Dear Prudence,
My mother-in-law is a preschool teacher and frequently speaks with her family members in a sing-songy “baby talk” voice. This is mildly annoying to me, but she’s otherwise a wonderful person, and I choose not to make a big deal out of it. The problem is her weekly Zooms with her three children, one of whom is my wife. All three children adopt this baby talk voice on the Zooms (or at least what I can hear of the calls from elsewhere in the house). After these calls, my wife then uses the baby talk voice for at least the next few hours before returning to her “regular” voice.
The first few times this happened, I just kind of avoided my wife until the voice went away. But now it happens every week, and it’s driving me up the wall. I’ve tried speaking to my wife directly (she didn’t really understand why I was so bothered), using behavior modification to extinguish the behavior (ignoring my wife until she speaks like an adult again), and just leaving the house (which got inconvenient after a while). I’m at the end of my rope. Is there anything I can do other than just suck it up and live with a baby for a few hours each week? It grates on my nerves to a degree I cannot put into words.
—Sick of Baby Talk