Queen Madalasa taught the supreme truth of Atman and Brahman
to her babies. She told them in her lullabies that they were pure, immortal, and
not the body and the mind. She did not shy from using the very words of the
Upanishads just because they would not be intelligible to her babies. And what
happened? All that wisdom was absorbed by her babies, and when they turned adults,
they started a spiritual journey, bereft of worldly attachments, to realise
their true nature that was told to them by their mother when they could not
even speak.
Imagine what would happen if every parent spoke only
sensible words to their babies but in parentese, in a manner that their babies
would understand!
All babies would learn language abilities at a much faster
pace and they would learn everything right the very first time. The
possibilities are endless. All that the parent wants as basic values that the
baby should adopt, could be taught from the beginning.
One could say: ‘Speeaak the truuuth! Respect your maather!’
It is very important that the right concepts, right words, and right language
is communicated to the baby, albeit in a manner she or he would understand. Any
kind of fear that is created in the baby’s mind at this stage of life is
difficult and sometimes almost impossible to erase. That is why babies should
never be traumatised by harshness or by giving fearful ideas. Of course, it
requires tremendous patience and meticulous care but that is what takes to
create anything worth mention. A bit of care in minding one’s talk to the
babies can make all parents proud of brighter children with deep sense of
values ingrained in them.
What do parents generally say to their babies?
When they want to express their love, they say something
like ‘bulu, bulu, bulu, bulu, ju, ju, ju, ju, ju’. So, the baby has to hear a
large amount of talk that makes no sense to anybody, just because the parents
think that is how the babies would understand them. Well, research proves that
such a belief is wrong. Baby talk, parentese, motherese, or infant directed
speech, is a kind of talk intended to aid language learning of the babies. It
should be high pitched, in a sweet tone, and the words should be enunciated
slowly, elongating the vowels. It is very important to use the right words for
objects and people.
Using sounds like ‘bah-bah’ for some object just because the
parent thinks the baby
will not understand the right word is completely wrong and
delays the development of the language skills of the child. Imagine if you were
learning a new language and the teacher teaches you words that are non-existent
in that language, just because the teacher thinks you are not ready for the
actual words. How frustrating would that be? That is exactly what happens when
most parents use such meaningless words while talking to their babies.
Source – Excerpts from Prabuddha Bharata August 2018
editorial