'AITA for telling my sister to stop using nonsense ‘baby’ talk?' UPDATED

"AITA for telling my sister to stop using nonsense ‘baby’ talk?"

My (34F) sister (27F) Alana has always been somewhat infantile, but in the last year she’s stepped up her game in the category of nonsense baby talk. She was seeing a guy last year who I think liked it, which might be why, but it’s literally every second sentence, and it’s driving me nuts.

Some examples- she’s arrived at my house and asked if she could put some “yoose in the froooj”, turned out she wanted to put juice in my fridge. On seeing my six month old crying she loudly said “oh no, don’t creeee!” And she’s asked if we have any “eece in the friz”- ice in the freezer.

You get the idea. It’s endless, and very annoying. My older sister (35F) Este and I have chosen to combat this by pretending we don’t know what she means until she says it correctly. My mum does nothing about it as Alana is the youngest and always babied a bit- mum has even translated the baby talk for me and Este when we are pretending we don’t understand.

Anyway. Yesterday Alana was at my house for my birthday, and the baby talk was dialed up to 100. We had a giant cookie for a cake and later in the evening Alana handed my husband a plate and requested a “sleece of the cake of cooks” (a slice of cookie cake). This was too much for me, and I told her to stop with the made up words.

She replied “but it’s cute!” I informed her it was not cute and asked her to cut it out. She refused and told me “I can do whatever I want and nobody can tell me what to do,” or something along those lines to which my mum agreed.

I then said that she had to make sure not to use the nonsense words in front of my 6 month old as I wanted her learning the right words (which was really just an excuse to stop her from doing it). Alana pointed out that Este uses made up words with her 2 year old- Este says “tummer” instead of tummy, but that’s the only one she could think of.

I said that what Este does with her daughter is irrelevant because I’m the one asking Alana to stop. (That bit might not be relevant but I’m adding for full transparency.) When my husband reappeared with the cake I refused to let Alana have it until she asked for it properly. She gave me a death glare but did ask properly, albeit sulkily.

My AITA is twofold here. Was I TA to withhold the cake until she asked for it like a grown up? And was I TA for telling her to stop talking nonsense in the first place? She is, after all, a fully grown adult who can do what she likes, but I honestly can’t tell you how irritating it is to hear nonsense talk all the time from a 27 year old woman, and she had dialed it up to 11 for some reason.

My mum agreed with Alana obviously, Este wasn’t there but agreed with me when she was told what happened, as did my husband. I’d love to put my foot down and tell her to cut it out every time, but I need the judgment from you for this as I don’t know if I’m blinded to my unreasonableness by how annoying it is.

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

[deleted] said:

NTA. I haven’t even met your sister and I just need her to stop so badly.

No-Policy-4095 said:

NTA - it's not cute, it's weird and annoying as all get out. You're not wrong to point out it's ridiculous and ask her to stop. I would also be ignoring it and not responding when she uses baby talk until she uses actual words. But also hold hope that if she's around your children, as your children get older they're going to say things....kids don't hold back AT.ALL.

[deleted] said:

NTA. Just tell her "I have no idea what you're talking about." Every single time. Because if what you're typing is an accurate representation of what she's saying, I have no idea how she expects anyone else to parse any of that.

OP responded:

This is largely how we’ve chosen to combat it, it seems to have made her double down. I think because she thinks we’re in the wrong and she’s standing up for herself?

samthesuperman said:

NTA. I thought she was primarily doing this baby talk to a child. She needs to cut this shit out, it's incredibly cringe.

plm56 said:

NTA. “I can do whatever I want and nobody can tell me what to do,” She doesn't just talk like a toddler. I can't hear her, and I'm cringing. She can indeed do what she pleases, but so can you, and that includes not responding to her until she communicates like an adult. You don't have to tell her to cut it out; just don't respond to her nonsense.

Some baby talk with babies/toddlers is not inappropriate, but they will learn to communicate verbally faster & better if you provide the example.

OP responded:

I’m gonna use this phrasing on my mum later, since I think she feels like she needs to back up Alana when she ‘stands up for herself.’

KittenSnowMittens said:

INFO: have you tried being direct, but making it less about a demand (which is trying to control another person) and more about a boundary (which is controlling yourself and what you will do)?

This might sound like "Sis, you have every right to talk however you want, but this form of baby talk is on my last nerve and really making our time together feel frustrating. I want to continue to spend time with you because I love you, but I can't be around this type of talk any more. Are you willing to stop using it at family functions? My alternative is to spend less time together, and I don't want that."

How she responds to that might give you a better sense of how committed she is to being "cute" (eye roll) instead of modulating her behavior.

