Are you struggling between how and the ways to teach your baby to talk? When will you hear your baby’s first words? I know all these questions must be littering your mind, well, don’t freak out. This article gives you brief information about the introduction of language development as per the age-appropriate activity and the various ways of teaching your baby to talk.
Teach Baby To Talk:
Learning to talk is a process that starts at birth (R) when your baby experiences different voices and sounds. Well, babies normally hear voices from the time they are born, and therefore, they start to learn the art of conversation quite early and easily. By the time your baby reaches two years of age, his vocabulary has evolved and they are capable enough to start to express their ideas through words. Teaching your baby to talk is significant for language development in your child, and this depends on the quantity and quality of your words, voices, and sound. Since speaking comes naturally to babies (R), it is a good gift. You’ll be well on your way to developing an able communicator simply by interacting with your babies naturally.
Baby Speak Age:
Baby develop differently from one another, but you can predict your young one’s language skills and progression. Before teaching baby to talk, let’s know the development of talking ability of baby speaks as per age. Here’s what you will expect.
1. From Birth to 3 Months:
At 3 months, stage in life your baby listens to your voice and watches your face as you talk turns toward other voices, sounds, and music that can be heard around the home. Many babies prefer a woman’s voice over a man’s. Most babies also prefer voices and music they heard while they were still in the womb. By the end of three months, the babies begin “cooing” and ”gurgling” sounds that are a happy, gentle, repetitive, sing-song vocalization sound.
2. 3 to 6 Months:
At 6 months stage in life, your baby begins to babble with different sounds. For example, your baby may say “ba-ba” or “da-da.” or “ma-ma”. By the end of the 6 or 7 months, the babies respond to their own names and try to recognize their native language. The baby also uses their tone of voice to tell about their expression. Some eager parents interpret a string of “da-da” babbles as their baby’s first words “daddy!” But babbling at this age is usually still made up of random routine without real meaning or comprehension.
3. Baby at 6 to 9 Months:
After 9 months, the babies come across an understanding of a few basic words like “no” , “bye-bye.” etc. They also begin to use a wider range of consonant sounds and tones of voice.
4. Baby Talk at 12-18 Months:
At this stage in life, most babies say a few simple words like “mama” and “dada” by the end of 12 months as the child vocabulary has grown and they are capable of produce couple of words. The babies now know what they’re saying and responding to. The babies can at least understand the words very well, if not they will obey.
5. Baby at 18 -2 Years Months:
Babies at this age say several simple words and can point to people, objects, and body parts you name for them. They repeat words or sounds when they hear you say something to them, like the last word in a sentence or words. But the babies often leave off endings or beginnings of words. For example, they may say “daw” for “dog” or “noo-noo’s” for “noodles.”
6. Baby at 2 Years:
By age 2, babies at this stage string together a few words in short phrases of two to four words, such as “Mommy bye-bye” or “me milk.”. They understand better than before. They learn that words which mean more than objects.
7. Baby Talk at 3 Years:
By the time your baby is age 3, at this stage, his or her vocabulary expands rapidly, and make-believe to play spurs which is an understanding of symbolic and abstract language like “now,” feelings like “sad,” and spatial concepts like “in.”
Few Tips on Learning To Talk:
1. From Birth to 3 Months:
You can try leaning to talk with your baby learn to nice voices (R) by
- Sing to your baby. You can do this even before your baby is born. Your baby will hear you in the womb.
- Talk to your baby. Talk to others when your baby is near. They won’t understand the words but will like your voice and your smile. The babies will enjoy hearing and seeing other people, too making some noise.
- Plan for quiet time. Babies need time to babble and play quietly without any noises.
2. From 3 to 6 Months:
Try these tips to make your babies a talker
- Hold your baby close so he will look in your eyes.
- Talk to him and smile.
- When your baby babbles, imitate the sounds.
- If he tries to make the same sound you do, then say the word again.
3. From 6 to 9 Months:
You can help your baby to understand words by
- Play games like Peek-a-Boo or Pat-a-Cake.try to Help her move her hands along with the rhyme. For more information on a baby laugh, you can check on
- Give her a toy and say something about it,
- Let the baby see herself in a mirror and ask, “Who’s that?” If she doesn’t respond, say her name.
- Ask your baby questions, like “Where’s doggie?” If she doesn’t answer, show her where.
4. Baby at 12-18 Months:
You can try something like-
- Talk about the things you use, like “cup,” “juice,” “doll.” and give your child a few time to name them and alter the words.
- Ask your kids questions about the pictures in books, board, TV, etc. And give your child time to name or pronounce things in the picture they are exposed to.
- Smile or clap your hands when your child names the things that he sees. Say something about it.
- Talk to your baby about what your child wants most to talk about and give time to tell you all about it.
- Ask about things you do each day like “Do you want milk or juice?” and so on.
