Stages Your Toddler Needs For Talking With Success: Part 2

In this week's episode, we continue our exploration of the vital stages of babbling with your baby, delving even deeper into the intricacies that shape their cognitive and communicative abilities.

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Building on last week's discussion, we unravel the significance of cooing and babbling as precursors to language development, offering valuable insights for new moms eager to support their baby or toddler at home. 

Unlike common advice to "just wait," I firmly believe that understanding and actively engaging with your baby/toddler during these early stages is paramount. 

I emphasize the importance of being intentional during these crucial moments as I share insights from the rich history of research on early child development, shedding light on the often-overlooked significance of babbling.

This episode goes beyond theory, providing practical strategies and everyday activities that empower you to enhance both cooing and babbling skills in your little one. 

It's about building a strong foundation for future language acquisition and ensuring your child is on the right track.

Remember, you're not alone in this journey, and with the right knowledge and intentional actions, you've got this. 

Let’s step up together and make a positive impact on your child's developmental journey!

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Transcript

Erin: 0:00

Because that's their survival link, but now it becomes fun. Now is purposeful. Now they have built a healthy, engaging relationship with you. Their first love. And they're in it with you. So those first 12 months. Are critical for hearing. Listening. Perceiving. Discriminating. And then finally understanding, and those words do have different concepts. And when I use them, I try to be very, very specific, it's really honing and building and strengthening. Fell whole listening system, their auditory cortex. Hello, and welcome to Talking Toddlers, where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. We're going to cover all of that, but here, our goal is to develop clarity. Because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind. He's thriving through your guidance. We know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. Hello and welcome new mamas, new daddies and grandparents. This week's episode, we continue the deep dive into the critical developmental milestone of cooing and babbling. And if you have an older toddler, hold on. This is for you too. If you have a 20 month old, 24, 26, 30 month old, perhaps you're looking at a late talker. And that has a lot of different definitions. You don't want to dismiss these insights because it can truly help you analyze. And figure out how the puzzle pieces fit together. Did he skip these stages? Could that be why he's not chatting so much right now? And then how can you use the suggestions I give on the second half of this episode to help you support his growth now. Remember speech and language is a multifaceted, intricate processing system. It has both the physical elements. using those hundred muscles for human verbal speech. And then we have the expressive and receptive language component. all of these pieces fit together and your child cannot, and typically does not develop these in isolation. It's an acquisition process. So, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, number 75, it might serve you the best to go back and listen first. Because there I build the stage. I differentiate Between cooling and babbling. And then I start the deep dive with babbling stages one and two. I want you to be able to identify where the challenges are early. Understand exactly where your baby is on this journey. Head off any missteps zone in and then nurture any weak links. Then mom, dad, grandma, you can proceed with confidence and watch your child master. That's what it's all about. So now let's look at stage number three. Canonical babbling. And what that means is that there's a lot more purposeful movement, intentional practice. And this happens between six and 10 months. Again. With some wiggle room, but there are two primary subtypes in canonical, babbling. The first one is what we in my field referred to as reduplicated babbling. And I think this is kind of the general conception of what babbling is, what all babbling is. It's when your baby will repeat the same syllable over and over again. It all sound like. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Or Google goo goo. Mom mom, mom ma. Right. So they have three or four times they'll repeat the exact same. Sellable. But here's where it gets a little fun. Again, in my kind of strange life. Is that through this reduplicated babbling, your baby is literally practicing different combinations and experimenting. Again, this is, this is the brilliance with introducing solid foods at this age at 5 6, 7, 8 months of age. they're honing both of those skills. And you'll see that through this repeated syllable. That they'll create different. Rhythmic patterns. And so that's where we hear mama. Dada. Now. Most babies through most cultures will say those two syllable patterns because it's one of the easiest we over the years. And I know that I've crushed a lot of hearts. Saying that mama and dada or Papa. Are just easy motor planning skills. They're not really. You know, at 6, 7, 8 months really calling you, mama are dada. But soon they will. Soon we will teach them. Yes, that's me. Yes. That's my name mama. And I point to me, mama. Or dada or Papa, whatever those easier reduplicating patterns. But by reinforcing