How To Increase Your Baby’s Babbling
What are cooing and babbling?
Cooing and babbling are your baby’s way of practicing making sounds, and laying the groundwork for them learning to say their first words. Babies start cooing as early as 6-8 weeks of age, and are your baby’s first sounds besides crying. Cooing consists of vowel sounds (e.g. ahh, ooo), and gurgling-type sounds. Babbling can start as early as 4 months, and can be distinguished from cooing, as you will start to hear your baby making consonant sounds (e.g. /b, p, m, t, d, n/), first as single syllables (e.g. ba, da), followed by repetitions of the same syllable (e.g. mamama, bababa). As your baby’s babbling advances, they will start to produce variegated babbling and jargon, starting around 8-10 months, where they will mix different consonant and vowel sounds together (e.g. mabodu), and may start to have the same intonational patterns as adult speech. Learn more here about what sounds to expect to develop first.
Responding to and imitating your baby’s sounds can help increase their babbling.
Why is babbling important?
Producing different sound combinations is getting your baby’s neural pathways ready to say their first words. Not only are babies learning how to produce different sounds with their mouth, and to combine different consonants and vowels together, which is a fine motor skill required to speak, they are also starting to learn the social contexts of talking. Babies begin to learn that their vocalizations result in reactions from others, which is a stepping stone to learning the symbolic representation of words, and different communicative functions.
Getting face-to-face with baby is important to help increase babbing.
What can I do to encourage my baby to babble more?
Research has found that parents’ response to babbling impacts their speech and language development. How you respond to your baby’s vocalizations and babbling, along with these other tips and tricks can help increase your baby’s babbling and get them ready to say their first words.
Respond to your infant’s sounds by making eye contact and speaking back to them.
This is one of the best and most important tips for helping to increase your baby’s babbling. This encourages your baby to vocalize and babble more, because they get a response out of it. It is also helping to teach them that their voice and sounds have meaning. The more you respond to their vocalizations, the more they will continue to vocalize, as well as learn to make more complex sounds.
Imitate your infant’s vocal productions.
Imitating your baby encourages them to vocalize more, as they are getting a response from you. For example, if your baby says, “ba,” make eye contact with your baby and imitate it back by saying, “ba.” Pause and look at your baby expectantly (smile, mouth open, eyebrows raised), and wait to see if your baby repeats it back again, or continues to vocalize. By imitating your baby, you are also teaching them the concept of imitation, which is needed in order to say their first words.
After going back and forth for a couple of turns, for example, Baby: “ba,” Mom: “ba,” Baby: “ba,” Mom: “ba,” Baby: “ba;” try changing the sound, Mom: “da.” See if your baby then imitates the new sound you introduced. They might not at first, especially if you primarily hear your baby only use a couple of sounds in their babbling, but keep practicing!
Prioritize face-to-face interaction with baby, and significantly reduce or eliminate videos and screens.
The current recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) is no screen time for children under 18-24 months of age, with the exception of FaceTiming/video-chatting. Recent evidence shows that it is not the screen, but the lack of true social interactiveness that impedes early language development from videos.
Additional evidence shows that time spent in front of screens, and even “educational” videos, is associated with decreased language skills.
For young babies to learn language, face-to-face interaction in the “real world” is essential. Language and learning to produce sounds and words is complex, and learned from producing and imitating sounds and gestures and getting reactions from the people around them (e.g. When I say a sound mommy responds to me; when I smile daddy smiles back; when I point mommy says that word; when I reach my arms up daddy picks me up; when I say ‘ba’ mommy gives me the ball).
These are skills that are not learned through videos. Videos do not encourage babbling or talking, because there is no social reciprocity involved.
Eliminating screens altogether in this day and age can be a challenge. If you think your baby may be showing signs of a language delay (e.g. limited babbling by 10-12 months, absence of first words/word imitation by 12-15 months), significantly reducing screen time and replacing it with in-person interaction is an important step towards increasing speech and language development skills. There is some evidence to suggest that learning is possible when a caregiver watches the video with their toddler and provides a real-life commentary and connection. Additionally, FaceTiming/video-chatting preserves many of the social qualities of communication needed to facilitate language learning, which is why the AAP makes an exception for video-chatting.
Imitate your baby’s actions.
Gross motor imitations (e.g. movement of arms, body, etc.) often precede the fine motor imitations required for speech imitation. First imitate your baby’s actions (e.g. clapping, actions with toys, etc.), and then see if your baby will imitate your actions (e.g. clapping hands, hand motions in familiar songs). This will help build their overall imitation skills needed to imitate speech sounds.
Model sound play for your baby.
Get face-to-face with baby, and go repeat strings of sound (e.g. mamama, bababa, tututu, neeneenee). Point to your mouth to bring your baby’s attention to how your mouth is moving, and lightly tap their mouth to bring their attention to their own mouth, and encourage imitation. Occasionally pause and look at your baby expectantly (smile, mouth open, eyebrows raised), to see if they vocalize to get you to keep going.
Sit in front of the mirror and look at your mouths.
You can incorporate the same sound play discussed above while looking in the mirror, and this way, your baby can see their own mouth, too.
Make fun sound effects in play.
Babies will sometimes imitate sound effects before imitating speech sounds or words. Make sound effects like raspberries (e.g. when driving a toy car), popping your lips, weeee, rawr, meow, ah-choo, choo-choo, beep, dog panting (e.g. heavy breathing or “h” sound in and out), woof, etc.
Talk in parentese.
This is when you speak in a higher tone of voice, or in a sing-songy way, with a slower rate, and more drawn out words. This helps bring your baby’s attention to important words and sounds. Parentese not only helps babies learn words better, it also helps them connect the sound with the mouth shape. By bringing your baby’s attention to both your sounds and mouth shape, you are helping them start to learn to produce these sounds, too. A recent study found that the use of parentese spans across cultures around the globe.
Bringing baby’s focus to your mouth can help increase their babbling.
When should I get help from a professional if my baby isn’t babbling?
If your child is 12-15 months of age and is not yet using or imitating a few words, and has a history of limited babble, or limited repertoire of speech sounds you hear in their babble, you may want to talk to your pediatrician and get a referral for a speech-language evaluation with a speech-language pathologist. There are multiple factors involved in determining if a child requires speech-language therapy. Early intervention has been proven to have better outcomes than the outdated “wait and see” approach, so speak to your pediatrician if you are concerned.
This website and information on this blog post is provided for educational purposes only. It is not meant as medical advice, intended to replace a speech-language assessment, therapy from a speech-language pathologist, or serve as medical care for a child. It is recommended that you discuss any concerns or questions you might have with your speech-language pathologist, pediatrician, and medical team, and develop an individualized team plan specifically for your child.
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