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You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
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Yakkety Yak Yak Yak
"I can't believe I spent so much time wishing they would talk sooner."
A friend of mine with older children happened to be feeling the noise one afternoon when I quizzed her about speech development and which consonants are most treacherous.
As in so many areas, I sometimes feel I've been a bit of a slacker as a parent. The vast arena of tot chatter is one example. I have encountered people who work on kid noises, do whole programs of baby sign language, teach second languages, and I admit to having done none of this. There is a lot of talking and reading aloud around here but nothing programmatic.
But very occasionally, the media coughs up some comforting tidbit that makes me feel less like a lazy millstone, hindering my kid from reaching ace potential. Emily Bazelon has an interesting piece in Slate all about childhood language development, and there is a ton to be said about it, and I am toying with reading the book that inspired her article (The Infinite Gift by Charles Yang). But I was grateful for her penultimate paragraph:
"And while I'm all for neurons firing away (who isn't?), the intense focus on young talkers often seems to me overblown. "She has so many words!" we coo about precocious toddlers—code for "she's smart" or "you're smart too, since you're her mother." Then there's all the comparing of notes about how much or how well our children speak compared to other children. But if early speech is more like a party trick than a measure of intelligence or aptitude, then the cooing and the comparisons generate more anxiety than light."
Yep.
posted by Elise at 10:37 AM
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