Baby Talk

When Will My Baby Start To Talk?

The first sounds will usually be uttered around three to six months of age. Gurgles and cooing noises will come first but soon you'll be able to make out vowel sounds, shortly to be followed by consonants. "M," "p" and "b" are often amongst the first consonants as these are the easiest to pronounce.

Within a couple of months your baby might be able to pronounce the "ke," "da" and "mi" sounds and will start to string vowels together with consonants.

You can help your baby to improve her communication skills by copying her noises. This also teaches her to take her turn in a conversation and wait for a response from others.

Why Is My Baby Babbling?

From around eight months old, you might begin to hear your baby making strings of nonsensical noises or babbling. These are the first building blocks of talking. Practicing animal sounds with her is a good way to encourage these noises. By nine or ten months of age, she'll be repeating these sounds back to you and beginning to pronounce the beginnings of words. Encourage her by repeating these sounds back and uttering the whole words to help her to practice.

When Will My Baby Understand What I Am Saying?

Interestingly, the cognitive skills of understanding develop faster than talking. After around six months of age, your baby might begin to recognize their name and a couple of months later simple words such as "mummy," "dog" and "book." can be understood.

Again, copying her sounds and words can be a really good way for her to learn and remember. Looking at books together can also be an effective way of helping her communication skills to develop.

You might start to recognize particular actions that your baby is making, holidng up her arms to be picked up for example. Once she reaches around ten months of age she will be able to nod and shake her head.

What Else Can I Do To Help My Baby Develop Her Communication Skills?

Around this time your baby is also being weaning onto solid foods. Eating gives her plenty of opportunity to develop control of her facial muscles and speed up her communication development. Once she has firm contol of her lips, tongue and mouth speech acquisition will come a lot more quickly.

Around the age of one, vocabulary's can differ in size. You baby might have learnt anything from a dozen or so words to as many as fifty. There is research to show that babies tend to learn to talk at the same rate as their parents, so if you were a late developer there is a chance that she might be too. Boys often learn to talk at a slower rate than girls. If a second language is spoken at home, this might be acquired at a slower rate.

When Will My Babies Talk Become More Fluent?

From around a year and a half, your child may be learning a dozen words a day! These will start to form sentences. At first these will be very simpe (noun+verb) but soon she'll be using three or four word sentences. Once she's three she'll be able to string five or six words together. Familiar things will be most interesting for her, so she may start talking about family, playgroup, family pets, food , clothes or parts of the body.

Are Pronunciation And Grammar Important At This Time?

No! What she is trying to say is more important that how she says it. If words are structured with the wrong consonants at the beginning or syllables missing, this will all come with time. Repeat what she says correctly to help her learn for next time.

At this stage reassurance and encouragement is vitally important rather than becoming uptight about correctness. Regular reading, singing and talking together all help language to develop quickly and puts her at an advantage in future when she begins to learn to read and write.

Grammar develops later, Be prepared for plenty of false starts, this indicates that she is learning that there are lots of different tenses in language.

Click here to read our article on baby sign language