For many years, as a Speech Language Pathologist, I have talked about early language development even though I had never been through it myself. So now, you can imagine how excited I am to be experiencing it all firsthand! Currently, we are at the one-year-old stage and there has been a lot of language development so far! One important piece to remember is that children grow and develop different skills at different times; there is a huge range of ‘normal development’ when it comes to these littles. So please don’t automatically compare your child to others without looking at the ENTIRE picture – communication isn’t just about talking, it includes everything that I mention in this post.
Our babies learn so many things in their first year of life – obviously, communication has been the highlight in our household. Here are a few things that I have experienced with my own little dude so far:
Imitation of actions, sounds & words
This begins with copying your arm movements or your facial expressions, then it is refined to imitating your intonation, sounds and eventually words! {This is all communication} Kids will require a model and lots of repetition in order to learn these things – that’s where you come into play! The latest example was when I was changing my bud’s diaper and I was in his face saying “YOLO” (you only live once — don’t ask me why I decided to teach my little sponge this term). He looked at my mouth the first 5 times that I said it, then I watched as his little tongue started copying mine as I continued to exaggerate “YOLO”. By the time I picked him up from changing his diaper, he was saying “YOLO”! ….I am currently working on changing this to ‘yellow’, since a color is more appropriate for a one-year-old to be saying 🙂
Intonation or the sing song quality of our voices. This is how our voice fluctuates when we’re asking questions, giving directions, or speaking calmly, for example. Little ones will imitate the changing intonation of what you say; it’s pretty neat! In the last couple of days, my babe has been pointing and consistently ‘saying’ the same thing with the exact same intonation each time — it’s been driving me nuts as I try to figure out what I have been saying that he’s imitating!
Saying Sounds
This is the way that they shape their mouth, lips and tongue to create different sounds. Some are easier to learn than others – P, B, M are some of the easiest sounds to learn because they can watch us make these sounds with our lips; they can feel the air that you make with your mouth when you ‘pop’ the P sound and the vibrations when you say the M sound. If you’re wondering which sounds you should be focusing on teaching first, check out ‘Typical Speech Sound Development’ (which can also be found on the resources page).
Listening Skills
These little sponges are always listening to your words, absorbing the message, and storing it in their brain; they are learning and programming all of the time. It can take around 200 repetitions of a word by us before our child is able to say the word – that’s a lot of talking on our part! Some days my voice is strained by the end of the day – I talk all of the time – I explain the road signs as we drive, we play “I spy” when we’re waiting for an appointment, and I describe the steps of my recipe when I’m cooking dinner. I talk to him like he’s another adult in the room, using full sentences and complex words. However, when I’m giving him directions that I want him to follow, I keep them simple; I say “throw the ball” rather than “go get the ball and bring it to me over here”. The ‘Language and Listening Checklist’ may be helpful in determining where your child is at in terms of understanding and using language (the checklist can also be found on the resources page).
Social Skills
This includes little things like when our babes smile at us, make eye contact or share a moment with us; these are younger skills that develop earlier on. Lately, it has been more about interacting with other people. It always puts such a big smile on my face when our son sees his Grandmothers and he begins pointing and yelling Grandma; he is recognizing so many people now – even those ‘mean’ doctors with their stethoscopes! The other thing that our little man is doing lately is using us to get what he wants; he will ask to be picked up and then point to where he wants to go or he’ll grab the remote and place it in Daddy’s hand to turn on the TV. Although kids don’t really ‘play’ with their peers at this age, it is imperative that they are given the opportunities to interact and be around kids their own age; it is a special experience and a different level of learning that we cannot teach them ourselves.
First Words
Just the other day, a doctor asked me “how many words does he have?” I excitedly and proudly said 10, but then thought ‘okay, I shouldn’t exaggerate’ – however, when I stopped to think, I was surprised to learn that my little one does have a vocabulary of at least ten words! [dad, mama, grandma, dog, up, l’eau l’eau (water), banana, go, more, yes (head nod), no (head shake), all done*, food*, bye*, milk*] he signs the * words. With that being said, I need to emphasize that the number of words a child has does not necessarily represent their language development — this is the easiest way for other professionals to measure a child’s language development, but it’s simply the tip of the iceberg. Instead of measuring the number of words, look at the other early language skills that I have mentioned in my post – that is a more accurate & valuable measurement. Are they imitating you? Are they making a variety of sounds? Are they stringing these sounds together? Do they understand you? Can they follow directions? Are they interested in others? {Remember, this is all classified as communication – this is the majority of the iceberg under water, which is more difficult to see/measure}
Isn’t communication development fun?! Message me if you have any questions about what I have written or would like to discuss your own experiences with your kids’ speech and language growth. Thanks for reading!