wow. There are a lot of languages that sound similar. Yeah, so, you know, obviously they don't understand every language of the world. but basically they're capable of comprehending the sound units in any given word in any given language. So take the word cat. Baby's ears from the moment they're born can comprehend each of those distinct sounds and then what happens essentially is the more exposure a baby gets to a specific language or languages, the brain becomes more attuned to those specific sounds and less receptive to all the rest.

4:23The first 12 months of life are sometimes called a sensitive period for this initial language learning because a baby's brain is super flexible. Here's child psychologist Roger Harrison of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

4:35Lulu Garcia-Navarro:So for example, if we were conducting this interview in like Greek or in Mandarin, at some point I would lose interest no matter how earnest you were speaking to me because my brain simply isn't connecting to that. But babies, their brains are actually looking to see when sounds begin and sounds end. Their brain's capacities are so elastic that it really is setting the foundation to understand the cadence of any language. So it sounds like that first year is an especially good opportunity to raise a bilingual baby or a trilingual to help your baby learn multiple languages? Yeah. I mean, I think the argument here is just don't wait.

5:20If you have the opportunity, if you have a second language, get started right away. It's never too early. Different cultures have different feelings about this, that it might be a bad idea, that you might confuse a child by having more than one language in a house. And the research says it's really an advantage. You know, like personally in my home, in my family, I don't speak Tagalog because it was discouraged when my mom was growing up for assimilation reasons mostly. And that's a real bummer for me now, you know. So before there was a thought that bilingual kids might be behind, it's just that their experience looks a little different.

5:53There are certain benchmarks that the CDC has for language. One benchmark for two and a half year olds is being able to communicate at least 50 words or so. Research has shown that bilingual kids meet those milestones, it's just often that those words are divided between those two languages. Don't worry, that vocab learning does generally catch up by the time that kids enter school. In fact, a study from just this year found that bilingual children outperformed their monolingual peers in both vocabulary and grammar in kindergarten and first grade before eventually leveling off. So being at the same level as all their peers.

6:28And separate from that, research has shown there's just a lot of advantages to being a bilingual learner. Things like better working memory, better executive functioning, and the ability to think flexibly.

6:39Lulu Garcia-Navarro:I can see this putting a lot of pressure on people who only speak one language and have a baby. Like, am I letting my kid down by not teaching them multiple languages? Yeah, I get that. I only have the one. So I feel that, but definitely not. That was actually a big theme of my interviews on this subject, is that raising a baby is stressful enough. You shouldn't have to think too hard about this. Really, the first year is about laying a solid foundation for your little one for future language development. There's lots of small ways to do that just by making a point of being communicative with your baby.

7:12You want to just surround them with language on a daily basis because those first few months of life are wiring their brains through that language exposure and through interactions with their caregiver. Because early on, they're not really learning words. They're learning, you know, things like the rhythm and the tone and structure of language. So they're really tuning into that connection with you. And that's what drives brain development.

7:38Lulu Garcia-Navarro:So it doesn't matter so much in that first year what you say, but you just want to talk. Yeah. One idea I loved, I learned from someone who spends a lot of time thinking about play. Her name is Jessica Rolfe, and she's a mom of three and the co-founder of Love Every. They build research-backed toys and books for different stages of child development. One of the things that newborn babies love to do is if you hold them sort of front-facing, you can slowly walk them around your home and talk about what you're seeing. And so you can wrap on a window or you can open and close a cupboard and get yourself a glass of water.

8:17Lulu Garcia-Navarro:Because sometimes I feel like it's hard to know what to talk to them about. Right. And it can feel a little silly. So a similar idea with this is just to narrate the things that you're doing. So using functional words during play is another really good idea. So, for example, when you're playing, you could say like, oh, we're putting the ball in the hole. I'm pushing you in the stroller. Those first words can be really valuable for those early months in life and can help them with their first words once they're a little older. So, you know, bottom line here, you don't have to stress about it. You don't have to make flashcards.

8:47You just have to connect with that kid and try and create an environment that fosters quality communication. Coming up, how to speak parentese.

