Baby Speech

Baby Speech - is all about practice

Baby speech is a topic that interests all parents and baby carers. They all are madly keen to hear a baby or toddler say its first words and most are keen to know how they can help this process. Some parents however have no idea that they play a role in helping their baby's speech to develop.

There is a frantic activity going on every second of the day and night in a baby's brain that organises the brain cells, grows new connections and lets some brain cells die.  Babies are learning something almost every second of the day. Recently I came across the expression " a baby learns what it lives" and I thought that was a brilliant and simple way to express how babies learn and gives a huge clue to parents and carers what they should be doing to help a baby learn anything, not just speech.  At a simple level we can apply the principal to any skill learning and get very specific.

Example
A child will learn to play the piano if it

1. has hands mature enough to move on the keys 
2. gets lessons
3. has an instrument to practice on -  a piano
4. has the time to practice every day and, most importantly -
5. the interest and encouragement of an adult, to practice every day.

You may see that we can apply that recipe to a child's learning anything.

To apply it to baby speech learning we could say the baby needs

1. ability to hear and make sounds
2. lessons in speech - being shown how
3. an instrument to practice on - the mouth and voice (without a soother or pacifier in the way)
4. time to practice every day
5. the interest and encouragement of an adult, to practice every day

We know from research that babies start to develop language skills while they are in the womb because by 21 weeks, hearing has developed and they can hear the voice of the mother and anyone else close by. So through the fluid surrounding it, the baby hears the rhythm of speech and it's tone. We know babies can recognise their own mothers voice just after birth compared to other women's voices. Also, researchers at Leicester University in the UK discovered that at the age of 12 months babies can recognise  a piece of music that was played to them in the last three months while it was in the womb.

Babies' brains are also hard-wired for speech learning so the moment baby is born and discovers his crying reflex, he learns that ( if he has caring parents)  crying will result in getting the attention of the carer, being fed, carried, cuddled, changed, spoken to or ( really nice!) sung to. This last point, being sung to, shows how pleasure and entertainment are key ingredients in babies' learning. Parents need to be aware that boredom is a principal cause of crying and is as important to deal with as hunger or a dirty diaper or nappy. So a crying baby may just be saying " I need entertainment. Talk to me! Sing to me! Make a funny face! Tell me a nursery rhyme! "

Human beings in general repeat actions that bring them pleasure. So babies will begin their speech development by making short little cooing sounds; if those sounds get a reaction (like a smile, or mirroring of the sound back to them) they will repeat them over and over until they eventually develop, over a period of months,  into words.  Its worth repeating "babies learn what they live". It is a really useful thing to make a mental note say, ten times a day - "What is my baby learning right now?". Parents and carers do deeply influence what a baby is learning just by taking an action or not taking an action. Learn strategies for making baby speech learning a daily and entertaining part of your day.

How Parents Can Use Baby Talk to Teach Baby to Talk

How Parents Influence Baby Talk

The serious business of ba-ba-ba

In The New York Times this week, pediatrician Perri Klass breaks down baby babble for us. As we know (but it’s always good to get a reminder), baby talk is not a random chaos of drooly sounds — it develops along a predictable path. And research shows parents have a big part in shaping it and helping their little one turn it into language.

Klass says that by seven months, the vowel strings, squeals, and gurgles that little babies make start to be punctuated with consonants. “Canonical babble” is just this — ba-ba-ba, or da-da-da. It takes a certain amount of oral-motor development, because the baby has to close her mouth and shape it in a distinct way, so as to push the air through and make the right noise. Pretty advanced stuff.

Canonical babble is a turning point for most parents, because we start to recognize and respond to these sounds as if the baby is really trying to say words. We’re finally having a conversation.

And how we respond (not just by mimicking) makes a difference.
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Learn more about how parents can respond to baby babbling to teach baby to talk