A Child's First Words - Let's Teach Your Baby to Speak

Parents begin to communicate with the child long before he can utter his first word. Communication is mainly based on gestures and explanations from parents. A one-year-old baby begins to consciously use gestures for communication: pointing gestures and reaching gestures. Thus, the child asks to explain something or give him what he asks for. In order to quickly achieve what he wants, the child repeats the gesture or begins to whine. These gestures are the predecessors of words. When the baby learns to express his desires in words, he will stop using so many gestures, and subsequently will forget about them altogether. Gradually, speech will become the baby’s main way of communication. The child learns new words when parents name the object and correct it. If the baby repeats a word incorrectly, it is enough to repeat the new word for the baby several times so that he begins to understand it, and then use it in active speech. From the beginning of the second year of life, the child begins to understand about twenty words per month, while he pronounces only nine. Which words appear first in speech, other than mom, dad and baba, depend on the needs and environment of the baby.

The child’s first words are sound complexes of one or two syllables and indicate the most important and interesting objects, objects and actions for the baby. As the vocabulary increases, words appear that reflect the state of a person (oh - oh, bo - bo). Based on the way the baby pronounces words, they can be divided into two groups: words shortened to one syllable, the first or stressed (drink - pi, milk - ako) and words built on the model of the original word. The number of letters and stress remain the same, but the baby does not try to reproduce the word exactly (medicine - anAna, bricks - tititI). The sequence in which a child masters sounds depends on the complexity of their pronunciation.

From about one and a half years old, a child begins to actively expand his vocabulary. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four months, the vocabulary increases from twenty-five to ninety words, but it is different for each child. At the end of the second – beginning of the third year of life, two-word sentences appear in the child’s speech, which gradually lengthen; there are sentences consisting of five words. Basically, their constituents are verbs, nouns and adjectives (give me a drink, go here, a dog there).

There are many ways to develop a child's speech. You need to talk to the baby and be sure to listen to his answers, because the child needs an interlocutor. He needs a person who not only talks to him, but also reacts to what the baby wants to say. If the mother is not ready to talk or listen to the baby, or she does not have enough time to communicate, the child’s speech development will be slow and the vocabulary will be very poor. Let the baby tell you what he wants or does, and you help him use words he knows well. While walking, show your baby new objects and talk about them. Your speech must be correct, words and phrases must be pronounced clearly. Say the new word separately and as part of a sentence.

Don't copy your child's pronunciation, don't babysit with him. Your speech should serve as a model for the baby. Read books with illustrations with your child. Let your child show the pictures that you tell him. Make an album for your child of photographs of household items, toys and clothes that are familiar to him. You can flip through such an album anywhere, constantly drawing the baby’s attention to the reality around him. It’s good if the album contains photographs of the baby’s actions, so the baby will remember the main verbs: sleeps, eats, sits, runs, walks, swings on a swing. Sing simple songs together, tapping the rhythm. Teach your child to play simple story games by commenting on the game. If your baby has a poor vocabulary, replace words with sound combinations (bang, tu-tu, drip-drip). Encourage