But it's very funny to respond to babies babbling nonsense with "yes, I see, an intriguing point."

There is a big difference between recoding "I am unable to do this currently because I am tied up with other work, ask me in a few hours" to "Daddy's busy right now sweetie, maybe later?"

and

"Aww whosa sweet wittuh one! My wittle girlie so preshusss!"

Baby talk overemphasizes everything, including repetitions, that makes it easier for babies to actually get what you want and what all those cues are supposed to mean.

So yeah, kind of important, even though it sounds stupid.

That being said, there is a point at which kids should be taken seriously and communicated with accordingly. Some parents talk to relatively old kids like with toddlers and that can't be healthy either.

Idk man. There's this 3yr old girl that's a child of one of our family's friends. She's pretty expressive with her vocabulary. Like i can have full blown conversations with this girl without dumbing much down, and i think that might be due to her parents' pedanticalness.

I think it's both true that baby talk is good for infants and that people infantilize children for far longer than they should

"They're deliberately trying not to look like they're talking about me!"

"They must be talking about me!"

We had a dog once that was super smart and would learn what different words meant very rapidly. I'd say with most dogs I've had, you can go most of their life and they'll maybe learn 2-3 different words for "dinner" and you can use other words if you're trying not to excite them too much. But this dog I swear near the end of her life we would have to say ridiculous things around her like "Did you put the K9 cereal in the receptacle?" because she had learned just about every other basic way to say "did you feed the dog?".

The little shits have almost certainly done something to deserve it

If someone's toddler starts talking about how AI is a paradigm shift I'm going to dropkick it

Denying their existence is totally on-brand

Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o’clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

According to Alfred Matthew Yankovic:

There were seventy three of us living in a cardboard box.

All I got for Christmas was a lousy bag of rocks.

Every night for dinner, we had a big ol' chunk of dirt.

If we were really good, we didn't get dessert.

It really depends on the kid and the complexity of the message. Young kids are still learning the intricacies of the language and building a vocabulary. Not talking down to them helps build those skills up. But at the end of the day, if the message is not getting across, it's the fault of the communicator.

Plus it's an annoying flex to say "see how amazing my kid is? It's all because of me!" Some kids just pick up language easier, some kids sleep all the way through the night earlier, some kids toilet train easier, etc. Usually it's better for parents to quietly take the little victory rather than treat it as a reflection of their amazing parenting skills.

laughs in condescending to children at a level they just don't comprehend

It definitely works. They'll grow up way faster. Like they'll be out of your life 15 YEARS faster!
When my toddler son hit his sister, instead of giving him a 'talking to' like the parinting book suggested, I just called the cops. Now he's in federal prison all on his own! I'm so proud of him. 🥰

Correct but obviously exaggerating. I'd love to hear his not-quite-2-year-old daughter "using" 4-syllable words 🙄

Obnoxious, but also NOT correct. As another poster pointed out baby talk does serve a purpose in language development, and is a pretty universal part of child rearing. It's not some recent cultural phenomenon that's holding people bad from their full potential (or whatever BS this person is trying to imply). Using big words or skipping the baby talk stage doesn't lead to more rapid or better development.