Gender Differences In CDS

While my work with children kept me around kids to hear all sorts of hilarity, it's not that often I'm around real youngins. I was out for an early dinner/late lunch and there was a nice couple seated next to me with two children. The older was probably around 2, and the younger was quite young, but I'm real bad at guessing ages. She couldn't speak, but yelled out nonsense every so often. That in itself wasn't so interesting, but the fact was that the mother kept responding to her. Almost exclusively, she said "oh yeah?" and "that's right" or similar statements.

Even more interesting, at least to me, is that the children were oriented so that the mother would be mainly occupied with the older girl, and the father with the younger. The father was the one feeding the younger child for the most part too, but I remember him conversing much more with the older girl.

The other thing that I noted was that the father called (I'm pretty sure it was) soy sauce "salt water" while talking to the older girl.