that you're teaching them. One of their first words in a good speech therapist will always ask. What was his, or her first words besides mama and Papa or mama and data, because that. Really tells us the other oral motor planning. The other speech sounds like my daughter was kitty. Now reduplicated babbling is crucial because there's a lot of vocal play. And they're building their muscle strength and planning skills. Elongating them shorting them out, moving from the back of the mouth, to the front of the mouth. Isolating movements, the jaw, the lips, the front of the tongue, the back of the tongue. And it teaches them to control the sounds. And practice in a variety of intonations. It really helps your baby learn how to process and at the same time distinguish between different sounds. It sharpens that cognitive skills that I mentioned in the very beginning. So during this. Reduplicated phase, right? They're repeating the same syllable there. They're building a lot of motor skills and auditory skills. They're learning to contrast were those sounds the same. Or were they different? They also have to begin to map out neurologically acoustically. Where those sounds or where those changes occurred. So for example, and I have this written. I have. The contrast between pop. Pup pup. And. Cup cup. So. So the, in the first position and the. Are those two sounds that change. And so your baby. Acoustically auditorily has to recognize, oh, only that very first sound, which is about 35 milliseconds in duration. Changed everything else. The up part stayed the same. Pup cup. Pop. Cup. And we, when we talk at normal adult speed, that's quick. And then you contrast that with pan. Packed. Pan. Pat. So now that. At pan. And packed that. Differ. They're not the same anymore. We use this same technique when we're building what we call phonological processing. And phonics. When they're 5, 6, 7 years old. Again, needing that auditory attention. And discrimination skills necessary. For breaking the code to literacy it's hearts. At cooing and babbling. I kid you not, I know you might be thinking. I don't know about that, Aaron, but that's how we're wiring the brain, the auditory system. And that's why rhymey is not only entertaining. It's wickedly important. Even with one syllable words. So listen. To this group and. And I always use this as an easy example. But where your child has to auditorily discriminate that very first constant because the vowel stays the same. And it's a lot of. Really detailed listening. So here's the, here's the group. Me. C. B. QI. She. Ni. Three. He. Tree. GHI P. We. T. So you're thinking, all right, whatever, they're rhyming words, but what I'm sharing. Is that vowel? All of our vowels in English language are always longer and louder. There are longer in duration, IE. Is longer than. Or. Or, mm. So what happens? I there's a term for it. We call it backwards masking Where the vowel can mask that initial phoneme sound. And so it gets confusing when your child's older and they're learning how to spell or decode words and all of that. But this is why this cooling and babbling stages are so important. We are training the ears, the auditory cortex to pay attention, notice changes. What sequence, where the sound patterns in. Notice if they're the same or they're different. Listen. Pattern after pattern after pattern. This is what we refer to as fine. Auditory discrimination sequencing. If you want your baby and your toddler to be a competent communicator, a listener, and then a strong reader and writer. It starts here with cooing and babbling. So now let's move on to the second subtype of canonical babbling, and that's called variegated. It means variety. Right? The first one was reduplicated it means just repeating the same syllable. Now we're going to vary it up. During this second subtype, your baby experiments with combining different constants and different vowels in a variety of ways. Right? And you'll watch your baby, him or her experiment with different consonant and vowel sounds in a variety of ways. And they're, they're striving to form more complex and non repetitive syllable sequences. And this is more, much more purposeful. So for example, your daughter or son might say something like Bobby DB. Bobby D D. And you're like, well, what the heck does that mean? Right. Where's my D D my daughter's nickname for her blanket was D D. Um, Or they're just practicing, moving because they have much more control over these. Oral motor movement patterns through practice and stimulation with you through self play, through biting and chewing and eating. All of this is coming together. And it's really quite exciting because this is when your little one begins to display their kind of creativity, but their language and they'll, and they'll have the intonation patterns and the sing song, just like you. Right. And it really begins to develop her ability to make more complex and meaningful speech sounds. And you'll see them going from the back of the mouth to the front of the mouth. And really, really playing it up. And of course, as you move closer to that first birthday, those speech sounds will develop into first approximations or first real words. Right. I remember, I, I laid out those initial sounds. And so sometimes like blanket was too hard for my daughter and somehow she just figured out DD was a whole. Whole heck of a lot better. That was her nickname. We reinforced that that's not considered baby talk. It was what she labeled her beautiful white blanket. Of course it had to be white. It was always being washed. But variegated babbling, what we refer to it. Variety. Also helps your