How to develop a baby’s speech from birth to one year: recommendations from speech therapists

Updated: 06/11/2021 15:45:52

According to speech therapists, speech formation occurs especially rapidly in the first year of a child’s life. The extent to which speech will be developed in a person is not transmitted genetically, it is not an innate feature. It depends only on the development of the function. The most favorable time is from birth to 3 years. In our article we will give young parents information on how to develop a baby’s speech from birth to one year.

Stages of child speech development

Speech development in children occurs in stages. It is divided into 4 stages. The transition from one stage to another does not occur smoothly, but with a jerk. The boundaries of the stages are blurred among themselves due to individuality. If a child is a few weeks behind, this is normal and should not cause concern to parents. But even a delay of several months from a certain period may well indicate pathology.

1. From birth to 2 months

   – screaming stage. The newborn's reaction appears in the form of a cry, which has a nasal tone.

   Read also:  Papak on self-education of speech therapist teacher Nadezhda Viktorovna Klyushnik
2. From 2 to 5 months

   – stage of humming. The child's voice acquires intonation and changes depending on his mood. He is able to involuntarily shout out the sounds “p”, “k”, “g”, “b”, “m”, “n”. The first syllables appear, “la”, “na”, “pa”, “ba”, “nya”.

3. At 3 months

   - stage of the first laughter.

4. 6 to 7 months

   – babbling stage. The baby is able to pronounce individual sounds, form them into separate words that are only understandable to his loved ones, “dai”, “pi”, “tata”, “baba”, “mom”, “dad”. The child pronounces syllables several times in a row, as if he is telling something.

5. From 8 months to a year –

   stage of the first words. By the end of the first year of life, the child speaks about 25 words. Of course, while they are not very complex, they consist of the same syllables. Children at the age of one usually express themselves in “their” words, which are understandable only to their relatives.

"Talkers" and "Silent Ones"

Each child has an individual pace of speech development, which can be influenced by illness, stress, lack of communication, and a multilingual environment. Psychologists divide children into two types:

1. “Talkers” show increased interest in the world around them. They start speaking earlier than their peers. Subsequently, they like to tell something and ask questions.
2. “Silent people” tend to be contemplative. They need time to adapt to the situation. They begin to speak later than their peers, but without speech defects, usually immediately in sentences.

According to statistics, girls begin to speak earlier than boys. They are more emotional by nature, which is already evident in infancy.

Who speaks faster - a boy or a girl?

As a rule, girls start talking faster. According to various studies, boys speak fully 4-6 months later than girls. But this does not mean that they are developmentally delayed or have some kind of pathology.

There are several theories that explain this phenomenon:

• 
  Biochemical.

  Many scientists adhere to this version. According to it, boys have more of the hormone testosterone in the womb (indicators exceed those of girls several times). This hormone is involved in the formation of the central nervous system and affects the development of speech functions.
• Psychological-genetic. According to this version, communication skills have long been more necessary for the female sex. They were used in everyday life for communication in tribes and when raising offspring. Men were busy hunting and other activities that did not involve active verbal communication. It turns out that delayed speech development in boys is something of an archaism.
• Physiological. According to research, girls have more developed tactility and fine motor skills - this has a beneficial effect on the development of speech centers.

It is impossible to talk about the veracity of this or that theory, just as it is impossible to completely deny them. But the experience of many parents suggests that boys actually start speaking a little later.

Although, if a child, regardless of gender, speaks later than his peers, but otherwise develops normally, there is no need to worry about this. You can simply continue to study with your baby, replenishing his vocabulary. There are often cases when children, having accumulated a sufficient number of words, begin to speak quite coherently only a few months later than their peers, but no longer making their mistakes.

Development by months

If a child’s speech is not developed during the first year of life, it will not be formed, and then it will not be possible to catch up, even with active studies. Therefore, from birth, the baby must be immersed in an environment of active verbal communication. The founder of Soviet speech therapy, Mikhail Khvattsev, compiled tips for young parents to develop the speech of children in the first year of life.

From birth to 3 months

From birth you need to pay attention to the development of the child.

1. Sing the vowel sounds “o”, “i”, “a”, “u”.
2. When talking to a child, show movements of your lips and tongue. Children always watch adults closely. They will peer into the face, copying the movements necessary to pronounce sounds.
3. Sing lullabies.
4. Talk to the baby, but not with eloquence, but in simple words, short sentences.
5. After speaking to your baby, pause. He will subsequently “answer” in his own language.
6. Massage your arms and palms. The babies still have their fingers clenched into a fist. It is better to do a relaxing massage while the baby is sleeping. Finger massage is done from the nails to the base.
7. Play magpie-crow with your hands and count your fingers.
8. Use nursery rhymes and pestles.

