Why I Stopped Talking to My Infant Like a Tiny Corporate Executive

There's this very specific, slightly yellowish stain on the left shoulder of my vintage Ramones t-shirt. I got the shirt at a thrift store in 2018, back when I had things like "free time" and "disposable income," but the stain arrived precisely at 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in November, shortly after Maya was born. I remember the exact time because the glowing red numbers on my microwave were aggressively burning into my retinas while I paced the kitchen floor, bouncing a screaming seven-pound human, wearing one sock, and desperately trying to remember when I had last consumed water instead of coffee.

Maya was in that awful, beautiful, completely terrifying newborn phase where they don't even seem like real people yet. They're just these noisy little lumps of needs. And I was staring down at her, trying to get her to stop crying, and I caught my reflection in the dark kitchen window. I was leaning over her little face, my eyes wide like a crazy person, my voice pitched somewhere near a dog whistle, going, "Hiiiiiiii! Who's a little squishy? Who has the widdle toesies?"

And then I stopped dead. I horrified myself.

Because before I had kids, I swore to god I was never, ever going to do that. I was going to be a Smart Mom. I had this whole philosophy—mostly built on zero actual experience—that baby talk was insulting. I thought we were all just raising a bunch of oblivious goo goo babies who would end up with terrible vocabularies because their parents didn't respect them enough to use proper English. My husband, Dave, was totally on board with this. He had read some article in a waiting room somewhere that said you should speak to infants like they're tiny adults to build their linguistic capacity early. So for the first three weeks of Maya's life, we had been talking to her like she was a junior accountant who was underperforming at Q3 projections.

I'm not kidding. I was changing diapers at 2 AM saying things like, "Mother is going to replace your soiled garment now, please help this transaction by remaining stationary."

Oh god. It was so stupid.

The bizarre midnight google search

Anyway, the point is, standing there in the kitchen, exhausted out of my mind, I realized the "professional" voice wasn't working. She didn't care about my expansive vocabulary. She just wanted comfort. But I was so deeply paranoid about ruining her brain development that I actually pulled out my phone with my one free hand to research if making weird noises was going to stunt her intelligence.

I was so tired I couldn't even spell. I was texting Dave, who was snoring in the other room, about our new babie—yes, with an 'e' on the end, because phonetics had entirely abandoned me. I opened a browser and my brain just completely short-circuited. I was trying to search for "infant babbling milestones" but also I was thinking about this hiking trail Dave wanted to take us to called Cedar Creek, and I literally typed goo goo babies super creek into the search bar.

Like, what the hell was I even looking for? A secret nature reserve for infants? An underground society of babies who hang out by a stream and refuse to learn consonants? I don't know. Sleep deprivation is a literal drug.

But that completely unhinged search rabbit hole eventually led me to something that actually changed everything about how I parented, and it was so much simpler than the rigid rules Dave and I had been trying to follow.

What my doctor actually said

At our next appointment, I confessed to Dr. Aris that I had started speaking to Maya in a voice I didn't recognize. A high, sing-songy, slightly unhinged tone. I told her Dave thought we were doing it wrong.

Dr. Aris kind of laughed and told me about something called "Parentese." It turns out, I was kind of right, but also completely wrong. You shouldn't just make up nonsense words—like, don't just stare at your kid and say "flim flam blorp" because that doesn't teach them anything. But the high-pitched, exaggerated tone? The dragging out of the vowels? The ridiculous facial expressions? That's exactly what their little brains are begging for.

She explained that babies have a much easier time hearing higher pitches. When we naturally slip into that weird, melodic voice, it acts like an acoustic hook. It literally catches their attention. She said something about neural pathways lighting up and synapses firing, and I only vaguely understood the medical mechanics of it because I was heavily caffeinated and extremely sleep-deprived, but the gist was clear: Parentese helps them map out the sounds of their native language.

You use real words, but you stretch them. "Look at the cuuuuuuuup! Do you see the reeeeed cuuuuuup?"

It was like someone had given me permission to stop being a college professor and just be a mom. I didn't have to read her the Wall Street Journal. I could just get on the floor and be an idiot.

The floor time revolution

By the time my second kid, Leo, came along four years later, I had fully embraced the madness. I spent hours on the floor with him just narrating my day in the most ridiculous, drawn-out voice possible.

Really, if you want to know what my living room looked like for most of 2020, it was basically just me, a cold cup of coffee, and Leo rolling around on this Colored Universe Bamboo Baby Blanket. I'm weirdly obsessed with this specific blanket. Most baby stuff is either blindingly primary colored or so aggressively beige that it looks like a depression ward, but this one has these really cool, deep celestial patterns.

The contrast of the universe design was amazing for Leo because when they're tiny, they can only really focus on high-contrast stuff anyway. Plus, it's bamboo, which I swear is some kind of magic fabric. Leo was a sweaty baby. Like, randomly damp all the time? I don't know why nobody tells you that some kids just run hot. But this blanket somehow kept him cool, and it survived him violently throwing up milk on it at least six times. It genuinely got softer after I washed it, which never happens with anything.

