Communicating with your children begins long before they say their
first words. From the moment mom holds her baby for the first time,
there’s some "talking" going on.
"It’s important for parents to talk to their children and to establish
eye contact," says Dr. Cynthia Jacobsen, director of Hearing and Speech
at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics. "This is how children learn
how to communicate."
Although babies may not understand what you’re saying, they can hear
the differences among words and tell apart different vowel and
consonant sounds. And before long, babies will begin to make sounds on
their own.
The first sounds, known as "coos" are vowel sounds — "oo," "ah," "ee."
Babies start to coo between two and four months of age.
Next comes babbling, in which consonant sounds like "da" and "ga" are
repeated in a string. While babbling, from four to 12 months, it may
sound like children are making words — "dadada" — but in fact they are
really just practicing sounds.
Before your baby is a year old, he/she will recognize her own name and
will understand a great many words. At this stage, parents will talk in
something language researchers call "motherese," short, simple
sentences with exaggerated inflections and musical speech. Motherese
comes naturally to most parents.
Around the first birthday, your child will probably say his first word.
Names for family members and things the baby wants will likely be
first. The baby will also likely use one word to describe several
things for which adults have different names. For example: all men
might be "daddy."
Once the child has mastered word formation, he/she will begin to put
two words together in phrases. Even though your child has begun to
speak, he/she still understands far more than he can say.
Just before age two, the spoken vocabulary will increase dramatically.
And this will be followed by a stage when children put three or more
words together in phrases or sentences.
When children are learning to speak, many parents begin to think about
providing "learning aids" such as audio tapes, video tapes or computer
programs to enhance the learning process.
"The most important thing is for parents to participate in the learning
process with the child," Jacobsen says. "After all, language is a
system of learning to communicate with other people."
To help your child’s language learning, follow these tips:
- Be a good observer. This will enable the parent to interpret a
baby’s cries and, eventually, those first hard-to-understand words.
- Communicate nonverbally with your child. Games like peekaboo, for
example, are a great way to nonverbally exchange information.
Listen to your child. The best thing to do is let the child set the
topic. Pay attention to what interests the child. Listen and expand on
the topic.
- Accentuate the positive. If you express approval, you’ll be
encouraging the child’s attempts to communicate and motivate him/her to
be more verbal.
- Eliminate the negative. Instead of correcting a child’s errors,
just repeat back the correct pronunciations. This way you can model the
correct use of the word without inhibiting the child’s experimental use
of language.
- Read to your child. "Nothing is more effective than reading a
picture book together," says Jacobsen. Reading helps the child focus on
language development, learn to sequence words and events and relate the
words to the pictures words describe.
- Provide varied experiences. The more experiences the child has, the
more opportunities there will be to talk about.
