He is just born and you can’t wait for him to talk so you can express his emotions, that’s why you can’t help but wonder when newborns start talking, and we are here today to give you a detailed answer on when and how they learn to do it.
As we have always said in our blog, each newborn has a different learning level, therefore the exact moment in which he starts talking becomes very subjective, generally speaking we can say that a newborn starts talking around the first year of life, with a range between 10 months and 18 months.
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When a baby says his first words
Children can start saying their first words as early as their tenth month, but how can we distinguish babbling from the actual words of a newborn?
It might seem obvious, but it isn’t, because newborns in their first phase of learning words tend to distort them, they are not very precise, but we can understand if they are really speaking, (even if in their own way) through two fundamental requirements, intentionality and meaning.
This means that if your child says water in his own way, but does so because he is really thirsty and wants you to get it for him, he is really speaking, we cannot instead define a distorted word that is said without the requirement of intentionality as a real word.
On the other hand, babbling is the simple babbling of a child who is learning to speak, but if it is devoid of intentionality or meaning, they remain sounds in themselves that are simply useful for his phonetic learning of words.
What are the stages of language development
- From 1 to 4 months, the child interacts with the parents by making sounds and noises.
- From 4 to 9 months, babbling begins, that is, the child begins to emit syllables such as ma, pa, la. This is also the period when newborns learn to sit up.
- From 9 to 12 months, the child begins to understand what is said to him while babbling begins to transform for some into the emission of the first real words
- From 12 months to 18 months, the child says his first words quite clearly
- Between 18 and 24 months, the child should be able to know more than 100 words and can also combine two or more together, forming a small sentence
How to help a child to speak
To help a child speak, the best way we have is to interact with him.
You need to talk to the child face to face from the beginning so that he tries to imitate you and over time can be able to express his needs.
You need to communicate with your child using simple and concise words to help them learn the most essential words.
Another very important aspect is listening to your child, in fact at the beginning his words will be distorted but they could be the first sign of his learning, therefore you need to repeat them in the correct way so that the child can improve and refine these words.
Also not to be underestimated is the tone with which you speak to your child, you should never get angry if he cannot say a word well, on the contrary you need to communicate with him in a calm and quiet way also through reading stories that stimulate his learning.
When a newborn does not learn to speak
If your child has just turned one and a half years old and still does not speak there is no reason to be alarmed immediately, however it could be useful to consult your trusted pediatrician.
Delays in learning can be completely normal, even if sometimes these can hide even important neurological problems.
Among these is the spectrum of autism, in fact in Europe scientific research provides us with numbers on autism from which it is clear that 1 child in 89 has this problem, sometimes difficult to recognize for parents who tend to hide the problem or look for the cause of this language delay elsewhere, which is very wrong and does nothing but feed the problem of a child who instead needs to be helped by a professional.
Other problems in learning delay can be linked to deafness, genetic syndromes, or more simply to a delay in the general development of the child.
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NewbornTips, The Editorial Team
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