I had no idea it was so big a topic (per a visit to the Wikipedia infantilization entry).
Reminds me of an argument I had with my mom many moons ago. I was expressing how I felt it important to not do "baby talk" with my first born "because it was fake", and I felt it important for him to experience who/how I actually was. So, in other words, I didn't do the "Oooh, little <name>ie, you're such a cute little boy... oh yes you are! Oh yes you are!", blah, blah. I've no idea how I became motivated along those lines. But, anyway, she picked him up and started doing such, and he responded with the biggest smile.. and my dad looked at me and said something something like, "So much for your dumb-assed theories, <my name>... <wink>...."
And, well... okay... she seemed to be right in a way. And yet I still consider that kind of interaction with infants/kids to be a sort of "talking down", and it annoys me. But, as my dad not-at-all subtly hint, what do I know?
I'm not saying that kind of talk to infants/kids necessarily constitutes infantilization, but the first couple paragraphs into that Wikipedia entry brought this story to mind, so....
iirc baby talk can help a tiny bit with language acquisition but its far better to just talk normally, but yeah the talking down part is a massive part of infantalization. im disabled, mute and autistic, a few years ago for my partners birthday we went to the zoo (one of their favorite places), and this random lady while we were waiting for one of the other people in the polycule to go to the bathrom starts talking across me (as if im not there), about me to my partner, and then when she finally includes me in the conversation she goes "if you behave well maybe you'll get a toy" all baby talk like.
i cannot tell you how furious i was and the only reason why no confrontation happened is my partner is not one to terp me being rude (which is its own thing that they are better at now) and the lady didn't know any auslan.