- Are Baby’s First Words Mama Or Dada?
Will Your Baby’s First Words Be MaMa or DaDa?
Well there is overwhelming traditional statistical evidence which would suggest that MaMa takes out the win (and not just because ‘Animal’ has MaMa at 2x that of DaDa).
However new research has brought the question to the fore once again and the results make compelling reading… it all depends on the siblings (or lack thereof)…!
Classically the stay-at-home mother spends all her time with the baby and speaks predominantly in the first person when conversing with the baby – ‘..now mama is going to feed you..‘ and ‘…mama is just going outside to hang the washing..‘ etc etc.
Naturally your baby learns the word mama even though it doesn’t yet attribute it any significant meaning except that it gets a great reaction when used.
Now throw some siblings into the mix.
Well, baby now has TWO sources to learn from, mama with her constant rhetoric AND the sibling with their own brand of conversation. Needless to say the two styles are significantly different and baby has to chart a course based on both.
The sibling has already learnt the power of ‘mama’ and has used it great effect, ‘mama I want this…‘ or ‘mama I want that..‘ etc.etc. Mother for her part, has learnt to say ‘No’ or to say nothing in those annoying instances… which now yields a negative response for the sibling and leaves baby confused!
Then Dad comes home, and when the baby’s sibling asks ‘dada’ for stuff, he/she get it…. since all things with your children are hard to refuse (unless you’re the mother who has it constantly all day). So now baby see’s that ‘dada’ works better than ‘mama’…!
Now lets remove the siblings but make it a work-from-home Dad. Well things don’t just switch around as one might expect. You have to bring in the maternal versus paternal instincts and how they present when being compared directly against one another. …And it goes on.
In the final analysis, the research suggests a first born tends to utter ‘mama’ before ‘dada’, whereas a second or third child MIGHT utter ‘dada’ before ‘mama’… unless there is a stay-at-home dad situation where it becomes … NaNa (a reference to grandmother)!
But take heart, all you fathers out there – baby does not have a clue what the word ‘mama’ means and uses it in-discriminatory for everything from love to hate, food to poo and belive it or not, for Mom or Dad! So while it doesn’t sound like dad… ‘mama’ really means dad!