little guy or gal understand and distinguish between the sounds. So they've been auditorily mapping and listening to your variety of speech sounds. And now they're going to practice that. And that's where that turn-taking and conversational flow. Really starts to emerge. So. All of this auditory information. Is really for a separate episode, but for now I want you to always go back that auditory skills honing that auditory begins in utero before birth. And then within those first 24 36 hours, right there, cry is going to match the inflections, the melody of their native language. Because that's their survival link, but now it becomes fun. Now is purposeful. Now they have built a healthy, engaging relationship with you. Their first love. And they're in it with you. So those first 12 months. Are critical for hearing. Listening. Perceiving. Discriminating. And then finally understanding, and those words do have different concepts. And when I use them, I try to be very, very specific, but here we're going to chunk them all together. Because it's just easier right now it's really honing and building and strengthening. Fell whole listening system, their auditory cortex. And that's what we have to always keep in mind. And there's a dance to it. So I do want to kind of step on a sidebar right here, because I know that. In my episodes here. I'm I'm excited and eager to really share what I've learned through all of my study and my real life experience on the floor with hundreds and hundreds of children. And so I'm always using the term, oh, this is important. So listen up or that's important. So. Try to wrap your mind around that. And if you haven't figured it out, I say this. Is important because I think unfortunately, The vast majority of us humans, but especially new moms who are new parents. Really minimize a lot of the, the developmental milestones in those first couple of years. one, because I think life in general is overwhelming. It's all new. And we, I talked about that in a previous episode. You're, you're trying to reconcile who you were before you got pregnant. And now this role of motherhood. But as a culture, I think we're also in denial. And it could be conscious. Consciously or subconsciously we could be doing it just, as survival. That we develop these habits. Of putting blinders on because it's too risky to look around. It's too risky, too. Uh, to go there, right. It feels uncomfortable. And yes, we as humans do this often, right? That we move away from danger because nobody likes that sense of panic or uncertainty. And I, I once heard that plants. Don't move toward the light or toward the sun. They actually move away from the darkness. And I thought, wow, we humans do that too. Right. We, we turn away and I know, you know, this old saying that naivete is blessed. Or even ignorance is bliss. Because it is. It's a lot more comfortable to just wear the blinders or stick my head in the sand. Because if you think of it, ignorance or naivete, it just means there's a lack of knowledge. And that, that lack of knowledge, results in a sense of comfort, a sense of appeasement. And you might ask, well, why the heck are you talking about this errand? It's because. It's more comfortable to not know certain things. And I get that. I totally get that. And I've been studying on this and praying and meditating and doing long walks for a decade now. Why aren't more people up in arms with our children's health and wellbeing. Why aren't my colleagues saying the old model isn't working. And I think we as humans, we choose to stay in the dark because opening our eyes. Scares us too much. Right? It's. Like I said, motherhood in general. He is already overwhelming. And if we start really looking at the risks in this modern world of ours, And I know every generation has the risks. Right. I can't imagine, you know, being the first pioneers here in the United States. Uh, how the heck did they survive? But I live in 2024 and I know. This new role. Is daunting. But what, what I'm trying to bring through these episodes and on this channel. Is that if you choose to really live in the moment, Liv. With more knowledge live more intentionally. That's the way we all grow and learn. And change change. The course of our children's future. Because. It's it's this trial and error and willingness to go and be a little uncomfortable. And not stick our head in the sand and hope and pray and wait. Like the most of the system suggest, wait and see. Don't worry. You're just letting your hormones get to you. And, and I know it's, it's. It's much more comfortable in the moment. To ignore it. Or to, to live in this bubble, I've done it. In my, you know, multiple decades of life, I've done it in business in my own personal health and wellbeing. In relationships. And certainly with my daughter during those teen years that I'm trying to rectify now God bless her. Our finances for sure. You know, we all do it. When, when we're going through a rough time or when we're in one of those major transitions and you are in the thick of it as a first-time mom and I talked about this, you know, the whole. New mom, imposter syndrome. And what that is, or is not. And, and I even did it recently. It took me over five years to really finally close my practice because I had to admit that this old model. Of have come to therapy into my office, use my one-way mirror. That was helpful more than helpful. Let me get on the floor and demonstrate, and most of the time it was once a week. Sometimes we could do it twice a week. That is no longer the best practice, in my opinion. It's not enough to move the needle. It's not enough to close the gaps