Baby talk

“ BABY'S WORLD I WISH I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never could move, come creeping to his window with their stories and with trays crowded with bright toys. ”

“ Encourage them to talk, and meet them more than half-way by the utmost hospitality to the subjects that interest and puzzle them. Give them serious attention; do not ridicule their confusion of statement nor belittle their troubles.... Do not limit the [149] talk at table to the topics of childhood, but make it intelligible to children. Some people make the mistake of 'talking down' to their children; of turning the conversation at table into a kind of elaborate 'baby-talk'; not realizing that they are robbing their children of hearing older people talk about the world in which they live. ”

“ No mother ever tried to stop her baby from learning to talk because its first efforts were feeble, halting and unintelligible. How differently we treat the child’s attempts at musical expression—for that is the explanation of many of the crude baby noises that we hear. ”

“ For success in training children the first condition is to become as a child oneself, but this means no assumed childishness, no condescending baby-talk that the child immediately sees through and deeply abhors. ”

“ If he could talk, as he looks back at you, I fancy your baby would tell you how much your care of him, during the months before he was born, has meant, and then he would beg you to stand by, very closely, for a few months more, until he is a little more used to being a separate person living outside your body. ”

“ He looks up so earnestly, with such a solemn look in his eyes sometimes, that you would fancy he had all the cares of the world to think about, instead of only what his dinner will be, and when it will come, like other babies of two years old. Baby can talk nicely; he says his prayers night and morning, and before nurse feeds him with his beef-tea, he will fold his hands, and say his grace after her, as well as he can in his baby lisp. ”

“ Meanwhile, nature has provided an educational appliance almost ideally adapted to the child’s sense condition, in the mother’s face, hovering close above him, smiling, laughing, nodding, with all manner of delightful changes in the high lights; in the thousand little meaningless caressing sounds, the singing, talking, calling, that proceed from it; the patting, cuddling, lifting, and all the ministrations that the baby feels while gazing at it, and associates with it, till finally they group together and round out into the idea of his mother as a whole. ”

“ Every mother and real nurse knows that when the baby begins to be uneasy and gives a cry of dissatisfaction,—to come near with a smile, to make one's presence felt by a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their arms, will comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life—a word which signifies active relation;—and, in its highest sense, spiritual relation. ”

“ The children try with all their might to be quiet; and even the little two-year-old one struggles not to cry for company when baby cries, and learns a lesson in self-restraint. They look with respect on the maid or the nurse when they find that she has been up in the night, tending mother and baby, and that she looks as cheerful in the morning as if she had had good rest. ”

“ She will strive hard to understand the first time, even though the expression is imperfect and difficult of interpretation, and her nimble mind having figured out what it is that the child desires, will say, "Baby wants a cooky?" Here the child, in his comparatively new occupation of talking, finds a deal of delight in knowing that his words have been properly comprehended and feels a new confidence in his ability to express thoughts—which confidence, by the way, is essential to normal speech development in the child. ”

“ You'd think, to see us carrying on about that little tad, That, like as not, that baby was the first we'd ever had; But, sakes alive! he isn't, yet we people make a fuss As if the only baby in the world had come to us! And, morning, noon, and night-time, whatever he may do, Gran'ma, she laughs, Gran'pa, he laughs, Wife, she laughs, And I, of course, laugh, too! ”

“ All the billboards, all the street cars, all the minds and hearts of that great teeming panes simultaneously full of babies—baby likenesses, baby advertising, baby thoughts! The great urge of a great primitive emotion never once slackening! ”

“ The voice of nature is a voice rather poetical than truthful. The affection of children is earned and deserved; it is a consequence, not a cause, and gratitude is its commencement. At any cost, therefore, your baby must be made grateful. Do not reckon that he will be grateful to you for your solicitude, your dreams for his future, the cost of his nursing, and the splendid dowry that you are amassing for him ”

“ Begin with the baby, therefore, so that the child shall grow up into correct forms of speech, and into that regard of all good form which shall not only give him at once the ears, but the hearts of the people. ”

“ At an incredibly early age this baby could tell you how the birdies fly and what the kitty says.
All mothers who have had really wonderful children—and this takes us all in—will understand how hard it is to set these things down in cold print or even to tell them; for even our best friends are sometimes dull of heart and slow of understanding when we tell them perfectly wonderful things that our children did or said. ”

“ When a fresh infant was published in a house, the critics would call in a body to pass their judgment upon it, and the young mother would bring it down for them to sample.
"Did you ever see a child anything like that in this world before?" she would say, holding it out to them. "Isn't it a wonderful baby? You never saw a child with legs like that, I know. Nurse says he's the most extraordinary baby she ever attended. ”

“ Often kind friends manifest their affection and interest injudiciously through their anxiety to see the new-comer, when both mother and child would be much safer for a few days of perfect, uninterrupted quiet. In the early days when an infant should be forming the habit of long naps, and at regular times, and when the mother should be kept from any excitement, these friendly calls begin, and each caller has great curiosity just to look at the new baby, or just to wake it one moment to see whose eyes it has borrowed. ”

“ Intercourse with other children and with the older members of the child's family will also furnish constant material for the thoughtful mother. The baby bumps its head, and the mother soothes it with gentle, loving words. It is more than likely that the three-or four-year-old will express his sympathy also. ”

“ The narrative before us is couched in a dialogue, between a mother and her two children; and, being obviously designed for gentlemen and ladies not much higher than mamma's rocking chair, has frequently an infantine simplicity of style, that makes us marvel at our own moral courage, in daring to serve up such a baby's mess. ”

