Talking to children has always been fundamental to language development, but new research reveals that the way we talk to children is key to building their ability to understand and create sentences of their own. The exaggerated speech we naturally use with young children is special register – often called ‘motherese’A term used in the study of CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION for the way mothers talk to their young children. Its features include simplified grammar, exaggerated speech melody, diminutive forms of words such as doggie, and a highly repetitive style. There is also a tendency to expand or comment on what the child has just said: when a child says Castle down, and the mother replies, Yes, the castle's fallen down. Although originally mothers were the focus of research study, similar conversational patterns have been observed in fathers' speech (sometimes referred to as fatherese) and in the speech of others who look after young children, such as grandparents and nannies (users of caretaker speech). These patterns, however, are not identical: for example, research indicates that fathers tend to be more intense and demanding in talking to young children, using more direct questions and a wider range of vocabulary