Help your baby to talk, it's music to your ears

Listening the first word from your baby is a great feeling. Isn't it and when the word is "mama"? Your joy knows no bound, but l must say the first word my son said was "daddy"! Generally babies utter their first words at 11 to 14 months, when the tongue and lips gain dexterity and the brain starts to match up objects with names. Every child learns to speak with time but you as a parent can help them to talk from birth onwards. Critical milestones for a baby learning to talk happen in the first three years of life.

• Baby talk at 3 months: By the end of three months, babies begin "cooing" -- a happy, gentle, repetitive, sing-song vocalization. At three months, your baby listens to your voice, watches your face as you talk, and turns toward other voices and sounds.
• Baby talk at 6 months: At six months, your baby begins babbling with different sounds, "ba-ba" or "da-da." By the end of the sixth or seventh month, babies respond to their own names, recognize their native language.

Baby talk at 9 months: After nine months, babies can understand a few basic words like "no" and "bye-bye."

• Baby talk at 12 months: Most babies say a few simple words like "mama" and "dadda" by the end of 12 months and now know what they're saying. They start responding to you.
• Baby talk at 18 months: Babies at this age say up to 10 simple words and can point to people, objects, and body parts you name for them.
• Baby talk at 2 years: By the age of two, babies string together a few words in short phrases of two to four words, such as "Mommy bye-bye" or "me milk."
• Baby talk at 3 years: By the time your baby is 3, his or her vocabulary expands rapidly, and "make-believe" play spurs an understanding of symbolic and abstract language like "now," feelings like "sad" and spatial concepts like "in."

Tips for parents: To help your children learn speaking, you can be the best teacher. You can help your toddler to talk by starting early and giving her lots of your time and encouragement.

Give everything a name: Give name to everything in your child's world. If you're bathing her name the water, toy, soap and everything. Use your baby's name as much as you can so she is aware of her own identity.

Read to your child: Reading to your baby at a young age helps her to hear and understand the intonations and emotions of speech. Point to a picture and say "fire truck" to help her recognize the names for things.Listen to what your baby is saying: Observe your baby's sign language, try to understand their signal, smile and look. Respond to their communication. If your baby is trying to tell you something, help her by pointing to what it might be.

Sing for your child: Sing songs which encourage movement. ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes' are good for toddlers to learn which body part is which.

Mirror image: Sit with your toddler on your lap and face the mirror. Point out her eyes, ears, nose and mouth, and explain that you have a nose, mouth and ears too, but yours are a bit bigger.Numbers and colors: Use numbers and colors as much as you can for things. Sing songs which help to teach your toddler numbers like ‘one, two, buckle my shoe'. Try to count things out as much as possible, so when you give your toddler some food say, "two slices of carrot for you".

Teach your child to say his or first and last name.  Try not to use too much baby language as you talk, as babies learn to speak faster if you talk to them normally.  Choices enable your toddler to respond and talk back, so if you have a bowl of fruit ask, "Which piece of fruit would you like, the banana, apple or pear?" while pointing to them all. Give your toddler a chance to reply, even by pointing.Corrections: Remember how frustrating it was when you were told off at school? Try not to correct your toddler too much when she mispronounces words or uses the wrong word for an object, or she may give up trying. Repeat her sentence using the right word.

Learning to talk is such an important milestones in baby's life that guiding on the part of parents is very necessary. Babies would like to talk about lots of things but can't do so because forming words requires precise muscular control. By using simple gestures for items, parents enable babies to take an active role in interactions and help reduce frustration.

(Sources: parenting.com, webmd.com, gurgle.com)