When do children start talking?

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Many experts indicate exactly at what age children begin to speak. However, parents should remember that these are rather average data. Each baby is individual, grows and develops in different conditions, has its own temperament. Therefore, he begins to speak at different periods.

Children's first word

Most often, the infant begins his experience of speaking with the habitual gurgling (agu) and humming (guli). Mom distinguishes grunting, smacking, clattering in the baby. This is how the child trains the tongue and learns to reproduce the first sounds.

By about five to seven months, an infant can already form sounds into syllables. The most commonplace are am-am, ap-ap, pa, ma. It is from them that the first word is later formed - children begin to say "mom" and "dad". There is the most banal explanation for this: such words often appear in a conversation with a baby. Especially when the parent voices his every action. For example, "mom will feed now" or "let's go for a walk with dad."

First phrases

After the baby has uttered his first word, the rapid development of his vocabulary begins. He is the more, the more often and more clearly the parent speaks with the baby. As a rule, as early as 10 months, a baby can speak simple words such as kisya, yum-yum, dai, mom, dad, aw, top-top, etc. A similar vocabulary already by the age of one and a half turns into the ability to speak in short sentences. More often the kids say something like “I won't give it, mine”, “Go top-top”, “Danya write”, etc.

If at this stage the parental environment supports the baby, talks with him enthusiastically, then by the age of 2 years the baby begins to speak in precise, but short sentences with endings, prepositions, and correct cases. For example, “Mom will feed”, “I was sleeping”, “I don’t want to”, “The car is going”.

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The norms for the development of colloquial speech in a child

Physicians and specialists in defectology divide the process of speech development in a child into several stages:

• 1-2 months. At this age, the baby learns to distinguish between the speech of the parents, to react to sounds and intonation of the voice. Begins to smile intensely. The first emotions are shown by screaming or crying. It is they who become the first harbingers of the development of colloquial speech.
• 3-4 months. At this age, the baby is already able to pronounce vowel sounds. The ability to walk and gurgle appears.
• 5-6 months. From a set of vowels and consonants, the first syllables appear. Which later add up to simple words like mom, woman, dad.
• 7-8 months. Here, the child is already gradually pronouncing his first bundles of vowels and consonants, clearly reminiscent of ordinary words. Such a "talkative" baby already consciously imitates the speech of the parents.
• 1 year. The baby is already confidently pronouncing the first simple words like kitty, mom, drink, give. The vocabulary is constantly expanding. At this age, children begin to speak their clear first words consciously.
• 1, 5 years old. If the parents regularly talk clearly with the baby, by this age, he already knows how to speak in simple sentences without declensions in cases. Typically, a sentence consists of an action-verb plus a noun-object or person.
• 2 years. At this age, children begin to speak in sentences that are freely composed of three or more words. And it is at this stage that the baby is able to fulfill the most banal household requests. Here, in the course of the development of speech, the baby already uses prepositions, prefixes, and correct endings.

And already at the age of 3, the child fully expresses himself in phrases. At the same time, he freely uses adjectives, verbs, prepositions, pronouns and adverbs. At the same time, fuzzy or incorrect pronunciation of some sounds is considered the norm. Experts say that the child will definitely pronounce all the sounds until the age of 6. Therefore, if the baby has not yet pronounced the letter "r", do not panic.

The first signs of disorder and speech impairment

The fact that the development of speech skills in a baby is unnatural, has deviations, is evidenced by some violations. Mom, with close and full communication with the baby, can pay attention to them. Signs of a speech disorder look like this:

• Complete or partial lack of reaction to the appeal to the baby;
• Late appearance or gurgling, humming or their complete absence;
• Silence of a toddler until the age of one year;
• Lack of phrases in a child's speech after 2 years;
• Lack of eye contact with adults, neutral response to touch or hail.

It is believed that speech problems arise in a baby with neurological pathologies, underdevelopment of the speech apparatus or problems with ENT organs. Signs of such violations are:

• Lack of chewing skills when switching to solid foods;
• Inarticulate speech of the baby;
• The open mouth of the crumbs even while awake;
• Increased salivation;
• Difficulty nasal breathing;
• Night and even daytime snoring.

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Important: The identified problems should never be resolved on their own. With one or more of the indicated symptoms, parents should contact a specialist with their child.

For what reasons there is a delay in the development of speech

Professionals identify two main causes of speech development disorders in babies - social and physiological. The first include:

• Lack of close and intimate communication with mom and dad. Parents do not make tactile contact with the baby, do not try to talk to him.
• Lack of developmental activities in games with the baby. All kinds of nursery rhymes, games for the development of fine motor skills stimulate the development of speech.
• Ignoring by parents the possibility of talking with the baby. Dad and mom do not maintain a dialogue with the baby, do not try to guess his desires by gestures and give them names.
• Conversation with the baby on the principle of lisping or too quickly, abruptly. In this case, the baby does not understand and does not have time to grasp the meaning of what was said.
• The asocial environment in which the baby grows up. Parents-alcoholics, parents-brawlers and the like provoke the development of psychological trauma in the baby. That is reflected in the unwillingness to develop and speak.
• Regular excessive noise. Too loud music or spoken words from the TV especially negatively affect the child's speech centers. Words and phrases from there sound abruptly, which prevents the baby from taking the information properly.

Experts attribute any pathology of a medical nature to the physiological reasons for the violation of colloquial speech. Including problems with ENT organs, birth trauma, neurological disorders.

Knowing at what age children start talking, you should not adjust your child to the established framework, since each crumb is individual.