Talking and Communicating

This week I am going to be writing about when babies should start talking. No one really knows for sure what age they will be when they say their first word, but by the time they are a year old they will probably say about 3 or 4 words. Sometimes babies will start talking sooner than this. When a baby is around 6 months old he or she may say words such as “mama” or “dada” but may not really know the meaning of the word.

From birth to 3 months old a baby is learning to communicate with people. At this age the baby will communicate with its parents by crying. A baby can let people know when something is wrong or just when they need someone by crying.

At 4 to 6 months old a baby communicates with its parents by cooing or smiling. Babies usually start babbling a lot at this age. Even though cooing and babbling isn’t really talking or using words babies do this to learn sounds that they will use when they actually start talking.

7 to 12 month old babies start using the receptive language. At this age they will start to understand what some words mean. Babies may now understand instructions such as the word “no.” Babies at this age may wave bye or even say bye. They really start to blossom at this age.

My daughter did a lot of babbling. She started to say “mama” and “dada” when she was around 5 months old. From then on she really started saying more words. By the time she was a year old she knew about 5 different words. Now that she is about 18 months old she knows a lot of words. She can even put more than one word together. The three latest words she started saying were “thank you”, “please”, and “sorry.” Be patient when waiting on the baby to talk, it will happen and eventually their won't be a way to get them to stop.