From 3 to 5 months

Recommendations for parents:

1. As soon as the baby begins to walk, repeat after him the sounds that you heard from him, “agu”, “ay”, “gu”. This way you enter into a dialogue with him.
2. Read short poems.
3. Talk to your baby in simple words, but with different intonation, rhythm, and articulations.
4. Continue with the exercises from the first stage.

From 5 to 9 months

This is the time of transition to a new level of child speech development. Accordingly, new recommendations have appeared for parents:

1. We continue to play finger games while simultaneously including jokes and short rhymes.
2. We are actively engaged in rhymes and nursery rhymes.
3. We play hide and seek, “peek-a-boo”, hide our face, hide a toy.
4. We connect reading books with tactile inserts and sound effects.
5. We work with pictures that show close-ups of individual objects and animals. There should be no small details in the pictures.
6. We master gesture games, “bye”, “hello”, “okay”.
7. Let's get acquainted with the sounds of animals: dog - woof, cat - meow, mouse - pee-pee.

From 9 to 12 months

At this age, the child actively imitates the speech of adults. Speech therapists advise communicating with him in simple, clear, clear words, without “lisping.” The speech of adults should be leisurely. Recommendations for parents:

1. Draw children's attention to the sounds of the telephone, steps, rain, and the sound of water.
2. Turn on music, children's songs, calm melody, sounds of nature.
3. Name the names of objects correctly without diminutives or “lisps.”
4. Develop motor skills.
5. Work with subject pictures.
6. Connect pictures with people, show body parts on them, name them.
7. Start doing exercises with songs.
8. Point to the object in action. Name the action, the doll is sitting, the ball is rolling, the dog is running.
9. Ask questions “who is this?”, “what is this?”, “where?”, “where is the bunny, cat?”.
10. Motivate actions in speech.

Always talk to your child, don’t be silent, comment on everything you see around you while walking.

Age 4 to 5 years

The child knows and uses many nouns, verbs, adjectives in speech, uses generalizing words, names animals and their cubs, people’s professions, and selects antonym words. The ability to form words develops. With the help of adults, a child can retell a familiar fairy tale. In their statements, children begin to use the structure of compound and complex sentences. By the age of five, almost all age-related irregularities in pronunciation disappear. The sounds L and R may remain unformed.

What should parents do?

In order for a child to speak in a natural way for him, parents need to give as much information as possible about the world around him, sensory sensations, and stimuli. Speech therapists advise adults to pay attention to the following points during the development of children from birth to one year.

1. The very first sense for a baby is touch. The more the baby receives warm mother’s hands, massage, gymnastics, and games of different textures from birth, the better. He learns about himself and the world through tactile sensations. Fabric, rubber, wooden, plastic toys, finger paints, sand, and cereals in a jar will be useful for children.
2. A child is already born with well-developed hearing. Develop your baby through this feeling, give him as much sound information as possible, accompany any movement with speech.
3. Interest your child through vision, teach him to focus his eyes on objects. Hang toys and mobile phones at a distance of 30 cm from your face. Replenish your arsenal of toys in accordance with the child’s age, draw his attention to visual impressions, voice them.
4. Introduce your child to a variety of tastes, gradually, in accordance with age standards, introduce an assortment of products. Introduce your baby to the names of products.
5. Introduce your child to different smells, the smell of pies, autumn leaves, flowers. Teach him to distinguish smells.
6. Develop gross motor skills. Accustom your baby to active activities from the first weeks of life, allow him to swing his legs and arms freely. As your baby gets older, provide a safe space for him to move freely.
7. Develop fine motor skills. Nowadays there is a lot of talk about the connection between fingers and speech, which is due to the close location of the motor and speech centers of the brain.

Speech development classes should be systematic and consistent. Practice always and everywhere, talk about surrounding objects, unfamiliar sounds.

General Tips

Speech therapists give young parents the following general recommendations to speed up their baby’s speech development:

1. Talk constantly.

   Immediately after birth, a child is ready to absorb information, like a sponge, about what he sees, feels, and hears. A newborn's hearing is already fully formed. Talk about anything, where you went, who came, comment on any little thing. Actions that are accompanied by words lead to a quick understanding of speech and words. After a short time, the baby will be able to understand what they want from him using words that are not reinforced by actions.

2. Repeat after your baby

   . Children in infancy try to say something. This usually looks like an endless repetition of some sound. In this way, the child’s diction is trained. At this age, it is better for parents to repeat after him. You can gradually complicate the task by humming familiar sounds for your baby, “dya-dya-dya.” This way he will learn to keep up the pace. This will also be important for the further formation of speech.

