For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for October 05, 2020

I bet

The irony is, even though her job is supposed to give her the opportunity to talk about something besides babies, all she’s talking about is…

Maybe when we aren’t looking.

Love makes a man’s mind turn to mush.

Baby love makes a woman’s mind turn to mush.

She just can’t help herself!

We had never talked “baby talk” (“baff”, “walkies”) to our daughters. As a result, they grew up speaking well. However, sometimes my love of words and teaching them had funny results. Our older daughter & I had a fun game during bath-time. I’d ask her a question but, just as she was answering, I’d take a facecloth and scrub her mouth, making her speaking mumbly…then I’d “yell” at her for not speaking clearly. I’d tell her, “You need to enunciate!” She found this game hilarious. One day in kindergarten, for homework the kids had to “bring in a word from home”. They had to write it on a paper and explain the word to the class. Most of the other kids had words like “Cat”, “Ball” or “Home”…our girl brought “Enunciate”!

Oh yes it does!

Record her talking baby talk, and play it back so she can see how irritating it is to adults. She will quit doing it.

Yeah, it’s a blessing having the ability to work while you are concentrating on your kids.

I never talked “baby talk” to my kiddos and cannot understand why anyone would. Children learn to speak by listening to speech. So why would you not use real words?

Then there are those who use baby talk on their pets. Cringeworthy.

Different strokes for different folks. If you don’t like reading the strip you could always unfollow it.

The strips these days are the ones I missed in the first run. I know that I can go to the archives and read the story arcs ahead, but seeing them day by day is more fun (though I do slip & peek sometimes). I came in again when April was around 4 because I remember the adventure in the ravine.

It’s really not a good idea to talk baby talk to them. At least keep it to a minimum. They learn from us how to speak normally.

So, Annie bathes the baby every day in addition to the bath we saw last week that April gets every night? That’s too much bathing for babies. I was taught you bathed them every other day or their skin would get too dry.