Becoming Fluent in Baby Talk

Parenting didn’t just change the way I talked and behaved, it changed the way I saw the world.

At a baby-and-me music class, I have forgotten how to talk like an adult. Parents trickle out of the room, grabbing diaper bags and keys, while a few of us linger behind to chat and play with our little ones. I talk to another mom about sleep deprivation and crawling. Is he teething? When are you going back to work? Our babies get fussy, which means it’s time to go. “It was great talking,” I want to say. “Maybe we’ll catch up next time.” I want a mom friend. Someone to talk to about all the more difficult thoughts you have when you become a parent. Like how, in a capitalist society, gender equity means going back to work before your baby can even roll over. “Let’s exchange numbers,” I’d like to suggest. Instead, I grab my baby’s arm, flop it around in her direction and say, “Okay, bye-bye! See you next time!” She flops a baby arm back at me.

Before I became a mother—before I shopped for things called “boppies” and “oogiebears”—baby talk made me cringe. I watched my friends become parents and suddenly become fluent in it. They would spout off details about “mushie cups” and “itzy ritzies.” They would sing Baby Shark in public. We used to discuss work and politics and the latest episode of Game of Thrones. You know, important things. But after kids, they changed—they became lost in the world of babies, and I wished they would find a way out. They would say things like: WHO’S A GOOD BABY? WHO’S GOT THE CHUBBIEST LITTLE THIGHS? and I’d smile politely but die a little inside.

It’s called Parentese, and it seems to be instinctive. Parents around the world, across all different cultures, speak to babies using similar vocal patterns: exaggerated, simplistic sentences in high-pitched, sing-songy tones. Despite how much it makes adults cringe, Parentese is good for babies. One study found that it helps them learn new language skills and develop a larger vocabulary. Parentese also makes babies feel safe. When they hear baby talk, babies babble back, which some research even suggests is a way of processing stress. And that’s important when you’re pulled out of the womb and thrown into a world that’s unpredictable and blurry. You need someone to translate adult human speech to baby talk. You want someone to tell you it’s all going to be okay. To say things like, “who’s got the chubbiest thighs?” to distract from the fear of not knowing when your next meal will be.

It’s called Parentese, and it seems to be instinctive.

It wasn’t just baby talk, but the whole world of babies that used to make me uncomfortable. People seemed to lose themselves after having children—it’s what shows like Sex and the City warned us about. At the airport, a mother once barked at me for almost cutting in front of her in the boarding line. She had a kid on her hip and a stroller in hand. A diaper bag falling off her body. I rolled my eyes and muttered, “We’re all going to the same place.” But I thought: What an asshole. People with kids really expect everyone to cater to them, don’t they? Back then I wasn’t even a little bit curious why she might be reacting that way.

But now, here I was: a kid on my own hip, a diaper bag falling off my own shoulder, walking out of this music class and talking like a cartoon character. Had I also lost myself?

It’s not just music class. I’ve baby-talked in all sorts of non-baby situations. “Thank you, buddy!” I cooed to the mail carrier one afternoon. And when a car cut me off in traffic, I found myself singing, “Well, that’s not very niiiice.” I stubbed my toe on the coffee table one morning and instead of letting out a series of expletives, I shouted, “ouchie, ouchie, ouchie!”

As I buckle my infant into his car seat, the baby talk continues. “Let’s go eat,” I say to him. “Time for munchie munchies!” My pre-baby self would be horrified. But like any language, switching from one to another can be tricky. Some words don’t quite translate. In English, for example, love means something just a little different than it does in a language like Cantonese. Other words have no meaning at all—they are untranslatable. Something is often lost when you switch from one language to another, but something is also gained. As linguist Tim Lomas puts it, when one language absorbs the words of another, “it unequivocally gets richer and more complex.” Maybe the same is true for Parentese.

Just a few months ago, I held my son in the hospital, rubbing the thin, wrinkly skin of his back. I never considered that human beings could be so fragile. I mostly thought of my own species as the opposite: hardened, corrupt, and toxic. I was the kind of person who would say things like, “cats are my favorite people” or “dogs for president.” Animals are helpless and innocent; human beings are cruel and unkind. We start wars. We kill. We argue with strangers in airports.

But that day in the hospital, holding this very small person, my view had shifted. I could see that humans were also fragile. The world was cruel, sure, but I promised to show the tiny human in my arms that the world could be a kind and loving place. I expressed this in Parentese by saying, “I love you so much, bub-bub. Who’s the best baby?” Part of me cringed. But I was starting to understand that being a good mother meant doing all the things that once made me cringe. “Look at that little booty butt,” I said to the small face nestled in my chest.

Parenting didn’t just change the way I talked and behaved, it changed the way I saw the world. I was still the same person, yet something in me had been both added and taken away—less of a change and more of a translation. We drive away from music class and I glance at my kid in the rearview mirror. He looks out of the window and hums softly to himself, speaking a language of his own.

Something is often lost when you switch from one language to another, but something is also gained.

On the way home, we stop at the post office. I waddle out of my car, buried underneath a diaper bag, a large box, and a six-month-old, when someone yells across the parking lot. An older man, leaning halfway out of his window, is straining to get my attention. I squint and put my hand up to my ear. “You hit me!” he shouts. “You hit my car!” I did? Maybe this is what mom brain is like. You get into car accidents and don’t even realize it. I walk a bit closer and ask what he means. He leans farther out of his window and slows down his speech. “When you opened your car door,” he says, like he’s losing patience with a toddler, “you tapped my car.” I look at his car. It’s covered in dents and four different shades of paint. The bumper is missing. My face warms with adrenaline and I want to yell. Or at least, I want to say something passive aggressive yet cruel. Oh, I’m so sorry I tapped your bucket-on-wheels. Wouldn’t want to add a 17th dent to that stapled-on door. There’s actual duct tape on your rearview mirror, sir. Not a very nice thing to say, but hey, he started it. The words make it to my throat. “Sorry about that,” I say, remembering the promise I made. I take a breath.

“Should we see if your car is scratched?” I ask. And he thinks about it, then tells me no, it’s fine. It’s fine. Just be more careful next time, he says. He retreats back into his car, shaking his head at me.

That mom-brain stuff? It’s a real thing. Giving birth is correlated with a reduction in gray matter in some parts of the brain—which might explain why I keep leaving my keys in the front door — but it’s also positively correlated with an emotional attachment to babies. In other words, the transition to parenthood even happens on a neurological level. And it’s not just mothers and people who give birth. Fathers also experience changes to the brain after they become parents. Reality becomes, to borrow Lomas’ words, unequivocally more complex.

Walking back to my car, I wonder: Did I really hit his car? Am I the jerk? And an elitist jerk at that, mocking him for driving a car that wasn’t in pristine condition. I vow to extend a little more compassion —well, first I make sure he hasn’t keyed my car, then I vow to extend a little more compassion—to my fellow human beings. After all, this guy leaning out of his window to yell at me was also once a fragile, thin-skinned baby.

Parentese is a way to help babies understand the world around them by seeing it through their eyes, translating it into a language that appeals to them. I don’t think I needed to have a child to see the world differently, but it’s hard not to see the world differently when you have a child. At least for me, those first months of parenthood felt like a translation of the person I used to be into the person I have now become. And that person finds it just a little bit easier to understand the language of others, even when it’s brash or impatient or unkind. It’s a little bit easier to see everyone’s inner baby. Most adults are, after all, just like babies—trying to make sense of a blurry, uncertain world, fumbling around for a sense of safety. Hoping someone will tell us it will all be okay.