that it's not enough to change. The course of a child's life. And the whole dynamics of your family. I mean, we can use it. It can be part of the plan. But what I'm trying to. To bring light to. Is that. It starts with you at home. Wherever you are, whether you have a newborn, whether he's 18 months or 30 months. I'm focusing in on prevention to be more intentional, proactive. And I know it's hard to admit, but it typically starts with us mamas. If you want to give. Your child the best in life, it starts with you. Your attention, your love, your presence. Your openness to learn. Because it's hard to hear when I, you know, go on my soapbox like this one and I'll get off in a minute, but. When I share that 54% of American children have a chronic disorder. That's. Mind-boggling to me. When I share. Just my experience in 35 years as a practicing therapist. With early intervention. Being in the thick of it. Watching the numbers escalate and switch. That autism is rising today. It's one in 36 children. When in the late 1980s, when I graduated from university, it was one in 10,000. I don't know what goes through your head when you hear statistics like that. If you do just put your blinders on, or if you say. Wow, that doesn't sound. Healthy. But I started to really, we, I think my field started to open up, but I started it around 2015. In the sense that we started to look at the rise in speech and language delays since the introduction of the iPhones, which was, I think in 2006, And some of the first studies were out of the UK in which we saw an 18% spike in those first eight to 10 years since the iPhone. And it wasn't at that time, it wasn't necessarily. That babies were using the iPhone. As much as parents were distracted or primary caretakers were distracted. And now. The rise since the COVID pandemic, the lockdowns, the. The distance scene and all of this, just the stress and anxiety in the air. What the research that's now starting to surface, and I have a couple of links down below. It looks like. The rise of speech and language delay. Communication has doubled. That means baby's born. From 2018 till now. We need. To get out in front of it. We need to admit. That. We're at risk, at least take the blinders off. And as I said, I have a couple of links that really talk about what. Our systems are facing. And here's the truth. That our systems, you know, are early intervention systems that every state has our private practice settings. Oh, that focus on early intervention, the zero to three population and beyond right. The three to six. So, and our school systems are our healthcare providers. And I've shared with you in the past that. The whole department there in Vermont when I was there, um, a couple of years ago closed down because they had a two year waiting list and they had no idea how they would manage it. And this was, this was part of that. The. State system in which they sent children. To be, to rule out or rule in autism. You know, by their second birthday, which again, I think is late. But what I'm saying is there was no way that we could really manage all that well before the pandemic. And so. There has always been a shortage of speech, language pathologists. I've always kind of joked and said, you know, I could get a job anywhere in the world. Right. And every country has a shortage. And so instead of trying to fix the system. I can't. Do that from the inside, not one person. Right. And so I'm trying to go to the source. You mom, dad, grandma. Your family. How do we empower you? How do we give the Baton back to you? And enlightened. Your power, your, your ability. Because we were overwhelmed before the pandemic and I, I'm here to tell you. That it ain't looking good. Going forth. I can be more impactful, more honest and direct. If I help you. If I arm you, if I encourage you on a daily basis to stay ahead of it. To build and create what I refer to. And a lot of us do in this field, a language rich home lifestyle. And it's through nutrition is through connection is through that one to one. Playtime is through everyday experiences. And here's to me, here's the real inside scoop. You can learn. What true healthy developmental expectations are. That's why I'm talking. About babbling and cooling here. Just pulling that out of all of the different milestones and say, Hmm, how can we zone in on here? And make this. Measurable. How can we foster them at home? Nurture them naturally every single day.'cause that's what we did before we had all these systems. A hundred years ago, 200 years ago. And my take it's not rocket science. Yes, there's nuances. And I've said this. I've said this to, hundreds of patients over the years. I can help you interpret the nuances. But you have the beautiful skill to just learn these To put down. That limited mind set that you're not enough. Or that. Uh, quote unquote specialist, a therapist who has a few. Initials after her name. Knows more than you do. Or that that daycare provider does. At the end of the day. It's good high quality parenting that we've done for centuries. It's. Being intentional. And being proactive. And while I'm on this soap box, I'll reiterate, you don't need a lot of stuff either. You don't need fancy gadgets, baby gadgets, or fancy battery operated devices. You don't even need. In my opinion. Those expensive pre-packaged play kits. And I think you all know what they are. They're nice. They're beautiful. But your baby right now, your baby and your toddler. I know, you know what I'm going to say here. He needs you. Maybe a few classic toys like trucks and blocks. And I think somewhere I have a list of my favorites. Lots of books