Language Article

Now that your due date is looming you may have started to think about what happens after the baby is born. After nine months dealing with pregnancy you may have lost sight of the bigger picture: that you will shortly have a child to raise!

Bringing up a child is one of the most fascinating, challenging and exciting things you will ever do, and your influence will directly impact on the development of your child. Understanding some of the processes and stages of development your child will go through will help to reassure and prepare you.

In this article I will be discussing the remarkable phenomenon of children’s language acquisition. The ability to acquire language is thought to stem from an ‘innate capacity’. All children around the world learn language at about the same time but this is not to say that this happens automatically, language largely comes from social interaction, which is where you come in! Interacting with your child from a young age is essential in their development of language.

Every child is different so don’t panic if your baby seems to be learning at a different rate to others!

Babies will start communicating by making sounds such as cooing and babbling; these sounds will contain no meaning other than to display contentment or to signal that the baby wants something. Attempting to decipher these sounds can be an interesting and hilarious task! It is important that you respond to these sounds in a conversational manner in order to stimulate the child’s mind and aid communication. As a general rule children usually learn their first words at round 12 months and will then gradually begin to make connections between words and objects.

At around 18 months, language changes. Vocabulary growth increases and the child begins to learn words at a rate of one every two waking hours, and will keep learning at this rate or faster throughout adolescence. This leads on to the two-word stage at around 24 to 36 months in which children begin to learn the rules associated with language and grammar. This can be an amusing period as children will over generalise and use these rules inappropriately, for example utterances such as, ‘catched’ are incorrect but logical as children are using the rule of adding ‘ed’ to signify the past tense. These errors are completely normal and should just gently be corrected.

By 30 months your child will start to form sentences; these will start off in the most simplistic form but by 46months they will have started to produce more comprehensive sentences using sophisticated knowledge of verbs, tenses and abbreviations.

The ongoing process of learning to speak and communicate is one of the most vital aspects of a child’s development and will vary from child to child. One of the most important things to remember is that mistakes are completely normal and it is through this process of trial and error that learning occurs. Ensuring that you have fun with your child is essential; reading stories, playing games and imaginary play will all assist in your child’s development and will also help you bond with your child.

Good luck!