Talk to baby, and baby will talk to you
We have yet to discover how a baby – who doesn't know how to eat or go to the toilet alone – manages to learn to talk. But we do know how to help him in his journey of language acquisition...
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Clearly, baby talk is only useful when communicating with very young babies. From their earliest days of life, we notice how they pay particular attention to someone who speaks to them in this way compared to another person who changes nothing in their vocabulary or intonation.
Over and beyond baby talk
When a baby is a bit older (from 6 months to 1 year), they need more than baby talk and parents should strive to adapt their communication in accordance with their baby’s development, without overly restricting vocabulary or always cooing and aahing as when he was 3 months old.
The most important thing is to talk! A baby has a great need to be talked to - which isn’t the same thing as listening to people talking. It isn’t enough just to sit a child in front of the television or leave him to listen to telephone conversations: these will not stimulate him either intellectually or emotionally.
And research increasingly shows that intellectual and emotional stimulation are very closely linked. Some teachers and child psychiatrists even defend the idea that a child can only learn through this relationship with other people. Although widely acknowledged as true for learning to read and write, it does also make sense for the acquisition of spoken language.
Developing talkative interaction with baby
Good interaction is therefore fundamental. Playing, rocking, singing, smiling, talking, and telling stories... these are all essential. What is crucial for emotional balance is also crucial for cognitive development (the acquisition of knowledge), on which language acquisition depends. That is why the issue of emotional intelligence is of such focus these days. It’s no coincidence that babies start to form their vocabulary from “standard” sounds linked to words pronounced by the people most important to them - mummy and daddy.
Another North American researcher Rebecca Novick focused her research on this aspect of language acquisition and realised during her work just how "productive" communication could be in the first weeks of a baby's life. When we speak to a newborn, we ask her questions, then pause as if waiting for an answer (despite knowing that we won’t get one for a few months yet!). But these pauses allow the baby to understand the way in which conversations are held, and the notion of exchanging words during a conversation.
Even as early as 2 months old, some babies have already “learnt the lesson” and answer their parents with sounds, by moving their arms, smiling or sticking out their tongue. That’s communication for you!
Copyright © 2010 Doctissimo
Posted 04.05.2011
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