Baby Speech

The development of baby speech is critical in the early years of a child's life.

Here are some suggestions for what parents can do to promote and enrich this essential skill:

	Talk to baby early and regularly in tones that are simple, clear and positive.
	Point out and name objects, people and feelings, especially when related to your baby's own attempts to speak or express emotion.
	With young babies, they are attracted to the 'Motherese' tone of speaking, which is a higher pitched, highly intonated style of speaking. It is slower paced and helps baby's learn phonemic awareness. So use expression and vary your pitch when talking to enhance baby speech.
	Avoid too much muddled baby talk where caregivers talk in a cutesy fashion. Older babies can understand more than they can say, so it's best to teach them to speak well.
	Don't limit your words or vocabulary to simple and short words for babies and infants. They need to hear all words to learn them. Speak within your baby's reach of understanding, but also stretch her a little beyond her level of understanding.
	Use lots of repetition as babies love the predictability from nursery rhymes, familiar stories and songs. Repeating the same phrases over again help them connect sound and meaning.
	Have regular one-to-one conversations with your baby (with eye contact). Take turns to speak and make sounds, they are also learning the social skill of listening and being heard. It is also important to have face to face contact so baby can see and hear how words are pronounced.
	Pay very close attention early on when your baby starts to babble. Recognise when they are trying to label an object and follow this up by telling them the correct word. eg baby may be looking at their bottle and say "ba", you say "yes, that's your bottle".
	Focus on "what" your baby is trying to say and not "how". Don't worry about mistakes and praise the effort. Give your baby a positive message for talking and having a go.
	Set a good example in your own speech as this will lay the foundations for sound grammar.
	To enhance baby speech, play word games with repetition and sing songs regularly (don't worry if you're not in tune, babies love singing!) eg sing "Twinkle, twinkle little star" with hand actions, "Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear" on their hand and more fun games such as these that they can learn.
	Lastly, one of the best ways to teach baby speech is to read regularly and frequently to your baby. It is proven that two year olds who have been read to early and frequently have more advanced language skills than children who were read to infrequently as babies. Reading books to your baby is one of the best ways for teaching language and vocabulary.