- Build on what your child says. If he says “ball,” you can say, “That’s your big, red ball.”
- Introduce pretend play with your child’s favorite doll or toy animal, this will help your babies to talk soon. Include it in your conversations and your play.
- Tell your baby to “Show me your nose.” Then point to your nose. They will soon point to her nose. Do this with toes, fingers, ears, eyes, knees and so on. They will grasp it quickly
- Hide a toy while your babies are watching. Help them to find it and share it in delight.
- When they point at or gives you something, just talk about the object with them. like “You gave me the book. Thank you! Look at the picture of the baby rolling the ball.”
5. From 18 Months-2 Years:
- Ask your child to help you, such as ask him to put his cup on the table or to bring his shoe.
- Teach your child some simple songs and nursery rhymes and ask your child to tell them.
- Encourage your child to talk to friends and family.
- Engage your child in pretend play and can talk on a play phone, feed the dolls, or have a party with the toy animals.
6. From 2 Years-3 Years:
- Teach your child to say his or first and last name.
- Ask about the number, size, and shape of the things that you show your child.
- Ask open ended questions that don’t have a “yes” or “no” answer. This helps them to develop their own ideas and learn to express much better. How many are there? Where are they going? Wait, watch and listen to the answer. You can suggest an answer to them if needed.
- Ask your child to tell you the story that goes with a favorite book. “What happened to those three pigs?” by reading such the spurs lead to language development.
- Do lots of pretend play and acting out of stories as role-playing create rich and varied opportunities for using, and learning, the basic language.
Best Ways to Teach Baby to Talk:
1. Respond to Their Cries:
Crying is one of the ways by which the baby learns to communicate and learn the language. In the first year, crying is the key communication system with babies. When you respond to your young one’s cries, babies learn that you hear them and they perceive the world as a place where their needs are met and making them feel safer.
2. Talk with Your Baby
It feels quite odd to have conversations with a baby sometimes, but as we have already mentioned earlier, that they learn to speak through conversations. The more you do conversation the early they learn. This is also an important way of teaching babies to talk. The act of conversing tells the child that when he produces sound, he will get a response. If you coo, expect your child to coo right back at you. This is a very simple interaction, and you can help your child practice to structure a conversation.
3. Create a Communication-Rich Environment
The baby will develop receptive communication skills even before expressive skills. In other words, your baby will be able to comprehend what you are telling them and even before they are able to speak on their own. It’s very important to raise your baby in an environment or atmosphere which is filled with conversations, as it makes the baby speak naturally. The matter of thing here is that you don’t have to make the baby speak correctly. When you speak correctly, your baby learns how to speak correctly as well as the incorrect one.
4. Correlate Words with Actions
This is one of the best ways of teaching babies to talk. For example, if you see your baby touch his feet, take the opportunity to teach them by saying something like “feet.” If the child hears his daddy speaking, you can say “Daddy’s home.” If he becomes excited when the cat comes into the room, you can say “here’s your pussy cat.” The main figure out point is to teach the names by describing the actions.
5. Talk about Baby’s Actions
communicating a baby what they are about to do, just try to helps them to understand your language very well enough. You can tell the baby, that “You are going to clean up” just before a bath, or “It’s time to feed” as you prepare the baby to eat or feed. When changing the baby’s diaper, you can say “You need a diaper change.” This will helps the baby to develop his language and communication skills, and he also learns to understand what they supposed to do and hence it becomes active in their action.
6. Talk about Your Actions
You don’t just talk about the baby’s actions all the fact, but your actions as well. Self-talk helps the baby to make sense of what is going on around them and their environment. You can describe your actions which you can relate to the baby. You can say something like “I’m going to put you to sleep now” or “Daddy’s going to feed you today and so on.”
7. Tell Stories and Sing
Stories and songs are an integral part of teaching babies to talk because of their repetitive nature and skill. They teach your babies to communicate, and you will find your child producing sound something like car engine sounds to tell you that he wants the story of the car or related to that.
8. Read a Lot
Books with colorful photos are great and these don’t have to be cartoons. This is another way of teaching baby to talk easily. Look for books that are rich in language and varied photos. You can start something like reading books at any age, and you can easily gauge what sort of books your baby likes and dislikes about.
9. Play Word Games
Speaking is more exciting to the child when you make it a game with fun. You can start a “what’s this” game, whereby you can ask your kid to name objects, colors, and numbers in your surroundings or atomosphere. You can make the game fun by starting with objects that you know the child already knows, such as cars, and then sneak in new objects and words. With older children, you could have a more complex game of “what happens next.” Tell a story, and then let your child tell you how it ends or what happens next.
Hope the above brief information has helped you to make your baby talk as per their age and the kind of environment that your baby is exposed to. Just try it on your babies to see the results or outcome. Trust me you will just love it.