Ive noticed strange behaviour by parents, especially mums, towards their little ones.
I think mothers contribute to their babies’ mental growth and thinking.
Parents’ role is to fill babies’ minds with knowledge and wisdom, including language.
Most mothers, when teaching their children to speak, drop their language level to accommodate their children.
Words become completely twisted and pronounced at a level that is considered suitable for babies, making these little ones believe it’s the right way to speak.
For example, the Tsonga word for love is “rhandza” but you find mums saying “lhanja” to their children, thinking this is the right level of exposure suitable for them.
This is totally wrong and it makes children grow up with wrongly pronounced words learnt from their parents.
What makes things worse is that these kids still need to learn the correct pronunciation as they grow up, which takes time and makes their learning very slow.
I advise mothers to pronounce words correctly when speaking to their kids, and it’s up to those children to interpret the word in a manner that suits their thinking.
It’s normal for small kids to pronounce words wrongly, as this is how they learn.
Better to have them struggling to pronounce words in their early stages of speaking, rather than teaching them the wrong pronunciation.
That destroys language skills.
Our job as parents is to teach kids to speak, not for us to speak in a way that accommodates them, because it negatively affects a child’s development.
) Malphia Honwane, Gottenburg
