I’ve taken the liberty of using this description from the Center for Spoken Language Understanding at Oregon Health and Science University. Prosody involves “…the melody, timing and intonation of speech, refers to the ‘how it is said’ not to the ‘what is said’ of languageâ€. “We use prosody to convey meaning, intent and emotions. The ways in which we emphasize or express what we say is incredibly important in conveying the correct meaning of our statementsâ€.
Now I understand why my own use of language with young children is so effective. I have learned over time to use a range of emotions, tones and inflections to get my meaning across and, because I am a fairly balanced human being I do not get angry with tiny babies and toddlers.
I find that many of my colleagues and parents I know are ‘over the top’ in many of their emotions. They are often too verbally and physically affectionate in words, tone and action (artifically so in many cases — using words everyone expects them to say but without really meaning what they are saying) and well before a child is ready or skilled enough to respond, other than refusing to approach that person!
Those who work with young children need to be particularly well balanced in their delivery of physical care and language in order for their charges to trust them and thereby make excellent verbal, physical and emotional progress.
Children who don’t make excellent progress in all realms (those who fail to thrive) often have parents who lack balanced emotional reactions too. It doesn’t make them bad people but their own emotions and often stilted use of language definitely affect their children’s development in a negative way.
So, when any one of us doesn’t ‘get it right’ in the first year or two of life we ‘get it wrong’ and children are then set up for a poor (less than optimal) developmental trajectory.
Remember — prosody’s the word, I hear the opposite every day!