Is your child reaching all the speech and language milestones? Should you engage in “baby talk” with your child? What if my child isn’t saying words by 12 months? Should I be teaching my child sign language?
Parenting today can be confusing. It is important to remember every child develops speech and language at different rates.
What if my child isn’t talking by their 1st birthday?
Comparing your child’s development with their siblings or friends, who may be putting words together by 13 months, is difficult not to do.
So, if your child isn’t saying “mommy” or “daddy” by 12 months old, it may not be reason to worry. They don’t have to be accurate or completely clear, ‘da da’ and “ma ma” definitely count. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has a development chart from birth to 5 years old.
Is using “baby talk’ with my child going to slow down their language development?
Studies have shown any type of engagement is beneficial to your child. In fact, “baby talk” can help children focus on patterns of speech.
“Our findings suggest that diminutives and reduplication, which are frequently found in baby-talk words—across many different languages—can facilitate the early stage of vocabulary development,” says lead researcher Mitsuhiko Ota of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.
Will teaching my child sign language accelerate their language development?
Many parents are teaching toddlers sign language to communicate before their child can talk in hopes of speeding up their language development. But according to a study from the University of Hertfordshire in England, Dr Liz Kirk found, “Although babies learned the gestures and used them to communicate long before they started talking, they did not learn the associated words any quicker than the non-gesturing babies, nor did they did they show enhanced language development.”