at different stages. Rhyming, rhyming, rhyming. And then. When they're up and about at two leftover repurposed household products. Uh, duster. Uh, dust pan. A spray bottle. Some paint brushes. S some old Tupperware. Where he can learn or practice and engage with cooking and cleaning and dress up and building. And then of course go outside and be really creative. Let the magic happen out there. So I just wanted to. Reiterate what's my driving force. My mission here. And I know sometimes it can sound like a soap box, but. I love babies. And my heart goes out to you, mama. Because it's, it's such a beautiful experience to watch. The magic happened, the miracle. Of building human communication and building a loving relationship and watching them. grow and create and. Hone their curiosity. So thank you for listening to that. I'll step off my soap box and get back to babbling. There's just one final stage, but. I think it's important to always go back to the why. Why am I here? Why are you here? What do we see? Okay. So number four. Is conversational babbling. And we call it conversational babbling because. Your baby uses a lot of jargon. That sounds like conversation. And it typically starts around 10 months of age. as your baby unfolds these month markers aren't written in stone. But they are guideposts that we have to be mindful of. So at this time, somewhere around 10 months, the sounds that your baby makes will begin to resemble the sound of your adult conversation. They'll they'll practice pausing and using some rhythms and intonation that, that they've heard. Right. They, they do that through their crying in those first couple of days. And then they, they learned how to imitate through cooling. Now they're really moving all of their oral motor musculature. Getting the in-sync with their inhalation and exhalation. Phone aiding, right? That phone nation is when our vocal cords vibrate right. Based on our airflow. And they even mimic the conversational turn-taking going back and forth. Right? You and your baby. And I'm sure a lot of you have done this, but this is really. Incredibly important to reinforce. And I have shared a number of times, both in my private practice and here on these episodes. That there's a epic YouTube video. And I'll have the link down below and the young man's name is DJ Pryor. And at the time he had, I think it's four or five years old now, but at the time he had a 19 month old named Kingston, they're adorable. They're sitting on the couch. Sounds like they're watching a basketball game. And I know that there are quite a few excellent examples online now, but this Spoke to me in volumes back then, and I've always referred to it. And part of it is that. this little video was so remarkable, so outstanding for the time that, companies actually hired or organizations, state organizations, mostly I think hired this young man and his toddler to go and give presentations to new parents regarding the importance of what is termed. Serve and return. It's that tennis term, right? That I've talked about, even in cooling, right? The baby accidentally makes that sound. And then you. Imitate that, right? So he gives you a serve, even if it's accidental and you return it. But now at 10 months, that serve and return that give and take is purposeful. And you should hear quite a bit of it. and through these months, As your baby is beginning to emerge in this serve and return. Your helping them practice, listening, taking pauses, like I said, and then responding. And it really is this. This beautiful network of learning, what social communication or conversational flow is. so at 10, 12, 14 months, Your baby's first real words will be mixed up in a lot of this jargon. you might hear him say, mama, go by DECA. Mamma Gobi, DECA. Or, or whatever the variety is, but he's using mama to get your attention. He saying, Hey, you listen up. I need to go outside. Whatever his jargon. Is representing. So knowing the stages of babbling is a tool that you can use to truly monitor growth and progress over time. And especially in that first year, 18 months. And because of that, I generated a quick outline for you all, because I know it's a lot of detailed. And there's a link down below, but let's just recap briefly. The first is the phonation stage, right birth to two months. It's what we look at as more natural or vegetative sounds the cry. The cough, the grunt, the sneeze, the hiccup, all of those sounds that accidentally or. Reflexively. Come out of him. He's drawing attention to, if you ever. Teased a baby who sneezed and you sneezed back, you would realize that's engaging. Right. But that's more vegetative. The second one is the cooling stage two to three months that I outlined. Up above. Is more primitive movements. They're really exploring the lips and the tongue. They're beginning to coordinate. The vowel like, and constant like sounds quite often by mistake and we reinforce that. The third major stage is the expansion stage. The first of which is marginal babbling between four and six months of age, beginning to produce. What we refer to in my field as fully resonant vowel sounds right. Ah, along with squealing and yelling and growling and raspberries and laughter all of those marginal babbling. They're not. Word like, but they're engaging, right? He's interested in making noise and plane with them with you. And low and behold that's when we also introduce solid foods, giving them another channel to exercise. Then the fourth stage is canonical babbling, which again means. Much more purposeful it's between six and 10 months of age. There are two subtypes. But your baby. Really begins