[scobar]

The sentence, "The truth is this: I think Noa is raising us as much as we are raising her." and the paragraph it heads really resonated with me as a parent of a young child.

Upon seeing the title, I expected the article to be about the unknown languages infants sometimes seem to invent. We speak two languages to our son, but my wife and I both understand each language quite well. Our son was very vocal as an infant, but less than half of his words were English or Portuguese. He's nearly three now, but he'll still use some of his invented words to unnecessarily lengthen phrases. I imagine this is to mimic adults who express themselves with more words. He may believe that longer phrases are given more consideration as he tends to do this more often when making a request with a small chance of success, like asking for another treat after being told he can only have one.