Don't spoon-feed vocabularies to infants as babies pick up words relevant to their existence

Parenting has become even more of a fraught exercise now because of over-analysing and almost compulsive goalsetting. Thanks to ante- and post-natal coaching classes, websites offering timelines and templates for babies’ progress on all fronts, and an avalanche of often-contradictory information from various sources, practically nothing is left to chance or even instinct.

Weights, diets, times and frequency of meals, weaning and potty-training are all plotted out for parents to follow minutely, failing which, feelings of abject inadequacy are guaranteed. The latest is the list of 25 words that infants should be able to understand and speak before they reach the age of two, if they are not to be deemed ‘slow talkers’.

‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’ figure in that list (region- and language-specific variants presumably also qualify), as do ‘hello’, ‘bye-bye’ and ‘thank you’; the universal need for words such as car, juice, biscuit, banana and hat are obviously debatable.

Even if a list is meticulously collated, with enough politically-correct compromises, putting out a list of ‘should-know’ words could lead parents to conduct contrived conversations so that the ‘correct’ words are conveyed and internalised by their offspring.

Just like child-rearing, basic vocabularies cannot be standardised, no matter how hard experts try to systematise and homogenise cultural practices. Babies pick up words that are relevant to their existence depending on their diverse environments and they are known to doggedly defy typecasting and instruction despite their minuscule proportions.

Keep a healthy flow of intelligible words around them — actual conversations, recorded recitations, songs and TV shows — and they will select the 25 words they need the most. Spare the parents that task.