to produce sounds That we can recognize as syllables right there, mixing up the consonants, mixing up the vowels and playing. With intention. And. Those two subtypes are reduplicated and then non reduplicated. redo publicated would be Baba, Baba, mama, mama, and then non reduplicated is when he mixes it up. Di di di di mama, God, you got right. So a few different vowels, a few different constants, the consonants and the vowels make up those 44 different sounds in English. And then there's the jargon stage, which between 10 and 15 months of age again, giving. a little wiggle room on either side, but this is where your, your baby and now toddler, right. As he learns to talk around. Is really building more complex babbling with prosody, right? The prosody is the melody of our language and it matches their native language. So it sounds jibberish like, but the Babel. Really take on the tones and flections of our adult speech. They're really. Honing their auditory skills and trying their best. To, to be an adult talker, right. And then the final stage are those first words that start to emerge around that first birthday. And you want to see it grow steadily. So typically a 12 month old will have a handful of real words, interspersed with a lot of jargon, a lot of intonation play. Don't forget to click on that link below and listen to DJ prior in his lovely. Lovely. toddler. But then all the way up through 18 months of age and 18 months of age, they should have 20, 30 words by their second birthday. They're really predominantly using real words because they have a larger pool or a striving for a minimum of 50 words. Maximum, or there is really no maximum, but you know, many, many, many healthy, robust thriving toddlers will have two or 300 words. And with that they no longer have to practice with jargon patterns or figuring out how to put these sounds together to match their native language. They have enough words to. To converse, right. To be a communicative partner. And they're really learning how to do that. I do also have a link down below that. I get a lot of this data from and how we really study the phases of cooing and then the ages and stages. of babbling. This is all documented research. This is what we have learned over the last, a hundred years. if you want some evidence you can link down below or there is a link down below. And as I always stress here, the importance of the stages. And what you can do to promote this. a rule of thumb that quiet babies are often overlooked because they're th they're thought of as good babies. Oh, he's easy going. He's not noisy. He doesn't even cry all that much. Right, but we want noisy babies. We want babies who are eager to converse with us. And that delayed babbling. Can often be an important indicator of speech and language delays and other more serious developmental problems. And I assure you, it's not. The only factor, but something that is worthy to take a look at. And it could be part of the puzzle and it's very common and at least historically in my 35 years of practice, Parents have shared that, It's pretty comfortable to say, oh, my kid is going to. A speech therapist, right? Because quite often speech therapies. I thought of as someone who has, a funny R or a list for a stutter or this or that. And they're really not looking at quote unquote developmental issues. That has kind of shifted in the last 10 years as I've shared how more serious developmental issues are escalating and the numbers are getting more and more. Noticeable, but I think it's important that we don't. Disregard any of this. And if I was a new mom today, And if I was literally sitting. Face-to-face with you. Having coffee. I would say I would be on it. Through every step of the way, not a helicopter mom, not someone who is throwing flashcards at your two year old. No, no, no, no, no. But to be in it, engaged, playing. Purposeful intentional when you're feeding, when you're changing, when you're putting him in and out of the car seat, as much as humanly possible. I know that you have a thousand other things to do. And I'm not saying 24 7, but I would never dismiss. Anything that could be a little yellow flag to say, Hey. Take a peek over here. Take off your blinders. And see. How can I stay on track as best as possible? All kids are not the same. I know that. But there are guideposts that tell us a lot. And I will continue to cover different milestones and zone in on them. Right. Because that's. How you can purposefully gauge where where's my toddler today. How do we stay on track? Is he sliding off a wee bit? And if I tweak here and there, can we get back on track or do I really need to call someone and revamp? Even if you have to call someone. Change your game plan at home now today. The bottom line is if. Any child is not babbling by seven or eight months of age, I would pick up the phone and call a speech language pathologist. And if you don't get some support, Reinforcement to say, Hey mom, good for you. I commend you for picking up the phone. Then call somebody else. Or dive deep into this. Click the link below and get the outline. You need to change some things at home. That's the truth. That's reality. And these are the, my suggestions. The first big step is to notice. Your child's babble. And how you do or don't respond. So the first thing is to pause and wait. Wait for your child to babble. When babies aren't yet talking. It's easy for us to fill in that white noise. And I've mentioned this a little bit before. But I think. It needs to be highlighted in the sense that. All moms and, and I've been guilty of this telling moms, oh, you need to talk to your