9:02Lulu Garcia-Navarro:So we've been talking about just talking to your baby in a normal tone of voice, narrating what you're doing. But I find a lot of the time when I see babies that I switch into this – I wouldn't call it baby talk. I'm not like, oh, look at the little baby. But I'm like, ah, you're so sweet. I love you so much. I want to eat your face. You know, like – and I wonder is that okay? Yeah, no, it can't. It's an impossibility. And you know what? Actually, there is a scientific reason for that and there's a scientific name for it. It's called infant-directed speech or parentese. And you're not alone. If you ever felt self-conscious about it or wondered whether or not it was a good idea, you can put your worries away.

9:48The answer is a resounding yes.

9:51Lulu Garcia-Navarro:Nice. The reason why we speak this way to babies, it turns out, is because many of the qualities of parentese, you know, it's often slower. There's variation in pitch and tone. We might repeat a word. Look at your toes. I love your little toes. they can help a baby's brain to start to recognize and decipher language. It's our innate way of helping our babies learn. I talked about this with Amelia Baklita, Director of Outreach and Education at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, or iLabs. Here's how she explains it. It's a cue to them that this is important. This is something I need to pay attention to.

10:26Lulu Garcia-Navarro:And the other piece about parentees is that often it's not just the vocal part. Usually we've got sort of a warm smile, you know, big bright eyes. It's all of these social cues working together that are really telling baby and baby's brain, hey, this is important. Pay attention. I need to learn from this. Got it. Well, are there right and wrong ways to do this, to speak parentese? One thing you want to do is use the right words. Use correct language. So no nonsensical baby speak, no goo goo ga ga, no making up words for their body parts or all the stuff around the house. But all of the experts encouraged this behavior.

11:10They said, even if it feels silly, even if it doesn't come super natural, lean into that kind of sing-songy parentese voice. Or when you feel moved, even full-on sing to your baby. They don't care if you can follow a tune, they are still gonna love it. And the long-term benefits of this are really pretty remarkable. For example, Amelia told me about this one study that monitored how parents talk to their children from six months old all the way to kindergarten.

11:36Lulu Garcia-Navarro:So if their parents used more parentese, at five, on average, they are producing longer sentences. They have bigger vocabularies. They are more complex in their conversations and even showing some improved reading readiness. So these early language inputs, that parent tease, the back and forth conversations, that is so critical and is really helping build that strong foundation that then each next language milestone can build on. Okay, what about the one-sided conversations? Because, I mean, for the first year of life, it is often one-sided. And I wonder, should you be leaving space for them to answer you?

12:21You absolutely should. It's another big yes. The technique you're referring to is sometimes called serve and return or sometimes a conversational turn. The thing about this is, yes, they're not going to be able to respond with speech, but there's a lot of different ways they might be responding to you. It might be a gesture or a wave of their arms. It might just be that their eyes start to follow you. Later, it might be facial expressions. It might be cooing. It might be those early vocalizations. but you definitely want to leave that space open for them because even if it's not right away, it's starting to build that muscle for them.

12:53It's starting to show them this is what a conversation is. This is what language looks and sounds like.

12:57Lulu Garcia-Navarro:You know, I feel like the elephant in the room here is screens and language learning on YouTube or on TV. I mean, we know those programs exist and babies and kids and parents love them. Everything from like Sesame Street to Miss Rachel, but are they a substitute for that human in-person interaction? They are not. So what Amelia told me is that it's the social setting that unlocks the brain for learning. We really need that social input as humans to learn, especially when we're really young. So there have been a lot of interesting studies on this. One of those studies out of iLabs was the study they did of infants learning Mandarin.

13:38So they took babies from English-speaking households and put them in three groups. Some of the babies they put in front of screens where there were Mandarin speakers. Some heard audio recordings of Mandarin. And then the last group they took and put in a room with live Mandarin speakers. And over 12 sessions, what they found was that the babies in front of screens and with audio recordings didn't really learn anything. Oh, wow. But the babies that had live interactions with people speaking Mandarin were able to tell the difference between the sounds of Mandarin as well as babies who were born in Taiwan.

14:10So as well as native speakers. That's huge. Yeah. So one-on-one in-person parentees is most beneficial for your baby's language development. You need to be giving them those quality interactions. And to define that even further for you, let me introduce you to Nairan Ramirez Esparza. She's an associate professor at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Psychological Sciences. She was part of a research project that recorded babies and their families to try and understand how language learning happens in the home.