OP responded:

Honestly no, I’ve phrased it nowhere near as reasonably as that. Other than ignoring it or acting like I don’t understand I’ve once or twice just been like “can you not, that’s really annoying.” I’ll have a chat with Este and maybe we can both try this approach and see what she says.

Fit-Distribution-252 said:

Nta. This reminds me of age play taken public and you specifically never consented to this shit. It's not cute, it's disturbing and will influence any children around her. It's simple, you requested she stop, she refused. In life, especially as an adult, there are consequences and she needs to experience them. It's up to you what those consequences are, whether low contact or something else.

You can't change her but you can limit your exposure to her and her influence upon your kids.

And OP responded:

I’ve not really considered actually cutting down contact with her but that’s an interesting one. Perhaps I’ll make it clear invitations are conditional on normal use of language or something.

She later shared this first edit/update:

Thanks for all the comments, I’m trying to read the through them on and off while looking after my daughter and some of them are really making me laugh.

To answer a few questions, yes, I’ve addressed this with her before, as has Este, this is just the first time I’ve flat out refused to follow up on what she said. She’s pulled the ‘but you do it with your daughter’ card on Este before too so clearly she thinks that’s a good argument.

The only people present were me, my mum, Alana and my husband, it was just a low key thing so no big crowd. Este and her husband joined later via zoom. We played Joke Boat on Jackbox, I came fifth.

Alana is generally very sweet and fun, but definitely immature and can be super annoying; this gets on my last nerve VERY quickly and I can be hard on her, hence my AITA. Usually my husband is good at pointing out if I’m being harsh, but he was totally on my side here. Yes, I used the Haim sisters names on purpose, and yes I’m smug I get to be Danielle.

Anyway, my mum just came over and I spoke to her. She agreed very quickly that it is annoying AF but said that Alana is working on standing up for herself and my mum wanted to support that. I was like, sure, but pick your battles.

My mum agreed and said she will talk to her about it when it’s just them as she thought that agreeing with me in the moment would have made Alana defensive and she wouldn’t have listened, which is probably true. I mentioned what some commenters had said about it being my house and me being able to ask her to stop, she agreed with this and reiterated she would talk to Alana.

That’s all I have for now. I’m going to talk to Este and I think we’re going to go for the ‘talk to her seriously/treat her like an adult’ approach, and try and be a bit kinder about it. Thanks again for the comments, Este and I are feeling very vindicated.

After speaking to Alana, she shared this update:

As I said before, Este and I feel incredibly vindicated by the judgment and the comments in general, as we are always being told by our mum not to be hard on poor Alana. It’s got to the point where we don’t rip into her like we do each other, which is a shame as we are English and our primary love language is insults and sarcasm.

Anyway, I digress. I got my chance to confront Alana on Saturday evening, when Alana and my mum came over for another round of Jackbox and Alana asked me if I liked her new “Jump.” I replied “your what?” and she levelled me with a slightly smug, unblinking stare.

My mum jumps in and tells me “she means her jumper,” and Alana interrupts her, saying “She knows what I mean, I can say ‘Jump’ if I like.” Clearly she had decided to double down, but I had your voices in my ear and I was prepared.

I asked her to stop talking in nonsense words, and she told me that it’s a thing that ‘all millennials’ do, and I needed to ‘get over it,’ and said that I do it too, and gave ‘prosec’ as an example (Prosecco).

I disagreed, then told her that I’d been Googling it (translation: I’ve asked a bunch of people) and that it had made me wonder if she was doing it as a reaction to no longer being the youngest in the family.

She was VERY affronted by this, telling me she had been doing it way longer than the arrival of the kids. I said that she had been doing it much more recently- my mum AGREED WITH ME! Alana looked LIVID at this and kept spluttering that it wasn’t the case.

I then said that in my "research" I’d read that it could be a comfort for anxiety and asked her if this is what it was: she seemed very annoyed about my trying to diagnose her or make it into an issue. (IMO she was trying to be cute and funny and I was ruining it with my concern for her well-being.)

She told me that I was very weird for thinking it’s a big deal and for Googling it, and I said I was doing this because she’s far too old to be talking like a yoda baby. I then said that if it wasn’t a reaction to anxiety, could she please stop, because it annoys me a lot and I don’t want to be annoyed when I hang out with her.

She stared at me in silence for a good 20 seconds. I could see her brain whirring as she tried to calculate a reason to say no, but in the end, my mum quietly interjected with “that’s a reasonable request, isn’t it?” and Alana gave a hefty, defeated sigh and said “fine.” I said “thank you” and we swiftly moved on.

I’m hopeful that’s the end of it! I am so glad I turned to you for this one, as all the advice worked perfectly, and I’m going to try and keep it in mind with my interactions with Alana going forward.