SIMONS SAYS “BABA”

Let’s start with a key concept of language development – Speech vs Language. This is similar to the distinction between Sight and Vision for the eyes.

Speech is how sounds are produced. This involves the muscles that move and shape air to create vocalizations, or sounds. Language is how we understand and use words. This is how we intentionally use the sounds we produce.

Spoken language requires the development of speech. Here are a few ways to support and encourage this in your baby.

Try This

Simon Says Babble

When your baby begins to babble (making random sounds), wait a beat and then babble right along with them. It’s an early form of Simon Says “serve and return”. Babbling at this point is typically the mixing of easy consonant sounds with easy vowels sounds. It’s all sound based (phonetics) like a single ba, bah, da, do, dah, mah, muh, puh – or stringing these together such as a bababah. This progression of serve and return for them is all about sounds and reactions (like your facial expression).

Babbling works different muscles and helps with the firing and wiring in the brain of sounds vs muscle coordination vs social connection (how you and others respond). In terms of muscles – give it a try yourself. Focus on what your mouth and breath is doing as you make the letter sounds of the following:
B as in bat (bah), D as in dad (dah), M as in mom (muh), P as in punt (puh).
And that’s just four sounds. There are 44 sounds tied to the 26 letters in the alphabet. It takes about 5 years to master making those sounds. More on this in the future.

Progression: String together and mix different sounds into your babble stream and then pause and wait for your baby to respond. They will go from single utterances in a breath to developing the ability to produce more sounds in a single breath. Let them look at your mouth as you do this – they look to the shape of your mouth vs sound made. Flow the babble in response to their lead, but avoid forcing the interaction. Pivot when you see they’ve reached their limit. “Observe, interact, and encourage” says Simon.

Vocal Range

Around 5-6 months, babies tend to experiment more with aspects of sound – such as pitch, and rate, and volume. They do this on their own and by imitating some of the sounds they hear from others.

The characteristics of the sounds we make convey a lot of information about what the words actually mean. In linguistics (the study of language), a basic part of speech is called intonation. This is how pitch changes as we speak. In english language we tend to have a rising intonation in our voice when asking a question (pitch goes up toward the end). We tend to use flat intonation in our voice when making a statement (pitch is relatively consistent).

This intonation also helps to convey intentions and attitudes and emotions behind sounds. Note: this is not the same as “tone”, which is the attitude behind sounds… you know that thing that gets us in trouble from time to time…

Try these three things:
1) Encourage exploring vocal range via the babble – exaggerate and repeat sounds, adjust the rate slower or faster, and vary the pitch up and down.
2) Listen to the intonation of the baby and return in an intonation that makes sense.
3) Try making non-babble statements or asking simple questions and see how they respond.

Word Play

Go ahead and insert some actual words that correspond to the sounds your baby is making. If you get a MaMa turn it into a MaMa Mia or just Mom. You can, and should also point to Mom (or yourself when you get a Da). This continues teaching your baby how to connect words to objects – and… to Mom and Dad.

Language learning is all the time.
Nothing crazy this week. This is the transition into language – we will get deep in the coming weeks.