14:41Lulu Garcia-Navarro:The infant benefits the most when the interaction is with one other person and there is no like group interaction or two people are talking to the baby or there is a lot of things happening. So it's just this one-on-one interaction between the infant and the curvy giver. And that's when the baby talk really helps the infants later in their lives. Versus like putting baby in a playpen and everyone talking around them or, you know, siblings playing nearby where they're hearing a lot of language. People might have thought previously it's helpful for them just to hear things. It might be, but not anywhere to the same degree as when they're getting that one-on-one talking time, that one-on-one quality connection with one person.

15:24Lulu Garcia-Navarro:One thing that I've noticed some of the parents in my life doing with their babies is teaching them hand signals before they know words or before they're saying words. So it's like, this means milk or this means all done. Is that helpful? I mean, all done is baby sign language that will live in my brain forever. It's burned onto my brain. I will be doing all done until I am all done. Yeah, a lot of parents are curious about baby sign language. It's generally a lot more accessible than verbal communication at first. I know we tried. We picked up a book that had like the 100 most common baby sign language words.

16:00And we have like 10 left over. Does he still do them now that he talks? Yeah, he does. Sometimes he'll get like really excited about a dinner. More, more, more, more, more. Or dessert or something, you know, and it'll just like come out. But there's a lot of them that have just like fallen away. But more specifically, more and all done are the ones that we still have.

16:17Lulu Garcia-Navarro:What about reading to your baby? I wonder how early we should be doing that. It's never too early. It's never too early and never too often. A simple pro tip I loved from Jessica was to read books face to face with your baby instead of just putting them towards the book. So the reason why you do that is that they can see your facial expressions so they can get that social learning boost as well. And while you're at it, don't be scared to whip out all your literary devices and your terrible singing voice. You want to be as animated as possible because remember, it's not just about the language.

16:47They're getting social learning. That's why Roger says nursery rhymes are actually really helpful for brain development. You know, you want to paint a picture for them as vivid as you can. I don't know when or why this became a thing, but our transition song out of the bathtub at night is Take Me Out to the Ballgame. But I changed the lyrics of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. So now it's take Teddy out of the bathtub. That's all I give you. You don't need more than that. For your sake. So on that note, I think that's a very good reminder, you know, that you don't have to take it too seriously. That said, you do want to try to be mindful.

17:23When life can get stressful, there's a lot of devices around us all the time. Jessica says it can be easy sometimes for some of that critical language to get lost in the home.

17:31Lulu Garcia-Navarro:There is a lot that's distracting us as parents now. There's a lot happening on our own phones. We're texting people. We're checking for important updates. So in general, it's a little harder for parents today to be present with their children. But you gotta try. Andy, thank you so much for this. Thank you, Marielle.

17:53Lulu Garcia-Navarro:All right, time for a recap. Takeaway one, surround your baby with language. Talk to them every day. If you're not sure what to say, try narrating what you're doing or taking them on a house tour. If you speak another language, talk to them in that language too. It's never too early to start, and research shows that bilingual kids have a lot of advantages, like they're better at thinking flexibly and focusing their attention. Takeaway two, go ahead, speak parentese. That's when you modify your delivery because you're talking to a baby. You might do things like slowing down, varying your pitch and tone, and saying things in a high pitch like, I love your little toes.

18:31Lulu Garcia-Navarro:Those things can make it easier for a baby to start recognizing and deciphering words. What you want to avoid, though, is nonsensical or made-up words. Takeaway three, leave space for your baby to start responding. It might feel weird at first, but don't talk nonstop. Ask them a question and pause. That teaches them what conversation sounds like. And even if they don't speak to you in the moment, they might follow you with their eyes or wave their arms or make a sweet little baby sound. Takeaway four, nothing beats one-on-one in-person interaction. That is what's going to help your baby develop their language skills.

19:06Lulu Garcia-Navarro:And takeaway five, make learning language fun for them. Sing songs, read books. It's never too early. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to travel with the baby and another on everything you need to know about car seats. Also, we love hearing from you. So if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us at lifekit at npr.org. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our digital editor is Malika Garib, and our visuals editor is CJ Ricolon. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Claire Marie Schneider and Margaret Serino.

19:46Lulu Garcia-Navarro:Engineering support comes from Nisha Hines. Fact-checking by Andrea Lopez Cruzado. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.