A baby’s brain is growing at an alarming rate. I’m not speaking from medical knowledge, but it stands to reason that while the brain is growing, and despite the fact that there is no sensible uttering from the mouth of your babe, one should talk to the baby. And I mean actually talk … sense. It puzzled me that most parents believe their babies will understand cooey, gooey crap until I realized that it was the cooey, gooey crap they wanted as their children’s first words. Most parents think it’s cute for their kids to say ‘ta ta’ instead of goodbye. I find it annoying.

I used to live in hope that my child’s first words would be something along the lines of dada, cat or woof. But based on his later exposure to the spoken word, there became a higher likelihood that the first coherent uttering would be more along the lines of fuck or bloody hell. His first real word turned out to be ‘bugger’, repeated several times in quick succession. With his first swear word under his belt, the rest was easy.