baby. You need to talk to your baby. But. Not 24 7, because then they sit back and say, Hey, she's got this. I'm cute enough and I'm happy enough and I don't need to do this vocalization thing. So the first thing. Is to always pause and wait. When you're changing or playing or eating. But you do some non-verbal things. You'll wink your smile. You raise your eyebrows. bloke them a quiet kiss. You're shrug your shoulders. You wave, you do some non-verbal some gestures. Remember 16 gestures by 16 months. But it's quiet. See if they. Vocalize, right. We want to see where are they? Because sometimes if we say nothing, And just wait your baby, your child will learn how to initiate. through that quiet, that white space. You're encouraging them to make sounds on his own. But you don't just sit there with a blank face and say, oh, okay, whatever you ready to talk? No you're encouraging them. Would that, that nonverbal communication enticed. I seen him. Right. High-fiving shrugging, pointing at something. Blowing them a kiss. Okay. So that's the first one, right? You pause and you wait. And then the second way to notice, where are we on this? Is to observe your child. From a distance observe. Carefully. When he does Babel. Because there, there are two levels at this early phase. So the first one is he might babble by. Needing to send you a message. Right. So if you observe him pointing and then babbling. He's trying to get your attention. it's likely that that is an intentional babble. And that he sending you a message. But if you observe your child babbling, while he's busy playing and you're not involved. Then he doesn't want your attention. He's just practicing. These are new skills and he's testing it out. We often talk to ourselves, right. both are important. We want him to babble to get your attention and share something or call you over. And we want him to practice quite often, as you may have already experienced or, you know, I love it to hear when, when babies talked to themselves, first thing in the morning, my daughter did that. Yeah. Talk to her. Little stuffy animals or finger play or whatever, but we want to observe and notice both of these. And then the third notice step would be. You imitate your child's babble. If you figured out that your child really isn't sending you a specific message by babbling. A great strategy. And I've said this before, but is to imitate. Imitate his sounds. And we do this when they're younger, we don't do this when they're older. But you're showing them. How to imitate how to copy his sounds. So you're paying attention. And then you're demonstrating, ah, what you said was interesting and caught my attention. It's important. And I know there's a lot of literally hand over hand teaching your child. But it's just in the beginning, it's when they're beginning to emerge and what you're doing is reinforcing. You're shining a light onto that. You're drawing his attention and you do that when they're crawling you do that. When they're walking your dog. I mean that when they're eating, learning how to eat and chew, and you do that for talking as well. Because by imitating him at this young stage. Then it might motivate him to babble again. To build that initial turn-taking. But it also hopefully will encourage him to initially, or I'm sorry, intentionally make sounds to get your attention. So if you highlight. When he makes a sound and then you give him that attention, he's like, Hm, that's pretty powerful. When I squeal. She comes running. That's pretty cool. Maybe I'll squeal again. Or make a different sound and see if she squeals to that too. Huh? I'm pretty powerful. and I've shared with you earlier that this works best, in my opinion, with the younger. Baby, right. The 6, 8, 10, 12 month old. Once they get to be toddler age 12, 14, 6 months. I really stress that you use real words. They're simplified three long gated and exaggerated, but they're real words. They have meaning behind them. Because I think reinforcing babbling with a toddler and older toddler. I can. Delay things, or it builds another layer we want to close the gap as much as possible. And so in my mind, that's working backwards. Now, for a long while with older kids with a three, four five-year-old. I did a lot of what we call nonsense syllable patterns in speech practice. But it took a long time to generalize into. Real words into everyday conversational flow. And to me, it was hard to measure. Quite often we would do it as a warmup or we do it for fun and practice. But I wouldn't after. Several years. I think, in the early 1990s, when I was really diving deep into oral motor and Sarah Johnson Rosenfeld, who was my mentor, Was out front and center Helping kids with their motor planning for speech. And she took a lot of the arrows for us who cause this was a, a big pivot in my field. And it's still is controversial for lack of better phrase. But you're going to have some speech therapists that don't even begin to touch oral motor skills. And then a lot of us who have been in it for a long while. Saw that it made sense that we couldn't just ignore the physical part of talking. But that too is a different episode. I think. The fourth. Area or the fourth way to really. Observe. Is that you act as your child's interpreter. So if you think that your child is trying to tell you something. So before is that he's making sounds and you're giving him great attention to show him the empowerment of initiation. Now, if you think that he is trying to tell you something, then you interpret that. Even if it's a wild guess. Right? So for example, if you're, you know, walking down the street or in the car