A baby born with his or her biological, chemical, and neurological systems intact is born with the abilities necessary to acquire language. Amazing! Awesome! The newborn is ready, motivated, and equipped to communicate with you and a lot of other humans! But, this innate ability for language must be nurtured and stimulated in order to continue to develop normally. You, as parents, are key to providing language learning. You know your child better than anyone and, most likely, spend more time with him or her than anyone. Helping your child acquire speech and language is a tremendous responsibility and, the more you know, the better you will be able to help your child in his or her early language journey!
Early language development is an evolving process. It begins with reflexive behaviors, such as sucking and crying, which start somewhere in the first three months and end at about 24 months. By then, your child should communicate intentionally, with a speaking vocabulary of at least 50 words and an understanding of many more. He or she should have begun to use two-word phrases, and people who know your child well should be able to understand what he or she says.
Even though research has shown that language comprehension actually begins in the womb and the precursors of language expression, such as crying, appear at birth, most parents say their children begin to talk when they begin to babble. So, babbling is where we'll start.
BABBLING
Children develop differently; however, most typically, developing infants begin to babble at about five months. Babbling is your baby playing with sound. Up until this point, he or she has been paying attention to your speech and making some vowel sounds. Babbling starts when your baby begins to add some early consonants and more vowel sounds. You may hear combinations of sounds like, “pa-dah,” “tah-koo,” “oo-bah,” or “bah-dah.” Usually, these babbles don’t appear to have any purpose other than pleasure. Your baby doesn’t seem to be “talking” to anyone, just playing with sound and having fun.
CONVERSATIONAL BABBLING
Gradually, your baby’s sound play begins to sound different and appear more meaningful. This is a different type of babbling, called conversational babbling or jargon. Your child actually sounds like he is having a one-sided conversation, even though it is totally unintelligible! Conversational babbling is complete with eye contact, gesture, facial expression, tone, and inflection. As far as your child is concerned, it’s the whole package! He is clearly trying to communicate with you, assumes you understand everything he says, and will probably be very annoyed if you don’t interpret his jargon correctly. Pressure’s on, Mom and Dad!
Because you can’t understand any of your baby's non-word “sentences,” you have to look for clues as to what he might be saying. Look where he is looking or pointing and watch his body language or facial expression to see if he’s angry, excited, hungry, etc. Since it’s often hit-and-miss to figure out what your child is “saying,” you can’t depend on jargon alone when searching for his meaning.
FIRST WORDS
Children usually have their first 10 words by about 15 months. First words are usually names for specific objects or people. The first objects your child names are ones that she can manipulate (ball) or act upon (pop-up toy.) First persons are important people, such as Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa, and, of course, the family pet. (Yes, at this point, the dog is a person as far as your child is concerned!)
These are words that are important in your child’s world, not everyone else’s. We’ll talk more about the things that influence your child’s vocabulary in an upcoming blog.
Your child uses these words to label or identify things and to talk about what she is doing or what she wants to do. For example, your child may point to the ball and name it, say “ball" while playing with the ball, or say “ball” when she brings the ball to you to play. The use of one word in different contexts shows that she has learned through experiences and is able to attach a really cool word to those experiences. She has learned that her language has meaning, which empowers her in her world!
POSTSCRIPT
In language development, your child’s earliest uses of language are tied to his or her physical and immediate world. In the next blog, we will talk about how your child's vocabulary will grow beyond first word labeling. We will talk about how simple first words to name objects and people evolve to better serve your child in his or her every-changing, ever-widening world!
I intend for this to be the first in a series of Early Language Development blogs. But if you have questions now, or would like more information, please call me at 940-704-4324.