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- The charity I CAN has produced
a Chatter Chart to help parents
support children's developing communication skills. It features
hints, tips and activities for communication development
at different stages, from birth to five, and tells parents
what to expect. It is designed to be displayed on a child's
bedroom wall and can be personalised by adding photographs
and additional information. For more information visit www.talkingpoint.org.uk
- The Child Development
Institute provides a section for parents on understanding
and supporting their child's language development. Visit
www.childdevelopmentinfo.com
- Early Education
has produced free leaflets to help parents of children up
to age five understand their child's development and to
play an active part in their learning. Visit www.early-education.org.uk
or for details of postage charges, email office@early-education.org.uk
or ring 020 7539 5400.
- Everyday
babycare: Learning to talk (2004). A practical,
user-friendly guide answering the key questions parents
ask about their child's language development. Covering speech
development from early babbles to complete sentences and
beyond, this brightly illustrated book is packed with expert
tips on useful topics like television and bilingualism.
Written by Professor James Law for DK publishers and Johnson's,
this book is highly recommended by the Talk To Your Baby
team.
- Flying
start with literacy, by Ros Bayley and Lynn Broadbent
(Network Educational Press, 2005), is a guide written for
parents and carers of pre-school and primary children. It
includes activities and fun games for helping parents to
contribute to their child's overall literacy development.
For more information visit www.networkpress.co.uk
- How
To Talk To Your Baby, by Dorothy P Dougherty,
is subtitled A Guide to Maximizing Your Child's Language
and Learning Skills (published by Avery/Penguin Putnam Inc,
USA. To order visit www.amazon.org.uk).
The author gives reasons why it matters and emphasises how
to teach your baby to talk without disrupting your busy
life, including talk in your daily routine. In particular,
she incorporates the teaching methods of naming, describing,
comparing, explaining and giving directions.
- Child Development: Language
Maria Robinson's article about how language begins with sounds which acquire meaning through the accompaniment of actions in exchange between infants and adults offers great detail and description about the important relationship between babies and parents. Robinson explains how from birth, facial expression, mouth movements and sounds all meet to provide the context for babies to become fascinated by vocal communication. As babies are used to hearing the human voice in the womb, sound becomes an integral part of communication.
<extracts from the article>
The first 'conversation' may be the baby's earliest cry and the mother's soothing tones in response, and it is the sound of the words that first provide meaning for the child. Communication is increasingly associated with feelings and meaning. Parents and carers, through their tone of voice, will express pleasure, annoyance, sadness, playfulness, and other feelings. Over time, these consisten rhythms will be organised into specific patterns of speech, which will in turn be linked to particular contexts, such as feeding, bath time or bed time.
Robinson describes a type of speaking called Infant Directed Speech (IDS), the manner in which mothers (and most adults) speak to babies. When people use IDS they speak in a higher pitch. It is, in other words, a musical way of speaking. Research suggests that babies like this style of talking very much, and prefer it to ordinary adult speech. Babies are also more responsive to the sound than to facial expression - which is logical, as they hear a sound before they sort out face. While adults are imitating babies' sounds and experssions, talking to them in this musical way, singing to them and playing, the babies are taking active part in these 'conversations'.
Not only do babies 'respond', but their different vocalisations appear to have a developmental progression. From birth, they make sounds (either cries or a general 'open mouthed' type of sound). Once they reach two or three months, many babies are making a 'goo goo' sound. As they get older, these develop into noises that can seem like vowel sounds. By seven to ten months, many babies are beginning to babble which begins to take on a form that resembles adult speech, although there are no recognisable words.
It is noteworthy that also around this time, babies are beginning to point in order to draw attention to something of interest as well as to something they may want. This is the amazing beginning of the realisation that there are two minds with one object of interest. So the baby's communication skills are widening, as they can invite other people to share their interest by pointing and vocalising.
The simple message about learning to speak is to talk to your child!
Milestones of acquisition: a broad overview of language development
- 8-10 months: word comprehension
- 10-12 months: word production
- 16-20 months: vocabulary burst
- 18-20 months: word combinations
- 2-3 years: grammar
- 5 years plus: discourse organisation
Permission to publish excracts from this article granted by Dr Maria Robinson
Read the full article
(Nursery World, July 2008)
- Parenting
practices that shape the lives of young children
- a US report shows that parents are missing opportunities
to develop their children's language development, by Los
Angeles County Department of Health Services (May 2005).
Click here
to find out more.
- Small
Talk: From First Gestures to Simple Sentences by
Dr Richard C. Woolfson is a book about understanding and
encouraging your child's gestures, facial expressions, babbling
and speech. It covers birth to three, and is divided into
sections covering three months at a time, with photographs
throughout. Each section covers body language and language
development, and has top tips for stimulation, questions
and answers dealing with common worries, and a development
chart. There are also sections on bilingualism and special
needs at the beginning of the book. Published by Hamlyn,
ISBN 0 600 60288 5.
- There is a wide variation in
the rate at which children develop speech and language -
some develop quickly, others may take a little more time.
As a rough guide for parents, Talking Point has put
together information about the typical stages children go
through as they develop language. The information has been
organised into different age ranges. For more information
go to www.talkingpoint.org.uk
- The Small Talk Collection is a resource with information about emotional development in the very early years. The Small Talk Collection is available in eight different titles. For more information and to order visit www.smalltalkcollection.com
- The
Social Baby by Lynne Murray and Liz Andrews.
An engaging book full of delightful and detailed photographs
of very young babies, showing extraordinary early communication
between adult and child. Even in their first weeks of life
babies show highly organised social responses, and this
book shows parents and professionals how to understand and
value these simple yet complex signals and cues. Published
by CP Publishing, Richmond, Surrey (2000).
- The Social
Baby is also available as a video with breathtaking
footage including Ethan communicating with his parents just
moments after delivery. Produced by the Children's Project
and NSPCC. More
- The Social
Toddler: promoting positive behaviour, by
Helen and Clive Dorman. Reviewed in Nursery World,
24 April 2003: "full of wise advice about communication
by words and body language with very young children".
Published by CP Publishing, Richmond, Surrey.
- "Tuning
Into Our Babies: the importance of the relationship between
parents and their babies and toddlers" is a
booklet produced by the mental health charity Young Minds,
highlighting the wide-ranging effects of our feelings and
emotions and how our responses to the needs and signals
of our children can have a positive effect on their social
and emotional development. Copies are available free of
charge from 0800 018 2138. Or visit www.youngminds.org.uk/
- The Understanding
Childhood website has a range of free downloadable
leaflets on children's behaviour and emotional development,
originally produced for the Child Psychotherapy Trust (CPT).
Child and adolescent psychotherapists and other experts
researched and wrote the leaflets for CPT, which operated
successfully from 1987 to 2004. Leaflets include 'Your new
baby, your family and you' and 'Postnatal depression: a
problem for all the family'. Visit www.understandingchildhood.net
- Understanding
Your One-Year-Old by Sarah Bustavus Jones
(Jessica Kinglsey Publishers, 2004) How does the world look
to a one-year-old? When your child doesn't have words to
explain things to you, how can you begin to understand how
she feels? Acknowledging the crucial role of relationships
and parenting, Sarah Gustavus Jones offers guidance and
reassurance in this sensitive exploration of the issues
central to your child's developing physical and emotional
needs.
- Why Love
Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain by
Sue Gerhardt (Brunner-Routledge, 2004) A lively interpretation
of the latest findings in neuro-science, psychology, psychoanalysis
and biochemistry explains why love is essential to brain
development in the early years of life. The author vividly
shows how early interactions between babies and their parents
have lasting and serious consequences for emotional well
being.
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