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The Benefits of Talking to Your Baby

Understanding language

The Benefits of Talking to Your Baby

Your baby learns language by listening to you and others use it. Though your baby certainly doesn't understand everything you say, she no doubt picks up glimmers of meaning here and there. Especially if you speak to your baby a lot, she will understand dozens of words before she utters anything recognizable.

One of the first words your baby will probably understand is the word no. By around six months, your baby will begin to associate a sharp "No!" with the idea that she has to stop doing whatever she's doing. By nine months, she may understand a few simple phrases that are often directed toward her, such as "Wave bye-bye," or "Drink your bottle."

If you want to check your child's understanding of words, even before she speaks, try these two games:

• Ask your baby to find a favorite object. "Where's your blanket?" "Where's your teddy bear?" If she turns toward it, your baby probably knows what blanket or teddy bear means. This game works even better with your baby's favorite people. If you have several visitors for your baby to choose from, have your partner hold the baby and ask, "Where's Mama?" or "Where's Daddy?" If she turns toward you, you're golden.
• See whether your baby can do what you ask if you make simple requests. Some examples include, "Wave bye-bye," "Sit down," "Give me a hug," "Throw the ball," "Drink your juice," or "Fetch my slippers." See how many your baby understands.
  If your baby does what you've asked her to do, let her know how pleased you are. If she doesn't, then ask her to do something else or drop the game for a while. (Of course, just because your child refuses to do what you've asked doesn't necessarily mean that she has failed to understand you. She may just be loathe to perform on command like a trained seal.)

Expanding sounds

Sound Bites

Q-tip

Pay attention to all sounds your baby makes. Like many infants at this age, your baby may develop a special sound (a cough, a squeak, a gleeful shout) that he consistently uses to gain your attention. What he's trying to say is, "Psst. Over here!" Reward him for this bit of cleverness with an enthusiastic response.

Q-tip

If you want to make good use of your baby's talent at mimicry, start teaching him your favorite tunes. Because songs add the force of rhythm and the enchantment of melody to words, they are often more fun-and more memorable-than words alone. So sing a lot of songs to your baby during the second six months. Just as your baby echoes your speech, he may imitate not just the words, but also the melodies you sing. And when he first joins in for a few notes, you may be surprised how well your baby can carry a tune.

During the past couple months of your baby's life, he was limited to one-syllable bites of sound: la, ma, ba, and so on. But around the seventh or eighth month, you will hear a wide range of new sounds. Suddenly, your baby will shout out two-syllable sound bites: ama, booboo, umum, poopoo, immi, and the ever-popular, gaga. These two-syllable sounds become more and more distinct as your baby tries new consonant sounds.

Hearing so many sounds coming out of your baby's mouth will be exciting for you, but your baby will be even more thrilled. He will love the sound of his own voice (not unlike many adults), and he'll talk in a steady stream whenever he's happy, regardless of whether anyone else is there to listen or reply.

By eight or nine months, your baby listens carefully to any speech sounds he hears. If you watch your baby when you're having a conversation with someone else, you'll notice that he resembles a spectator at a tennis match. He turns his head back and forth from person to person as each speaks. His expression may convey the impression that he's trying to follow the conversation of two people who don't speak the same language he does, and that's exactly what he is doing. After watching for a while, he'll suddenly burst into the conversation with a shout, as if to say, "Hey, I'm here, too. Talk to me!"

After all this careful listening, your baby tries to imitate sounds. Although your baby appears to be saying his first words, he isn't. This imitation is not really language; it's mere echoing of sounds. Few (if any) of these imitative sounds will have meaning for your baby.

Around the ninth month, language building progresses quickly. First, your baby begins to appreciate and imitate the tones of conversations he's heard. He begins to stress certain vocal sounds and add inflections to some "words." Now his babbling sounds like an adult conversation, sprinkled with statements, questions, jokes, and soft-spoken confidences.

Your baby may also begin to construct chains of vocal sounds that become longer than two syllables: moomoomoomoo or lalalalalala, for instance. On the heels of these verbal chains and the addition of intonation come fully inflected "words" that may combine several different speech sounds: something like pagoolamida, zippadeedooda, or moogoogaipan.

