Age Babies Should Start Talking

Parents wonder at what age their babies should be talking. 

The age babies should start to speak and say real words differs a lot from one baby to the next and depends on how much encouragement to talk the baby gets from the parents or carers. 

The usual baby speech development follows a pattern where the first real words can be expected any age between ten months and fifteen months.  

A Lot to Do With Parents and Carers

Parents and caregivers need to realize that the age babies start talking depends a lot on what the parents or carers do to encourage their baby to start talking right from the day baby is born.

Many of the babbling sounds babies make before a real word is produced have a purpose. A baby makes the first cooing sounds at around six weeks to two months,  eh, ah, oo, then later will add a consonant to make, meh, bah, goo. These are the best sounds a baby can say with the strength of the muscles in the mouth, throat and face. And the baby is actually trying to communicate. He hears your voice, sees your mouth moving and thinks,  " Wonder if I can do that? ".

Here's a Youtube video showing a 3 month old baby and her mother " talking"

Repeat Sounds Back To Baby

When you repeat the sounds baby makes back to baby and smile, you are showing baby that talking is a very important skill to learn and that you appreciate the sounds baby is making and the effort he is making. 

With this encouragement, baby will realise that a conversation means taking turns and start to 'reply' by repeating the sound or making a different sound. This is great fun - baby and you watching each other, making sounds, wondering what sound will come next, smiling and laughing. 

At this point the actual sounds are associated with the baby's brain loving the stimulation and something to learn that is also enjoyable. If he could, he would say " Isn't  this a great game?"  

Baby's Brain Development

So something amazing and wonderful is happening inside baby's brain. The brain cells associated with the following things are growing and being strengthened:

• making the mouth muscles move
• listening
• copying sound and movement
• sharing pleasure
• recognising emotion in a face
• learning about caring and  love

Baby Speech 6-8 Months

Around six to eight months of age, when baby starts to babble it can sound very funny like a foreign language. Baby is practicing putting sounds together in patterns, changing the tone of voice to a rising and falling, like in a conversation. 

These sounds have no special meaning but powerful learning is taking place. Baby is learning how to make all the sounds he'll need to start talking with real words.  

Baby Babbling

So when babies are babbling it is like their talking exercise program for strengthening the muscles in the mouth that will be used for saying real words. 

At this stage baby is not attaching any meaning to the sounds, but generally she or he will be enjoying the sound of his or her own voice! 

Beware of Pacifiers, Soothers or Dummies

it is important at this stage not to allow a baby to use a pacifier (soother or dummy) during the day, but only when it is naptime or bed time.   Sometimes at this stage, babies learn how to shout,  and loudly. 

It may be tempting to stick a pacifier in baby's mouth if you find that annoying but please don't.  Anything that prevents all that babbling and practicing will cause a delay in the age baby starts talking real words. Better to do something distracting like play a hide and seek game or sing a gentle song, but you may need to put up with it until baby gets tired of his own game.

Baby Speech 12-15 Months

By the time baby is twelve to fifteen months you should be noticing he is repeating certain sounds to show he wants something or wanting you to do something like give more food, juice or milk, or to want to be lifted. 

He may be saying mama, dada, papa when he sees those important people in his life. At this point you can say your baby has started talking!

You can learn more about what age babies should start to talk 

Ella

Teaching babies to talk is getting popular

Reported in the New York Times that in Providence R.I. a " Talking to Babies" project is under way  thanks to a $5 million grand prize in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge. Bravely challenging the "no baby talk" myth, families will be encouraged by health professionals and social workers to talk to their babies in special ways.

"Another idea, however, is creeping into the policy debate: that the key to early learning is talking — specifically, a child’s exposure to language spoken by parents and caretakers from birth to age 3, the more the better. It turns out, evidence is showing, that the much-ridiculed stream of parent-to-child baby talk — Feel Teddy’s nose! It’s so soft! Cars make noise — look, there’s a yellow one! Baby feels hungry? Now Mommy is opening the refrigerator! — is very, very important. (So put those smartphones away!)"

The project is based on research by Todd and Risley which is also mentioned in my ebook "How to Teach Babies to Talk".

My downloadable ebook has been available since 2010 and the parents who have used it with children from birth to age three have expressed their delight in learning how to talk to their babies and report great progress in their child's responses. So  if you are not living in Providence you can still benefit from learning how to teach your baby to talk by reading my ebook.

Read the full article here

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/

Read about the ebook here
How to Teach Baby to Talk

Reading To Your Child

Reading To Your Child

One of the best things you can do for your child is to read to them.  Right from the first weeks of life, every day if possible, reading to your child has huge benefits.

In the first month or two the baby will not understand any of the words you are saying but he will begin to recognise patterns in the way you read and the words will be embedded in his memory ready to be matched with a meaning in future months and years.

Reading to a young baby is very calming for a baby who keeps crying for no apparent reason. The sound of ريدينغ , especially poetry or nursery rhymes can even send a baby to sleep! It is a strategy worth trying by an exasperated parent faced with a baby who keeps on crying and you feel you've tried everything else..

As babies grow into toddlers, reading to them helps them to understand what books are and how to handle them; that they have pages, that the pages get turned, the pictures relate to the story. As your child grows one of the benefits of reading to them is that they hear words we don't often use in daily life. It's not every day you can walk down the street and point out a zebra or a camel crossing the road!

But the main point of all this reading to children is that it is great fun, a terrific bonding experience and also helps with a baby's learning to talk. The more words babies hear every day, the more words they will learn. The more words a child can say makes learning to read so much easier. And it only takes five or ten minutes a day.    

How you read to your child will depend on your child's age. The books you choose will differ too. This excellent book "Baby Read-Aloud Basics" gives really useful tips on the books to choose and how to read with your child at different ages to get the most fun and pleasure out of reading to your child.

Closing The Achievement Gap With Baby Talk | 89.3 KPCC

"Closing The Achievement Gap With Baby Talk
Jan. 10, 2011 | Alix Spiegel | National Public Radio

A child growing up in a poor home hears fewer words per hour on average than a child in a higher-income household, research has shown. So around the country, programs are trying to reduce the achievement gap by getting parents to talk more to their kids.

In the mid-1960s, Betty Hart was a graduate student in child development working at a preschool in Kansas City, Kan. The preschool was for poor kids -- really poor kids. Many came from troubled housing projects nearby.

Read more....

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Newborn Toys

Playtime For Newborns

Before we look at newborn toys that can be bought, the best newborn toys are the faces of the adults caring for the newborn. So your face, your partner's face the faces of friends and family - these are the most fascinating "toys" for a newborn.

However there are toys you can buy that are beneficial for a newborn's entertainment and development . It's true that a newborn is not going to be able to hold and manipulate a toy that is intended for their entertainment like an older child would do. However there are different things that you can buy for your newborn that are going to be toys and also going to help them in their development.

Baby's First Words...teaching baby to talk

This video a perfect example of a mom and dad teaching a 2 and a half month old baby to say "oo". And they are so surprised when baby says it back to them! This is a great example of " baby talk" just for practice and pleasure.