Who’s the evildoer who taught my daughter to say “night-night”? She never spent a night away from us, and I’ve avoided this grating affectation completely.
But when she grabs her doll and heads for her room with the words “night-night”, the last thing I want is to open a debate.
My guess she saw it on tv (or in play time at daycare?) or she just invented it independently as that kind of reduplication seems to come very naturally to small children.
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Maybe it’s a combination of “night” being easier to say than “good”, an understanding that “good night ” needs two syllables, and a common child habit of using repetition.
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Maybe that’s what they say when they go take a nap at daycare? I remember with my sons in daycare, they kept it pitch black in the room when the kids were napping. It makes sense to say ‘nighty-night’ when it’s so damn dark.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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