And let me tell you exactly why that is a tragedy: because how adorable would it be to hear Neil Patrick Harris use baby talk with his precious little babies? Just think about it, ok? Neil holding a baby in each arm and spouting off with some “ooooh, the ickle widdle babies! Who’s daddy’s widdle babies? Who are dey? Who are dey? It’s you! Iiiiiiit’s you!” … or whatever.
But, sadly, that is too much adorable for this world to bear, and so NPH just talks to his kids like grown ups:
Neil Patrick Harris and his partner David Burtka’s kids Gideon and Harper may only be 15-months-old – but that doesn’t impact the way the actor talks to them. It’s a parenting tip he says he picked up from his own mom and dad.
“My parents always talked to my brother and myself like we were regular people and not babies,” Harris tells PEOPLE. “So I don’t talk down to them in baby talk. I try to talk to them even though they can’t speak the language yet.”
As for their personalities, Harris says, “They’re thankfully in the new huggy, clingy, head-on-shoulders phase, which is fantastic. It’ll brighten up a sad day every single time.”
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? In case there’s any doubt, I’m thinking “pictures please.”
Really though, I was never a fan of baby talk. With my niece, who I had a hand in raising, I always spoke to her like an adult. At the moment, I can’t tell if it did any good because she’s 13, and, well … have you spoken to a 13-year-old lately? There’s just too much going on there to do much analyzing.
But while I don’t like using baby talk on babies, there are three people that I do use baby talk on: my two guinea pigs and my boyfriend. I KNOW. It started off as a joke, but then it kind of stuck. It’s not all the time or even a majority of the time, but it’s there, and I can’t take that back. And with the guinea pigs, well … maybe if babies had soft fur and made cute little squeaks all the time, and maybe if their poops were as easy to clean up as guinea pigs, then maybe I’d use baby talk with them.
What do you guys think? Do you use baby talk? Do you enjoy it? Or do you just want to talk about the mind-shattering way in which Neil Patrick Harris is the most charming person to ever walk the earth?
I love NPH. He is just so adorable. Glad he does not talk baby talk to his kids. The only baby talk I use is for Mr Kitty, a big bundle of a Coon cat.
Vocal play with infants is actually an important for language development. My daughter is deaf and when she got her cochlear implant at 18 months, and she heard for the first time, part of her therapy was vocal play, which is baby talk.
My parents didn’t use baby talk, and I won’t either.