Sunday, June 24, 2012

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND YOUR BABY




When your baby is born the first way that she can communicate with you is through crying and body language. Pretty soon she will be ready for the next step in her language development which is cooing and then babbling. At about 5 or 6 months your baby will start imitating sounds. At about 9 months she will start to try and imitate words such as baba and dada. She may begin to combine gestures with sounds such as hand waving when hearing "by, by".  After that she will learn to understand words, you’ll know this is the case by her correct pointing at items. At around 12 months your baby will begin to understand simple commands with gestures.  At 15 months she will understand simple commands without gestures. At this time her vocabulary should consist of about 4-6 words with a lot of random sounds and tones for expression. Finally your baby will begin learning to say words and her vocabulary will grow with her development. Talking to your baby at every age and stage is the best way to help develop and increase her word vocabulary.  I mean from the day you meet your baby you talk to her.  Tell her everything from how much you love her, to how long you waited for her, how much heartburn she gave you, where she is, what she is doing and on and on.  When your baby starts trying to copy you, answer. She’s trying to have a conversation with you. Whatever language age or stage your baby is in, engage with her on her level.  Babies as young as 2 or 3 weeks old can have a back and forth cooing conversation while maintaining nice eye gaze with you.  The trick is fostering this kind of engagement at just the right time for your baby, when she is ready to engage with you.  Sing to your baby. Sing the same songs over and over again.  Your baby will love to hear your voice and she will learn the words in the song that you sing over and over again.  When your baby is a little older you can help to foster language development by singing familiar songs and leaving words out of the sentence that she can proudly fill in. 

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