Your baby's first words are likely to happen after a few months of vocalizing and verbal experimentation, from coos to growls to sing-songy combinations of vowels and consonants. But listen closely and one day you'll hear it: the first "real" word. By 8 months, your baby will probably start stringing together "ma-ma" and "da-da" sounds without necessarily knowing what they mean. But when those sounds start to transform into words with meaning, it's a developmental milestone that feels like magic.
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When Do Babies Start Talking?
Babies start talking — that is, attempt to express himself in words with meaning — anywhere between 9 and 14 months. Some perfectly normal babies don't say a recognizable word until their 18 month, whereas some babies begin to communicate in words or word-sounds ("ba-ba" for bye-bye or bottle or ball, "da" or "da-da" for dog or dad or doll) as early as 7 months. "Da-da" seems to be slightly easier for babies to say than "ma-ma," so don't be surprised, Mom, if Dad (or the family dog) is the honored subject of your baby's first "real" word.
How to Get Your Baby Talking
Language acquisition starts with receptive language, or understanding individual words and their meanings. Starting at birth, babies are listening closely to the words and sounds all around them and beginning to sort out their meanings. By about 6 months, your baby will most likely understand individual words, such as his name, and the names of other people and familiar objects. Within a few months of understanding that there are individual words tucked into that jumble of sounds he's hearing every day, your baby will start to experiment with making sounds of his own. All of which brings him closer, day by day, to saying his first word.
The best way to help your baby say his first words is to talk to him — a lot! Your baby will be eager to pick up on your verbal cues. Narrate your day, describing what you're doing as you dress your baby, cook dinner or walk down the street. Speak the names of objects and people. Read to your baby, pointing out objects and their names in the pictures he sees. Ask questions, hold one-sided conversations — and listen if he answers. When he does vocalize, be sure to smile, make eye contact and show him that you're listening. He'll be encouraged by your attention — and excited to try again.
More ways to encourage a baby to talk:
- Speak slowly and clearly, and focus on single words. There's no need to resort to caveman-speak all the time around your baby, but slowing the pace as you flip through a picture book, or explaining in clear, simple language what you're doing as you put the book back on the shelf, helps your child understand and focus on individual words.
- Use names rather than pronouns. Whenever possible, name the people you're talking about rather than using the shorthand of a pronoun: "This is Mommy's coffee" or "Here is Sarah's bear" are both clearer and easier for babies to understand than "This is my coffee" or "Here is your bear."
- Sing songs and rhyme rhymes. Your baby will learn valuable language skills from the simple rhythms and silly repetitions of nursery rhymes and songs.
- Repetition is your friend. Repetition is your friend. (Get it?) Saying things not once but twice, singing the same songs over and over, pointing out the same flower pot every time you pass it on the street...all that repetition, boring as it may seem to you, is incredibly interesting to your little one, since it helps reinforce your child's growing understanding of how a particular sound attaches to a particular thing — in other words, what individual words really mean.
What Not to Worry About
When it comes to speech, the window of what's considered "normal" is wide open. Your child may start to use sound-words like "mi" for "milk" or "dat" for "that" (as in, "I want that!") as early as 7 months. Or your child might not start to say words or word-sounds until as late as 18 months. Believe it or not, it's just as appropriate to hear a child's first words at either end of that age range — or at any age in between. Every child develops at his own pace.
What’s Next for Baby
Long before he speaks his first words, he’ll learn to understand words, but understanding concepts and directions takes a little longer. Sometime around the first birthday (often before), most toddlers can begin following simple commands, but only if they’re issued one step at a time. Your toddler's vocabulary will likely begin to explode around month 18, and he may be able to put together a sentence by age 2.