After my first was born I read something about talking to your baby, how you should say what you're doing while you're going about your day and talk to them, and I remembered feeling guilty for not having a constant running commentary. Then after awhile I found myself talking more to the baby, but in a high sing-songy tone and often silly words, not baby talk in the sense of simplifying words, but affectionate and silly things. Eventually I found myself repeating words and phrases and signs in a more educational manner. By maybe age 2 or earlier I found myself using very natural speech and often using words I didn't think he had ever heard before, but in context they could possibly be inferred. All this was natural and not planned for the most part. When the new baby was born I didn't talk much to him at first, and felt guilty again thinking he was neglected because I'm harried and hassled, but now that he's older I realize that we're following the same pattern as with the first. I'm in the sing-songy stage and find myself using the same words and signs to identify or describe things because he is beginning to associate words with meaning. I think that a parent who is in tune with their child will naturally modulate their speech according to the child's developmental stage. Of course not all parents think to utilize this stage of easy language acquisition - "Do you want yellow or white?" is a wasted learning opportunity compared to "Would you prefer cheddar or Provolone?" IMHO.
