BABY TALK

Around 2 months of age, babies start to discover their ability to vocalize: cooing and gurgling and maybe even some vowel sounds (“ah-ah”, “ooh-ooh”). As they start to make sounds when you talk or play, it’s a signal to ramp up the language interactions. Here are some ways to do that.

Try This

Serve and Return

Use the “serve and return” as you continue to explore “conversations” with kiddo. In typical adult conversations, you communicate something (serve) and the other person communicates back (return) – hence the “Serve and Return”. In practice – watch for serves from your baby then return back a reaction – like ping pong. This is your first back and forth babble conversation – and it can be done both verbal and non-verbal (expressions and gestures). These teach the beginnings of social interactions. Serve and return also shows up in play as taking turns, including to signal the end of play. In the case of the latter, look for the “i’m over this” serve, and give them the return of moving on to the next thing – food, nap, movement, or even some time on their own.

Infant Directed Speech

Work in some “Infant Directed Speech” with your Serve and Return. This is the high pitched voice that is sometimes associated with female use when talking to babies or cute puppies. This doesn’t mean you’re going to “luvvy wuvvy” or “goo goo gaa gaa” all day long, but, if not naturally doing it, try modulating your voice to be more sing songy and high-pitched from time to time. Babies are drawn to it, see the WHY section for more details. Here it is in action:

• Excited Dad Helping Baby Stand [YouTube, 31 sec]
• Burly Football Fans Talking in a Squeaky Voice [YouTube, 61 sec]

Reading to Babies

“Reading” to babies at this age is less about the reading and more about the routine. Reading early increases the chance that you continue to read as your child gets older. Regular reading also helps to establish long term positive associations with books and learning – yet research suggest about 30-40% of Dads read to their infants (tho that’s from old research).

Here are a few pointers:

1) Pick books with faces, named characters, and objects – and if there are not any names or labels – talk about them or provide your own names.

2) A few minutes is fine – don’t worry if you don’t finish the story, you can point at the pictures and talk about the book – you don’t always have to follow the words or structure of the book. It’s OK to skip around. Reading is ripe for serve and return as well.

3) As a bonus: Reading is a way to de-stress. Within six minutes of turning pages participants in a research study showed relaxed muscle tension and decreased heart rate. Reading to others appears to be a built in stress management system. Sweet.

Infant Directed Speech

Infant Directed Speech (IDS) is what is often thought of as “baby talk”, but it’s actually a well-researched interaction that tends to naturally occur, to some extent, as part of communication between parents (more often with moms) and infants. It is characterized as slower (drawn out vowels with short consonants), clearer pronunciation, short sentences/phrases, more pauses, higher pitch and exaggerated intonation. It also is more direct and descriptive, using concrete nouns (dog, car, train, etc) and dynamic verbs (put, give, etc).

Early research suggested that IDS may be critically important for language learning and development, but other studies have indicated that it’s not exactly clear how IDS impacts development. More recent research has shown that IDS does grab and direct attention to language, it fosters more social interaction between infants and caregivers, and it cues infants into aspects of their native language through differences they hear from speech addressed to adults. The most recent developments in research focus on the social and emotional role of infant-directed conversational interactions as building blocks for language development, prior to the time language emerges. That said, every baby/toddler responds differently to emotionally expressive speech. IDS is useful and does no harm, however there is no magic approach that works for all.

Basically – babies seem to like high pitch voices and learn a lot from the interactions. It tends to get their attention in a joyous way and while you have their attention, breaking down your speaking may help their brains make sense of language – or at least cue them into the dynamics of it.

While mothers tend to speak IDS (also known as motherese/fatherese/parentese) more naturally, it’s great for Dad to try out, especially since newer research is showing that fathers language interactions with their kids may have more of an impact on their language development than previously thought, and in some areas – more than interactions with moms. Research is still emerging in this area, but the takeaway is that father language interactions matter.

Serve and Return

“Serve and Return” is something that many dads struggle with at first. Your last 10’s of years have been spent interacting with adults, so adjusting to baby pace can be a big shift for some. At the core of the concept is a training exercise for Dads in really paying attention to your child and building a skill of knowing what they are serving (a coo, word, look, gesture, movement, a cry, etc) and how to return (speech, explanation, excitement, getting them something, taking a turn, helping them out, etc). It’s also a mark of responsiveness which also supports brain development positively.

Recent brain imaging studies have further provided evidence for the back and forth nature of social interactions indeed changes the architecture of the brain and prompts healthy growth. The results suggest that conversational experience (serve and return) impacts language processing in the brain over and above the sheer quantity of words heard – and seems to eliminate disparities created by income and race.

Learn more HERE via Harvard Center for the Developing Child, also presented in FD02.

Benefits of Reading to Children

Literacy starts with a love of, and interest in, books. Literacy skills are built through reading as it provides enriched and varied language exposure. It also fosters the development of listening skills, spelling, reading comprehension and vocabulary. This one simple thing has so much power, even though it may be hard to imagine your child learning so much from you at this stage – pretty cool huh!

Research in Britain estimated that approximately 50% of parents read to their children every day. FYI – I plan to add more current research here, covering the dynamics of care givers that read often vs those that don’t.

Additionally, there is evidence emerging that the kinds of books and interactions with books are best timed with where the child is during development – meaning there seem to be better books for specific times in development. We have you covered with a full progression on this.

Furthermore a study from Harvard University found that children seem to reap more benefit if they are read to by their fathers (generally speaking) as mothers tend to ask ‘teacher-like’, factual questions, whereas the dads tend to favor more abstract questions which spark imaginative thinking, creativity, and discussion. It is obviously not fair to simplify it like this, or give more credit to the importance of one parent over another, but it does emphasize the benefit of both abstract and factual in language exposure with kids. The brain fires and wires with a rich variety in experiences – including who is doing the reading and how the reading is done.