3. Show what sounds animals make.

   If there is a cat at home we say “meow”, if a dog says “woof”. In this way, the child will quickly master the sounds made by animals. After the speech apparatus is formed, he will cope with calling the cat in the usual way “kitty-kitty”. If there are no animals in the house, then reinforce the sounds with pictures.

4. Develop fine motor skills

   . If you pay attention, you will notice that small children want to touch everything with their own hands. This is how their brain develops. If you develop fine motor skills before the age of one, then speech will develop more quickly. But, all activities with small objects must definitely be carried out under the close supervision of adults.

5. Organize communication with peers.

   Children communicate more actively with each other than with adults, although it looks like babbling. It would be nice if in the children's company there was a child who already knows how to speak. Thus, the baby will try to imitate him.

6. Use sign language.

   It is easier for a baby to show with a gesture than to say with words. Therefore, as soon as the child begins to gesture at objects, the mother should comment on this in words, and not silently give the necessary object to the child. The kid points at the juice, we say that it is juice, at the cat, we say that it is a cat.

Are there effective methods for early development of foreign language abilities?

Why is it difficult for an adult to learn a foreign language? Because language is not only words and rules, but also a certain way of thinking, which is very difficult to rebuild in adulthood. For a child, everything happens differently, because there are no language settings in his head. Children raised in bilingual families become bilingual without much effort, i.e. are fluent in both languages. This “life hack” of early development has been known for a long time, and in pre-revolutionary times, wealthy Russian families specifically hired governesses and nannies from France, Germany or other countries for their children.

If everyone in your family speaks Russian, and you are not going to hire an overseas governess, first let your child get used to his native language, and start learning the second language at about three years of age. Lessons should be held in a playful manner, completely eliminating any cramming and punishment. Early development of language abilities is best facilitated by immersion in a language environment. The child’s progress will be most noticeable if he goes to an English kindergarten, using a new language for the urgent tasks of communication with peers and teachers.

And don’t forget about one very important detail: if you decide to teach your child a foreign language, you can’t stop. Any break will inevitably result in a setback in knowledge, and then you will have to spend time to return to the previously achieved level.

The most common mistakes made by adults

During the development of a child, the most common mistakes made by adults are:

1. Overly active guardianship

   . Parents strive to predict the child's wishes. He doesn't feel the need to talk. He does not learn to express his thoughts, which leads to inhibition of speech processes.

2. Do not include new people in the child’s social circle

   , which will subsequently lead to difficulty communicating in unusual conditions.

3. Overestimation or underestimation of speech requirements

   . In some families, the child does not have the need to talk against the background of absolute prediction of all his desires. Sometimes the baby is constantly asked to “repeat”, “say”. It happens that in the same family there are two approaches at once: the grandmother is overprotective, and the father demands. This adversely affects both the speech and overall development of the baby.

4. Too fast or slow, monotonous speech of parents.

   Emotionally uncolored speech of adults, without pauses, has a bad effect on the development of children's speech.

There is no need to strive to accelerate the natural course of the child’s speech development. He should not get tired from studying.

Age 2 to 3 years

Children's vocabulary is expanding rapidly. The child uses verbs and adjectives more widely and begins to use pronouns and prepositions. Using adjectives, he not only denotes the sizes of objects, but also names their colors, qualities, properties, shape (red, bad, hot, round). Normally, children of this age still have constant errors in gender, number and case of nouns; they do not always use conjunctions and prepositions. The pronunciation of words becomes more accurate, and although many words are pronounced distorted, the child’s speech is quite understandable to others.

When to contact a specialist

All children develop differently, some begin to speak earlier than their peers, others later. Norms do not always serve as a guideline that a child is developing incorrectly. But, we advise you to consult a doctor in the following cases:

1. At 2 months the baby does not cry before feeding.
2. At 5 months the baby does not smile or coo.
3. At 6 months the baby does not listen to speech or music.
4. At 7 months he does not recognize the voice of his family and does not show any reaction to intonation.
5. At 9 months he does not babble, does not repeat syllables or combinations of sounds after adults, does not imitate the intonation of his parents.
6. At 11 months he does not wave when denied, does not say goodbye with a gesture.
7. At one year old, he cannot pronounce simple words, does not fulfill basic requests, “bring”, “give”, “show”.

From the very birth of a child, you need to deal with his development. The more often you talk to your child, the faster he will speak. If a mother is a silent person and instead of spending active time with her child she sits on the phone, then it is not surprising that the child will speak later than his peers.