You and Your Baby

You and Your Baby
How your baby will learn to talk

Thinking back to your own childhood I’m sure you can think of funny phrases you came out with as a child, well having your own child will give you plenty of entertaining and endearing stories to tell others, as language is shaped by the mishaps along the way.

You as the main caregiver are crucial in the development of your babies’ language. After only seven days your baby will be able to distinguish between your voice and the voice of another woman or man. Your baby will be keen to learn the sights and sounds of their new environment; they will be silent when they hear a new sound and will listen to the speech of those nearby. Even in these early stages they will be starting to communicate, letting you know if they are comfortable of in need of something, by cooing or crying!

At 4-6 months your baby will start to babble at you, this is called ‘vocal play’ and can sound like conversation, it is important at this stage to encourage your babies speech by mirroring the babies tone and talking back to them. Researchers have found that babies prefer to listen to adults’ speech when it uses exaggerated intonation and is higher in pitch; this ‘baby talk’ or caretaker speech usually uses shorter and simpler words than you would when you are talking to other adults. You will become so at ease talking in this way that you will notice a shift in your speech when you are in adult company.

The babbling speech will develop into a first word between 7 and 12 months, the first word will often use the sounds that the baby has been playing with while babbling, ‘p’, ‘b’ and ‘m’ sounds, these sounds are called bilabial (two lip) sounds. Many languages around the world use words for mother and father that start with these easier to make sounds. Although I’m sure you’ll be jumping around the room when you hear the first utterance of “mama” or “dada” your baby won’t understand your jubilation, as they have not attached meaning to the word, and first words are often used to mean lots of different things.

From uttering their first word they won’t stop picking up new ones, and between 1 and 2 years old they start to use two word questions and sentences, like “where doggie?”, and “doggie go”. The sentences grow over the next year and your child will start to point things out that they see, like a car and its colour. Between 3 and 4 years old your child will talk about things that are not happening in the present, like friends or outings and their speech is clear and can be understood by other adults as well as yourself. At 4 to 5 years old the sentences are more complete and use more joining words (the words we miss out when writing a quick text but the gist of the message is understood).

While learning language children will become familiar with the rules of language. Early theorists believed that by imitating others children pick up language, however children’s speech is not learnt parrot fashion. Children apply the rules that they hear and may use them incorrectly, for example “my teacher holded the rabbits”. Don’t worry about these mistakes, with gentle correction the errors will be ironed out and they’ll add to the bank of amusing anecdotes to share at coffee mornings. Make talking a fun activity and your child will pick it up in no time!