Is your son already a year and a half old and still not saying his first words? Don’t worry! each child has a different language development.
Elías is a year and a half old and is a typical representative of the male sex: he does not speak much. Mom, Dad, water, this vocabulary represents all of your conversation resources. But he understands much more. When you ask him to bring the hammer and screwdriver, he picks up the right tools without hesitation. If you tell them, it also turns off the radio or television. He knows how to bark in three different tones and perfectly imitate the song of birds.
Talk? It is not exactly what interests you the most!
Girls learn to speak before boys. Although it sounds like old-fashioned stereotypes, this one is valid even for the little ones. According to statistics, girls learn to speak earlier and are more willing to talk than boys. They need a couple of weeks, sometimes even more months to pronounce their first words fluently. And this is a guideline that follows in further development. Girls not only start talking earlier, but they also have fewer problems with all language development.
Crying is the first means of communication
The first cry is the beginning of all communication. The newborn wants to be heard: ‘Hello, is anyone there? I’m hungry!’
He quickly understands that when he talks (that is, he cries), mom and dad come to comfort him. Gradually the dialogue becomes more sophisticated: a high-pitched cry, grumbling, babbling, a cautious smile.
During the first few months, a Chinese baby doesn’t sound any different than a European baby. Only little by little the babbling becomes clearly Spanish, German, French, Finnish or Chinese. What parents hear after the second month is called the first phase of babbling, and is that their baby tries to investigate what he can do with his mouth beyond sucking and drooling. And then it forms sounds like for example ‘goo’, ‘grr’, ‘ej’. The baby is motivated by the pure desire to experiment.
Communication begins
Babies begin to understand language from the age of four months. At this age, children do not yet know how to express themselves more clearly but now they begin to understand the melodies of speech. They recognize if Dad is happy or sad and they know when someone speaks to them in their native language.
Listening well is an important requirement for the second phase of babbling, which begins at approximately six months. Also in this one they produce all kinds of sounds, but they only seem arbitrary. Babies compare what they produce with what they hear. And certain sounds are then discarded.
Between the ninth and twelfth months comes an extraordinarily fun phase. Babies begin to duplicate syllables: ma-ma-ma, pa-pa-pa, gugu. And the best encouragement at this stage of speech development is so-called triangular eye contact. The baby plays with the ball, looks at it, and then looks at Mom. And this means: ‘Please tell me what this is called.’ Children want to listen to older people talk, they want to know something about the world in which they live. It is an important step towards conscious communication.