First Sounds

Babies are born with the ability to communicate with you. From the very beginning they are listening to what you say and the intonation you use. To start with they use their cries to let you know if they are hungry, tired, need entertaining or changing. Form about 4 months old they start to use vowel sounds (cooing), and will take turns with you to copy your vowel sounds – a simple conversation!

Babies add to these sounds and by 9 months are usually able to produce strings of sounds, e.g. mumumum. These sounds gradually become more varied and some are shortened towards vocalisations that sound more like words, e.g. dada, uh (up), goh (gone

To encourage your baby to use more sounds you can:

• Be face to face with your baby whether this is sitting with them on your lap or looking over them when they are on the floor
• Talk/sing to your baby at every opportunity
• Copy the sounds your baby makes
• Take it in turns to make sounds as if you were talking together. Make a different sound

when it is your turn

• Sing and rock your baby in time to the rhythm of the song
• Play peep-boo and other similar games, listen to the noises your baby makes to tell you have they feel about the game
• Point out different sounds to your baby in the house and when outside, e.g. phone, bus, doorbell, animal sounds
• Sing nursery rhymes and accompany these with actions where necessary.
• Exaggerate your facial expressions
• During interaction remove your child’s dummy. Dummies are helpful to help settle a baby but get in the way of them being able to experiment with lip and tongue movement needed to help develop talking

These activities are likely to be more successful if you can turn off the radio / TV to make sure there is no distracting noise and your baby can concentrate on you.