He seems so close to speaking that you or your partner may expect him to launch into Hamlet's soliloquy any day now. In truth, however, your baby will probably practice and hone the sounds and inflections of these verbal chains for another month or two. His first words are unlikely to come until at least the 10th or 11th month and probably even later.

Talking and listening to baby

Baby Talk?

You can help your baby master the nuances of a difficult language and learn to speak without resorting to complicated phonics programs or rote repetitions of the names of objects. You only need to do two things: Talk to your baby and listen to her.

Your baby will learn language more quickly from you, her primary caretaker(s), than from anyone else. Because your baby knows you best, she's learned to recognize the way you speak: your tones, your inflections, your facial expressions. So talk around your baby and talk to your baby. Speak naturally and clearly (though you may want to slow down your speech slightly to make the words more distinctive).

Devote at least some time to talking to your baby one-on-one. Your baby will learn much more from direct conversation than she will by trying to follow a conversation that doesn't include her. Oh, she'll still listen to a two-way exchange and might pick up some valuable sounds and intonations, but any discussion that involves three or more people will probably confuse your baby. It's just too hard for a new listener to try to sort out sounds coming from all corners of a room.

When you talk to your baby, talk about the present as much as possible. Your baby's memory is not yet her strong suit. So talk about what's happening right here and now ("Wow! An airplane. Look up in the sky, Megan. It's an airplane.") Your baby can then form meaningful connections between what she's seeing or hearing or touching or tasting or smelling and what you're saying. Talking about what happened earlier will not necessarily evoke associations for your baby, unless of course you helped her make those associations by also talking about them when they were happening.

Understanding language

Pro Nouns, Anti Pronouns

The indefinite and continually changing meaning of pronouns confuses infants. For example, it is probably one of the most used words in the English language, but think of what must be going through your baby's brain as he struggles to understand what that pronoun means. It means a ball now, but a minute ago it meant the spoon, and two minutes ago it meant a rattle. Or they means the books now, but I thought they meant grandma and grandpa.

Personal pronouns may be even more confusing. To a listener, hearing you means me, and hearing I means you. But I also means your partner, who said it just a few minutes ago. You also means your partner because your baby overheard you talking to your partner by that name earlier. (This confusion will become more apparent next year, when your baby starts using these pronouns. Many toddlers reverse the two terms, speaking of their things as yours and your things as my or mine.)

Instead of pronouns, use nouns and names when you speak to your baby. "Mama's looking for Ian's spoon" will mean much more to your baby than "Where is it?" or even "Where is your spoon?"

Context Counts

Don't just give your baby words to parrot. Certainly, you will do no harm in holding up a ball and saying, "Ball. See the ball? This is a ball. Now say ball, sweetie." Indeed, your baby, who loves both to imitate and please you, may even say "Ba." But just because she makes the sound doesn't mean that your baby knows that ba refers to that colorful, round, bouncing thing in your hand.

Your baby will learn much more about language by associating sounds she hears many times, in a variety of contexts, with what she observes during those moments. That's why talking to your baby about the present, what you or she is doing or what she sees or hears, is so important. For example, if your baby hears the word diaper as you check it, pull the top of it away from her to take a peek at what's inside, put her on the changing table, take it off, get her a new one, put it on, and fasten it, her neurons will be firing with the connections made. Before long, she will realize that diaper refers to that thing she wears on her bottom.

Talk in full sentences to your baby and trust that she will pick out the sounds she hears again and again. If she hears it often enough, your baby will associate these sounds with whatever the occasions had in common. Remember, your baby is listening carefully to you, trying to make connections. Even before she tries to master the inflections and vocal sounds that seem to make up this appealing new language of yours, your baby will try to understand what you are saying.

Because your baby is listening so carefully to you, you owe it to her to do the same. During the babbling stage, give your baby your full attention as she chatters away. Then "answer" your baby's babble with adult language. This exchange enables your baby to initiate a "real" conversation with you to get practice in social interaction.