‘The nature and amount of babbling and vocal play a baby produces can be an indicator of the later speech, language and communication needs of a child and therefore it plays a vital role in childhood. So it’s definitely something to pay close attention to and encourage!’
By Kate Lewis, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist & Regional Service Lead
From birth, your baby will be using their ‘voice’ in a range of natural sounds, including the very familiar sound of crying. This is your baby’s way of letting you know they want something – they’re communicating with you already!
After this stage, babies typically move on to cooing, then onto a variety of squeals, growls, laughter and generally exploring what their voice can do. When a baby plays with their voice, this is them exploring how their lips and tongue can move around to make different sounds.
At first, there won’t be any clear single words which we could interpret, however all these beautiful gargles and squeals are supporting a child to develop their vocal play, which typically then goes on to develop into strings of babble and then later into words!
Responding to your young baby not only helps them to hear language, developing their understanding or words, but also supports them to learn about the back and forth of conversations. If your baby is making lots of sounds with their voice, it’s a great idea to respond to them in a similar way, e.g. with similar vocal noises. This may feel uncomfortable at first, but your baby is likely to enjoy this back and forth and be motivated to continue to respond. This way, you’re acknowledging your child’s attempts at their exploration and play with their voice, as well as supporting them to develop the understanding of how conversation works in the world.
If you have a young infant, these are some tips and tricks you can use to support their language development:
Copy and respond to noises that your child makes
Read books to your child, allowing them to link the spoken words you use to the pictures and start to learn what words mean
Sing nursery rhymes with your child; children pick up on the pattern of your voice
As your child gets older, model simple language onto the vocalisations they make, for example, if they babble ‘ca-ca-ca’ while pointing to the toy car, you could say ‘the car!’
The nature and amount of babbling and vocal play a baby produces can be an indicator of the later speech, language and communication needs of a child and therefore it plays a vital role in childhood. So it’s definitely something to pay close attention to and encourage!
If you have any concerns or questions regarding your child’s language development, feel free to get in touch with us and we can see if an assessment into your child’s communication skills would be appropriate.
