I recently met a mum again who told me enthusiastically about her son's first consciously spoken word: a picture-book "ma-ma" shortly after his first birthday.
But there are also children who remain silent shortly before their second birthday. But don't worry, this is no cause for concern! Little late bloomers in speech are by no means "less clever" than babbling early starters. Learning to speak is just as individual as Learn to walk - and it starts in mum's womb.
Even during pregnancy, the baby is surrounded by sounds that it can hear from the 24th week of pregnancy. For example, the murmur of mum's blood, her heartbeat and her voice reach her ears. Children already pick up the melody of their mother tongue - and use it after birth. A team of researchers has discovered that babies even cry in the familiar melody of their mother tongue! Isn't that fascinating?
The most important prerequisite for learning to speak is therefore being able to hear. This means that when sound waves reach our ears, the ears pick them up and convert them into specific signals. The auditory nerve then transports these signals to the brain, where they are processed accordingly and ultimately perceived and understood as speech. Areas of the brain that are necessary for speech are also involved in this process. Only those who can hear are able to perceive the spoken language in their environment and repeat it.
If, on the other hand, a newborn can only hear to a limited extent or not at all, it will also have difficulty forming speech sounds later on. Its entire speech development is then either severely impaired or does not take place at all. In order to counteract this in the best possible way and at an early stage, the Newborn hearing screening between the second and fourth day of life is one of the standard examinations after birth.
Language development in the first year of life
Babies listen intently to the voices and sounds around them. When parents talk to their newborn baby, the familiar voices give the child a sense of security. However, what is said initially only reaches him as a colourful series of endless sounds. But after around three months, your baby will not only be able to recognise the beginning and end of words, but also grammatical forms. Of course, he doesn't yet know anything about the actual meaning of the words - but he does know a lot about whether they are meant "good" or "bad".
By the age of four months, the little ones can already hear what the words "mummy" and "daddy" sound like. And they recognise the sound of their own name. They can also recognise when someone is speaking in their mother tongue.
Important: If possible, always look at your baby when you speak to them! You've probably already "caught" yourself speaking at a higher pitch and slower than usual when you're close to your child - and you're spreading out the individual words and repeating them often. "Where are your cute little feet? Well, there are the cute little feet!" In conversations like this, our facial expressions reflect baby's emotions at the moment. At the same time, our voice and facial expressions automatically signal to the child how we meant something - namely funny or affectionate, for example. That's really great!
Parents intuitively fall for this so-called baby talk. This way of talking is just right to support your child's understanding and interest in language and speaking. Your child will certainly respond to it. It still "speaks" to you without words, for example through facial expressions or sounds. Or even by crying. Crying is his first language and way of telling parents that something is wrong (tired, hungry, full nappy, too many impressions, etc.). Many parents quickly learn to recognise the child's different pitches and react appropriately.
As the weeks go by, your baby will love experimenting with their own voice more and more. For example, they find out that their little tongue can be rolled or their lips can be pursed and that they can produce different sounds. They will test loud and soft sounds with increasing pleasure, babbling, crowing, clicking, smacking and snorting with enthusiasm.
In this way, babies learn to control their muscle movements (speech tools) better and to make more targeted sounds for their own enjoyment. If the parents "answer" and tell them what is happening, for example, the whole thing is even more fun and also promotes language development ("Oh, there's Auntie Karin." - "Now there's a fresh nappy, my darling." etc.).
The older your child gets, the more they "tell" you things. From six months, they also like to use double syllables (dada, gugu). At around eight months, children start to associate sounds with certain things or situations. Whenever they see the green, rolling thing, daddy says "There's the ball". This means that they slowly understand the meaning of individual words, even if they do not yet speak them themselves. This also allows them to understand small tasks, for example ("fetch the ball"). And the child crawls happily towards the object and beams.
Learn to speakin the second year of life
It usually happens around the first birthday: the first "real" word makes parents' eyes light up. Your child names more and more things in their environment that they see, do or hear. These so-called one-word sentences can be a message, a question or even a request. For example, "Daddy!" can mean: "I want to play with Daddy" or "Daddy's sitting over there" or "Is Daddy coming soon?" Parents often need to have a flair for recognising what is meant. Responding to this is a point of honour: "Yes, Daddy is playing with you." - "That's right, Daddy's sitting back there." - "Yes, daddy will be here soon."
Your child now also assigns the same characteristics to other things. Perhaps they have understood that the large animal with four legs is a cow: "Moooo". So horses, sheep and donkeys can also be "Moooo". Or anything with four wheels is a "car". The vocabulary also includes so-called proto-words. These are children's own word creations that cannot be derived from the name of the object they are referring to. I remember the two-year-old daughter of one of the pregnant women I accompanied very well. The little one's favourite cuddly blanket was called "Nunu".
At 18 months, most children speak around 50 words (some more, some less). Language development progresses rapidly. The one-word sentences become two- and three-word sentences ("play ball" - "Maja play ball"). Children also increasingly use different types of words, i.e. nouns, verbs and adjectives. The vocabulary can soon comprise around 200 words.
From around the second birthday, more difficult consonant combinations such as "kl" or "sch" are also possible. While verbs were initially usually placed at the end of the sentence in their basic form ("grandma go home"), children are now increasingly using them in the correct place in the sentence structure.
Tip: Please do not correct your children if they mispronounce a word or use the wrong grammatical form! Simply repeat the sentence with the correct usage. Your answer to the request "Have a banana" could then be: "Okay, you want a banana."
Anyone who learns to crawl or walk naturally wants to use this new skill with enthusiasm. Learning to speak is no different. You can support your child in many ways by paying a lot of attention to them, talking to them as much as possible and looking directly at them. As I said, the facial expression that accompanies your words also tells your child a lot about what you are saying.
You can also sing to him or count out finger rhymes. Children love looking at picture books together and discovering what's in them or being read stories. Such language activities not only promote children's language development, but also mean important time together with mum or dad!
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