Baby Talk

In one of my classes last week, one of the activities the professor had us do felt incredibly silly. She brought in some of her grandchildren's stuffed animals. Basically we had to pretend our little teddy bear was a baby, and that you were either the mother or father, and were teaching it how to speak.

This felt ridiculous.

We were in groups, and the "father" in my group was an older gentleman who had raised two children - in short, a pro a this. I eventually started telling our baby - whom we named Petey - a story about pandas (as "Petey" was in reality a panda). We also had observers in our group - who later reported that we had isolated our child because we set him on a desk and kind of just stared at and talked to him. Hello! Petey was a stuffed animal!

So, that was my evening. Well, part of it. The class is about how we use language to create meaning. Basically the lesson was that you can't "teach" children how to speak - they acquire language through need and development. We don't sit our kids down and try to teach them in formal lessons. Doesn't really work on stuffed animals, either. :)