I'd lay him on that little universe pattern and just hover my face over his, making the craziest expressions. "Hiiiiii Leeeeeeoooo. Are you looking at the staaaaaaars?" And he would coo back. It was a conversation. A very weird, one-sided conversation, but a conversation nonetheless.

That one mom at the park who ruined my tuesday

Of course, there's always someone who has to ruin the vibe. When Maya was about ten months old, we were at the park, and I was pushing her in the swing. I was doing my whole routine. "Wooooooo! You're going so hiiiiiiigh!"

This woman next to me, pushing a toddler who was dressed in what looked like a miniature linen suit, leaned over and said, very loudly, "We don't use diminutive language in our household. We find it delays cognitive processing."

I swear to god, I almost launched my iced coffee into the sandbox. First of all, who talks like that at a playground on a Tuesday morning? Second of all, what does that even mean? It took everything in me not to ask her if her toddler was currently drafting a thesis on geopolitical economics between bites of sand.

The sheer arrogance of millennial and Gen-Z parenting trends sometimes just makes me want to scream. We have so much access to information that we've convinced ourselves every single interaction with our children has to be optimized for maximum intellectual output. We've turned parenting into a competitive sport where if you aren't narrating the exact physics of the swing set to your infant, you're failing.

My aunt, who's from Greece, always used to call both my kids her little babi when she visited, squeezing their cheeks and talking to them in this rapid-fire, high-pitched mixture of Greek and English nonsense. And you know what? They loved it. They smiled. They felt safe. Because communication isn't just about data transfer. It's about connection.

Also, anyone who tries to sell you baby flashcards is completely lying to you and just wants your money.

The teething phase and trying to talk

It's obviously much harder to have these little Parentese conversations when your kid is screaming because their teeth are erupting from their skull. When Leo hit five months, the babbling stopped and the drooling began.

He was just gnawing on his own fists, my shoulder, the dog's bed—literally anything. We ended up getting the Squirrel Teether Silicone Gum Soother. I'll be totally honest, the design is a bit random. Like, why a squirrel holding an acorn? It's fine, it works, but I always found the shape a little odd. That being said, Leo absolutely went to town on that squirrel's tail.

I'd sit there holding the little silicone ring while he chewed on it, and I'd just softly talk to him. "Ohhhh, does that hurrrrrrt? Are your teeeeeeeth coming in?" The silicone was easy to wipe off—which is major because the sheer volume of spit involved in teething is horrifying—but honestly, it was my voice, that weird, rhythmic, high-pitched Parentese, that really got him to calm down enough to use the teether in the first place.

Finding what really works

Looking back at how rigid Dave and I were in those early days makes me sad, honestly. We missed out on the pure joy of just sounding silly with our first baby because we were so terrified of doing it wrong. We thought we had to be perfect, adult models of language.

If you're currently in the thick of it, surrounded by baby gear and wondering if you're ruining your kid by speaking to them in a high pitch, please let it go. Lean into it. Stretch out your vowels. Open your eyes really wide. Sound like an absolute fool. Your baby doesn't want a perfectly articulated lecture on the state of the world. They just want you.

And if you're looking for the kind of stuff that seriously holds up to the reality of having a baby—the spit-up, the floor time, the endless washing—I can't think the organic options enough. We also had the Playful Penguin Organic Cotton Blanket which was just fantastic for tossing in the stroller. You can browse all of Kianao's organic blankets in their collection to find something that doesn't look terrible in your living room.

But whatever blanket you use, and whatever weird words you say, just talk to them. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but the two of you.

If you want to know more about navigating the incredibly weird world of baby communication and development, check out Kianao's full guide on early infant milestones.

The messy questions everyone asks (and my honest answers)

Do I've to sound like a cartoon character all day long?

Oh god, no. Your throat would literally bleed. I only ever did the whole high-pitched Parentese thing when I was face-to-face with them during diaper changes or floor time. If I was just walking around the house doing laundry, I talked in my normal voice. You don't have to be "on" 24/7. That's exhausting and impossible.

What if I feel incredibly stupid doing it?

You will. For the first two weeks, you'll feel like an absolute idiot, especially if your partner is in the room watching you. But then your baby will smile—like, a real, gummy, full-face smile—in response to your weird voice, and you'll completely stop caring about your dignity. Dignity dies the moment you bring a newborn home anyway.

Is there a difference between babbling and actual words?

According to my doctor, yeah. Babbling is just them playing with their vocal cords. It's the "ba-ba-ba" and "da-da-da" stuff. It doesn't mean they're calling you "Dada." Sorry to Dave, who thought Leo was a genius at four months. They're basically just revving the engine to see how the machine works.

What if my baby just stares at me like I'm crazy?

Maya did this all the time. I'd do my whole song and dance, and she would just give me this blank, unblinking stare that made me feel like I was being judged by a tiny, milk-drunk ghost. It's fine. They're taking it all in. Their brains are processing the sounds even if their faces look completely apathetic.

Does my husband have to do it too?

Dave took way longer to get comfortable with it than I did. He felt ridiculous. But eventually, he found his own version of it—it wasn't as high-pitched as mine, but he naturally started slowing down his words and exaggerating his expressions. Men naturally have lower voices, so their Parentese sounds different, but as long as they're making eye contact and engaging, the baby is getting exactly what they need.