Edition: U.S. / Global

ON LANGUAGE; The Mother Tongue

BY PATRICIA VOLK: Patricia Volk's latest collection of short stories, ''All It Takes,'' will be published this fall. William Safire is on vacation.
Published: May 14, 1989

NOTHING PREPARES you for motherhood.

Even the language is new. ''Are you doing demand feeding?'' my sister asks. ''What's that?'' I say. She tells me about a revolutionary experiment. In 1942, according to Dr. Benjamin Spock, Frances P. Simsarian fed her baby when it cried for food.

''Really?'' I say. ''You mean there's a choice?''

You read ''Baby and Childcare,'' ''Your Baby & Child'' and ''Between Parent & Child.'' In your spare time, you worry that your baby will spike a fever (98.6 to 104 degrees in five minutes flat). Your antenna is up for projectile vomiting (instead of ruining your dress, it flies across the room).

Concerned with early enhancement, you buy your baby a mobile designed by a Harvard professor. Anxiously you watch, waiting for him to realize that pulling a string makes a bell ring. Once he gets causality down, you put his find-me mitts on. These teach him where his hands are. After that comes a freakish ball with blue pimples that exposes him to texture. It's a straight line to Harvard.

As soon as he can crawl, you child-proof the apartment. You put bumpers on the coffee table and fill electric sockets with electric-socket fillers. You pray your baby won't be what Penelope Leach (''Your Baby & Child'') calls a hurtler, the kind that can't wait to see what happens when it dangles off the changing table.

When your child starts walking, it's time to develop a voice signal. This helps him find you when he gets lost at the beach or supermarket. In our family, it's the first two notes of Tarzan's call reversed, formed in the same place yodels come from.

In the playground, a non-working mother says, ''Who's your caretaker?''

Caretaker? You live in an apartment. You don't even have a plot yet.

''You know,'' she says, ''your day-care provider.'' This is state-of-the-art for what was once a day lady, then a nurse, then a housekeeper, then a sitter.

You launch into your quality (vs. quantity) time speech, recalling a dad you know who waltzes into his son's room every evening singing, ''Q.T.W.D., Q.T.W.D.'' (quality time with Da-ad, quality time with Da-ad), as he prepares for 30 minutes of intense parenting (a verb coined in Fitzhugh Dodson's ''How to Parent''). This dad is considered child-centered, a term used by Dr. Spock to explain the tendency of American parents to consider their children at least as important as they are.

About this time, your toddler becomes inseparable from a soft piece of cloth. Dr. Virginia E. Pomeranz calls this ''the Linus syndrome'' in her book ''The First Five Years.'' Like Lucy's brother in ''Peanuts,'' your baby carries the cuddly for security. It is, says Penelope Leach, a comfort habit. No matter how rank the cuddly gets, it's comforting to know it's better than other comfort habits, such as ear twisting and head banging.

As your child enters socialization, you start making playdates with other kids. Another mother brings her child over, and the two of you watch your children noninteract. While they parallel play, you parallel talk:

''Peter, you need to put that hammer down!''

''Brian, you need to stop eating crayons!''

This is the syntax of cooperation. To disassociate yourself from negativity, stick to the third person and what Haim G. Ginott (''Between Parent & Child'') calls escalation: ''Mommy's angry. Mommy's very angry. Mommy's very very angry.''

Competition for playdates is stiff. To avoid hampered social development, kids are booked into early enhancement classes: pre-gymnastics, pre-dance, pre-cooking and pre-swim, which sometimes backfires, leading to water-intoxication.

''They swallow so much pool water,'' explains Dr. Paula Elbirt-Bender, a pediatrician at Manhattan's Mount Sinai and Lenox Hill hospitals, ''that their brains swell and they go into seizure.''

Before you can say separation anxiety, you're noticing the development of fine motor skills. That's when your child can put Legos together. Gross motor skills is when he can hurl them at his sister with accuracy, at which point school starts. If you're lucky, you'll get a teacher who tells you your child friends out well and sustains the engagement.

''You mean he plays with other kids?'' ''Yeah.'' Then she will tell you she's not worried about the daydreaming. It just means he has a rich inner life. If you're not so lucky, the teacher will tell you he has selective listening. But don't worry. They don't leave kids back anymore. A child who has to repeat kindergarten is not pushed. He does a year of remediation. The person who has labeled your child pre-L.D. (learning disabled, a k a learning different) tells you she's working on unframing him. An unframed child gets rid of his L.D. label before it's stuck there forever by the person who framed him.

At home, you use positive reinforcement (as in ''Hey! You brushed your teeth twice this week!''), as opposed to negative reinforcement (''Hey! You forgot to brush your teeth 12 times this week!''). Soon, you're signing up for a summer enrichment program (camp). Visiting day, the counselor pulls you aside and asks how long your child has been Hoovering.

''My son's never touched a vacuum in his life.''

''I mean the way he eats. He sticks his face in the plate and seems to inhale it.''

Some kids are picky when it comes to food. Not yours. You don't have to call broccoli trees. Or put peas in mashed-potato nests. You don't have to call liver picnic meat or traffic in vegetable money (a big brussels sprout is worth more than a small one).

At nighttime, you and your husband put him down. Then the two of you wait. There are no new names for nighttime terrors. The bogyman endures. Your son feels safe if you close the closet door and give him his cuddly. But at 3, your daughter equates sleep with death, believing that, come morning, she'll be flushed down the toilet like her dead goldfish. Logic and nighttime don't mix. Nothing consoles her. Sleep disorder looms.

''Know what you need?'' you tell her. ''You need a . . . dream charm.''

She looks hopeful. You rush out of her room, then stand there wondering, ''What's a dream charm?''

You unscrew a heavy, antique finial from the living-room lamp.

''Here it is.'' You hand it over.

She studies the finial. ''I get it.'' She brightens. ''The bad dreams go out my head, down my arm and into this hole, right?'' ''You're one smart kid.'' For six months, she sleeps with the dream charm in her fist. She puts a sock over her hand so she can't drop it during the night. She even takes it to sleepovers at Grandma's, who chooses to be called Nana, Oma, Mimi or Gigi.

Such is the mother tongue. Like any lingo, it gives you the illusion you know what you're doing. Experts teach some of it. Moms help with the rest. All it takes is the miracle of a baby.