To help your baby speak, include him whenever possible in family conversations, because listening to people talking also helps the baby learn many words. Although small babies cannot say the words, they can understand them, so taking breaks between words helps them to focus on the sounds of each one, contributing to their learning.
The baby's first words come at 9 months and 2 years old and can be "mamamamama" or "papapapapa" because they are usually the words that most adults keep repeating to her. Other easy words for the baby to start talking are grandma and aunt because they are short and relate to the people she is closest to.
However, some babies may start talking later, and if he is already 2 ½ years old and still doesn’t speak anything other than mom and dad, you should take the child to a speech therapist to have him evaluated and to be evaluated. exercises in the office and also at home so that she learns to speak other words. In addition, if after the age of 4 the child continues to speak wrong and change the sound of the words, it may be a case of dyslalia disorder, which also needs treatment with the speech therapist. See more here.
Watch tips to help your baby speak in the following video:
7 Tips to help your child start speaking
The tips of what you can do on a daily basis to help your baby talk are:
- Talk to the baby, always explaining what you are doing. Whenever he changes his diaper, tell him "now let's get that dirty diaper off" and make a sound like "hummmm stinks" with a gesture with his hands and nose. During the bath you can say "now I'm going to wash the baby's tummy" or "where's the baby's belly button?" Whenever the child wants a toy and points to it, you can ask him to say the name of what he wants and not give it away, making this moment a joke. It is also important to speak the words correctly and in their complete form because although it is normal for the child to start speaking half words it will be even more difficult for him to realize his mistake, if what he hears is the same. So don't just call water water, talk water and show what water is, and where it is. If she says wrong, you don’t need to correct it, but say, okay, then drink water, reinforcing the correct form of the word. Living with other children of the same age and also older helps the child to speak because that way she has the need to communicate and the other child is probably not going to give her everything she shows she wants, just by pointing. Letting the child watch educational videos and children's music clips helps in the development of children's language, because that way the child gets used to the sound of words and tends to imitate their sound. Let her play with toys that emit sounds like animals, because every time she picks up this toy she will try to reproduce the sound of the cow, dog and cat, for example. Listening to radio programs helps to increase the listening experience, making language easier to acquire. So choose a variety of programs for him to listen to while playing. Sing for the baby, it can be children's songs or not and it doesn't matter if your voice is not in tune, because the baby won't care. The important thing is that the baby hears several sounds and knows how to identify what each word means so showing pictures of what each word represents helps a lot.
If even with all these stimuli the baby does not make a sound, you may suspect that he has a hearing problem that may be from birth or not. Some babies may have hearing impairment after a badly cured ear infection. Learn how to identify if your baby is not listening well.
If the child was already speaking some words but now has stopped speaking the words he already knew, it is possible that something has happened and it is necessary to investigate. If the child speaks wrong, it is possible that other older children will be calling her a baby and if she does not like it, she may be very upset and will avoid speaking. See other causes that can hinder the child's communication in: Why doesn't my child like to talk?
