Everett True Comics

Yep, the problem is parents talking this way all the time. We talked, and still do, to our kids much as we talk to adults.

Got my kids back for the summer and they made friends with the neighborhood brats. I'd talk to the other kids like I did mine and they often looked a little stunned, like they didn't quite understand me.

In a related note, I don't like kids too much, but they have always loved me. Couldn't understand it for the longest time but my first wife set me straight. "It's because you approach them as equals and don't talk down to them. They feel respected."

Having said all that, I do have my mother's unfortunate tendency to treat kids as small adults. That obviously doesn't work.

Absolutely, I wouldn't be surprised one bit if glossolalia is one of the fundamental mechanisms for developing healthy mental, emotional and social skills.
Glossolalia is healthy for adults, even practiced as a basic exercise in acting classes.

An equivalent I can think of is in reading, while in college in Mexico back in the 90s, I was talking to a girl about some book I enjoyed, and she told me that as a child she wanted to read a comic book and her mother scolded her, because "comics are for low class and/or low intelligence people".

I guess that stupid, rabidly-Catholic, typically inflexible mother thought children should start reading by cracking open The Iliad... or worse... the Bible.

Reading is supposed to be a joyful experience, you want to hit those dopamine receptors early and often, but that woman obviously didn't strain herself with thinking about it all that much, her life was surely more like a never-ending series of knee-jerk reactions. It makes me angry. Not satisfied with shooting her own foot long-term, she had to do it to others.

Of course you know it - my friend never did develop an interest in reading.