You don’t have to exaggerate expressions to captivate kids

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

We’ve all done it; a small child minding its own business makes its way towards you and instead of greeting them in some orthodox way, you instead screw your face up and gurn to scare them half to death.

I was reminded of this when I saw a friendly woman of more mature vintage pounce on an unsuspecting child recently as she went in for the overkill by simply, but spectacularly, opening her mouth wide enough to cram in a full snack box.

It was like that toothpaste ad where she had hinges to open her orifice 180 degrees – because it didn’t look possible to pull this off within the limitations of a normal jawline.

The problem – apart from the child probably thinking it was staring into oblivion and that this version of oblivion was burdened with very bad breath – was that at least half the woman’s teeth were missing, so the overall impression was of a very large salmon frightening the life out of an innocent little sprat.

It’s not just the wizened facial expressions that kick in as soon as you meet someone’s new sprog.

Because you only have to gaze down upon them in their pram and you immediately start to talk to them in a language all of your own making, as though – just because they don’t speak English at two months – you alone possess unique powers of communication last seen when Dr Doolittle talked to the animals.

Thus ‘goo goo goo’ is babyspeak for ‘well, hello and how are you?’ and ‘coochie coochie coo’ is supposed to get them laughing their little cotton socks off.

Blessed with the success of a smile, you now embark into a stream of utter nonsense while jiggling your head and opening and closing your mouth, wrinkling your nose and eyes and generally behaving like you’re some sort of fairground attraction.

What is it in us that makes us come up with such exaggerated facial expressions and gobbledegook just because we’re in the presence of a little mite?

Surely our big heads and booming voices are scary enough in their normal mode without hamming it up like we’re on drugs or staring in some over-the-top soap opera?

It’s a bit like those people who think that the can communicate with non-English speaking foreigners by simply adopting some slow-motion version of your normal speed.

Slowing down English doesn’t make it any easier to understand for someone who doesn’t speak it in the first place.

Nor does speaking English with a French accent make it any more assessable for French people.

The former England football manager Steve McClaren spent a successful few years in Dutch football without actually speaking any Dutch – although he did start to speak English in a bizarre Dutch accent.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.