“ I stepped up to a lady to ask the age of a baby which she had in her maternal arms, when I found myself instantly a centre of baby attraction—babies seemed to pitch into me from all directions—a baby poked its fingers into my eye, a baby put sugar on my ruffled shirt, a baby daubed gruel on my white vest, a baby filled my kid glove with milk, a baby dropped something done up in a rag down my neck, and a baby of huge dimensions and unredeemed ugliness amused itself by filling my hat full of playthings which it appropriated from the weaker babies on either side. ”

“ But to the mother that baby is the marvel of all time. There is endless meaning in the first mumblings, endless soul in the senile, baby smile, unlimited possibilities in the knobby forehead and round, hairless head. ”

“ But truths get flat and wonders stale upon us. We do not care much about the starry firmament, the budding trees, the cunning architecture of the birds; and to all except young parents and young brothers and sisters a baby is no longer a marvel. The completeness of the new baby brother is what children admire most, his toes and his fingers, his ears and all the small perfections of him. ”

“ I was looking down at baby, and thinking that when she is old enough to understand things--and baby is very quick, and almost understands already, don't you, my pet?--she will hear such stories from ill-natured people about father, as will make her as unhappy as her poor mother is. ”

“ Will he call you pretty names when the baby is crying in the night, and you cannot keep it quiet—or, better still, will he sit up and take a turn with it? Will his arm be strong around you in the days of trouble? Will his eyes shine above you full of tenderness when yours are growing dim? ”

“ It is trying to a young mother who is proud of her baby's looks, to go to no end of trouble to get exquisite clothes for it, and ask all her friends in, and then have it look exactly like a tragedy mask carved in a beet! And you can scarcely expect a self-respecting baby who is hauled and mauled and taken to a strange place and handed to a strange person who pours cold water on it—not to protest. ”

“ There is another kind of relationship by which little children interpret their environment. It is the early manifestation of the associational process which in our adult life so largely crowds out the sensory and motor appreciation of the world. It runs way back to the baby’s pleasure in recognizing things, certainly long before the period of articulate questions. We all retain vestiges of this childlike pleasure in our joyful greeting of a foreign word that is understood or in any new application of an old thought or design. ”

“ On the contrary, the child takes the impression, from the readiness with which its words are understood and the delight it evidently gives its mother to hear them, that it is going on triumphantly in its work of learning to talk, instead of feeling that its attempts are only tolerated because they are made by such a little child, and that they require a vast amount of correction, alteration, and improvement, before they will be at all satisfactory. ”

“ When a mother talks to a baby, she is not encouraging its little mind to think. When she is coaxing her child to walk, she is not making a theoretic exposition of the science of equilibration. She crouches before the child, at a little distance, and spreads her hands. "Come, baby—come to mother. Come! Baby, walk! ”

“ The baby! We hardly trust ourselves to speak. The usual baby—we have seen it. As a rule, to be candid, we never could detect much beauty in babies—have always held the usual gush about them to be insincere. But this baby! ”

“ For example, the Mother-Play rhymes and jingles, which are generally accompanied by movements and gestures, and those which affect the child's own personality,—the parts of his body, etc.,—infants sensibly appreciate and enjoy before they can talk, and it is but natural that they are among the first things which they repeat as they learn to talk. ”

“ Both baby and mother have a hard time of it for the first few weeks of its life. The baby is passed from hand to hand, fussed over, and talked to so much by the visitors that come in, that it must think this world a trying place. ”

“ It is the child's own body that first furnishes the objects of his attention to be associated with words. From the beginning it is the instinct of the maternal nurse to talk to the child, which attracts him to observe the organs of speech; and this prompts the sympathetic [54] use of his own organs. Speech is a function distinctively human, which, beginning in the nursery, is carried on carefully in the kindergarten, creating the sphere of the intellectual life; for words support the operation of thinking. ”

“ He could chatter more fluently about a hazel-nut without articulating a single word than any human that has addled his brains getting an University diploma!”
“True,” replied the first speaker. “And the longer humans live in the world the duller they become from read—read—reading, and talk—talk—talking words, words, words, words, words! Now take babies. Babies are the wise ones. Babies who cheep like birds when pleased and squeal the way little pigs do when they are hungry can always be depended on to make their meaning understood! ”

“ That’s why I never prepare a talk, why I don’t really like to have them taken down: they’re something which are meant only for the instant they are conceived ... a child, if you like, made for just a moment’s life by the people listening and myself speaking. ”

“ Speech, the accurate adaptation of sounds heard to the movements of tongue and lips, is, however, the great instrument of social adaptation; and with the development of speech (usually in the second year) adaptation of the baby's activities to and with those of other persons gives the keynote of mental life. His range of possible activities is indefinitely widened as he watches what other persons do, and as he tries to understand and to do what they encourage him to attempt. ”

“ This period is from birth to three years. The story interest begins with lullabies, rhymes, and jingles. Every thoughtful mother must notice that even before the little one can speak it responds to rhymes repeated over and over. Half of the baby’s pleasure is in the frequent hearing of a familiar strain. The baby enjoys also, largely for rhythm’s sake, the shortest and simplest stories with refrains and repetitions ”

“ She can lead her little one to oo-oo, and ee-ee, and mamma, and bub-bub, etc., by doing these babblings herself while the baby is in her arms and his tiny hands are wandering over her lips and face and throat. ”

“ If these two every-day married women had been rocked in the same cradle, they could not talk more intimately; and, indeed, they have heavy matters to talk about, for of all the babies that ever came into this breathing world, theirs were the most extraordinary babies. ”