8 Simple Ways to Help Develop Baby’s Speech

Cooing and babbling are early indications of the development of your baby’s oral communication, and as he grows older, he will begin to string words together and incorporate the different tones of baby’s speech into simple words.

Since learning starts from birth and your baby has the ability to capture over 13 million words from caregivers if they communicate properly with him, here are 8 ways to stimulate baby to talk and enrich his vocabulary…

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1. Talk to your baby all the time. Relate your daily play and care activities to your baby. Tell him what you are doing when changing his diaper, feeding him, giving him a shower or he is playing with his rattles. You’ll be making him familiar with the words used if you do this regularly.

2. Avoid the use of slangs or bad language. Avoid the use of slang or deliberate grammatical errors when talking to your baby as some mums do this regularly in the bid to create some amusement. One of those wrong words or slang may just be your baby’s first word if he hears it so constantly.

Don’t always repeat his incorrect pronunciations either. Pronouncing words correctly regardless of how he pronounces them will help him learn the correct thing over time.

3. Read to your baby. Read a wide range of stories filled with lots of interesting pictures to your baby at bedtime and during the day, using appropriate gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice. The little drama will fascinate your baby as he stores new words for later use in his memory bank. Tell interesting stories as well.

4. Make eye contact while speaking to your baby. When communicating with your baby, make lots of eye contact. Gazing intently into your baby’s eyes while you talk helps retain his attention and read meanings from your facial expressions.

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5. Name body parts. During bath time, point out body parts to your baby and name them. With time, he’ll learn to pronounce these words by imitating your pronunciations. Keep repeating the process to motivate him to continue imitating you and eventually learn the correct pronunciation.

6. Ask lots of questions. If your baby is 12 month old and above and already talking, asking him lots of questions and guiding him towards giving suitable answers encourages him to express himself, using already acquired vocabulary.

7. Name objects. Have a game whereby you and your 12 month old point at and name objects around the house, telling him what they are used for. When babies below this age point at objects, even if they are not talking yet, name them and tell what they are used for as well to expand the vocabulary in their memory bank.

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8. Sing to your baby. Your voice is the most important to your baby. Apart from helping your baby become familiar with new words, singing songs to your baby and moving him to the rhythm may help him memorize new words easily. In addition, it fosters baby’s brain development.