and he points out the window and he sees a big bus and he says, Baba, Baba, Right. So that's reduplicated Baba, Baba. And so you interpret that by saying yes, that's a bus. School bus. BP school bus. So when you interpret his message with real words, then you're providing him that label. And then he starts to. Shape his speech and language, and this will eventually. Build an add up his vocabulary. And that's why I always say, after that first birthday, use real words as his interpreter. So now I'm going to give you the major suggestions for older toddlers. But you would also use these naturally with your, babies, right? Your, 3 4, 5 month old, all the way up to his first birthday. But especially if you have that 16, 18 24 36 month. Nursery rhymes. You now know why, right. Because of all of the phonemes, the different sounds. The rhythm, you can sing the nursery rhymes and use books, rhyming books. Animal sounds. I'm always talking about animal sounds here because those are fun and interesting. Intriguing. We can repeat them thousand times. Environmental sounds so we can use these. We don't have to go back to babbling, but animal sounds isn't babbling, right? It's. It's our human interpretation of what those animal sounds make. And the joke has always been just like, what does a giraffe sound like? I've never. I've never quite mastered that. And it's always been kind of a fun joke with moms. But animal sounds and then environmental sounds right? The honk of the school bus or beep beep beep. Of the truck or room. Or swish. Or gulping, right. Kids love it. When I pretend to gulp in a cup. I don't know if you can hear that, but you can see me in the video. Boom, If there's a, an explosion, right. Or sirens, baby cries. Crying, you can imitate all the sounds that babies make or Yani. Oh, oh, Oh, right. They love that are snoring. Sneezing, of course, coughing loud kisses. They will imitate all of these social and environmental sounds. And again, building. Uh, motor planning skills, imitation skills, initiation skills, all of this turn-taking skills. The key. Is purposeful mouth movements and sounds blended together. And like I said, imitation initiation. Turn-taking and of course. one of the things that I'm always reinforcing here, gestures, gestures, body movements, especially as it's linked To singing. Right. But all of those gestural nursery rhymes the wheels on the bus. And then of course, one-to-one playtime. And what you want. Is think of what you would expect a really good therapist would do. And again, I've had a couple of colleagues or friends who I've ended up seeing their kids in therapy and. We've talked extensively about. 60%. Have a good therapist session. Is that I'm giving your baby. 110% of my undivided attention. And I'm in it with them. Right. So you want to carve out that one-to-one playtime. Where there's no distractions in the background. And that that allows you to respond in real time. If they make a soft Ooo sound, you can respond. If they kiss you from a distance, you can blow them back a kiss. You're going to keep it simple, follow his lead and what that really means. Is that you support his interest if he's really into animals and animal sounds or the farm set, or he likes trucks. Or little people, or she likes puzzles and blocks or, or dollies, whatever they like. If he likes to put the dollies in the trucks. You followed their interest. And then make noise around that. And I always say by keeping it simple, meaning. Pick one or two. Toy sets. If you have the little people out, I always had the little people farm set and I have an old version and a newer version and the old version. Is meant to last forever. But you can add a few extra vehicles or a few extra animals or some boxes or whatever, but you don't want to just dump a big, huge. Toy chest out. Keep it simple so they can focus on. The noises and the sounds that you're making with the movements in the plane. You know, if you're feeding a baby, add a few clothes. Or, you know, throw in a truck where they can transport them and go to the store with mama or turn over a box and give the baby a bath. Those elements that are relatable to real life. Make it fun. You have to be interesting. If you want your child to engage with you. Be interesting. Be playful. Be present. So paying more attention to babbling. As opposed to just cooling and making some noise back. Looking at these different stages can really help you move the needle. And then with you responding in real time and acting. As if your child is really trying to communicate something. Talking about something and sharing something with you. Not just labeling stuff, looking at a book and say, oh, cup. Banana. That has this place, but right now we're, trying to build his noise capacity. And it's hard. To get him to imitate those real words. Yes. You're helping him with the auditory mapping. But we want this expressive language to come out and it starts with cooing and babbling and babbling and babbling until it turns in to real words. You definitely want them to have. That practice in conversation turn-taking even if it's nonsense. Jibberish jargon. Call it, whatever you want. So your baby, especially, but in toddlers, but infants are very active learners. And it's true. It cuts across all aspects of development. But your infants are looking to act. With you, because those first six months, eight months, it's all about you. And you're putting your facial expressions and all this beautiful noise that's coming out of your mouth. And intriguing him to be a communicator. So one of the myths, and I think a lot of people think this and I think unfortunately, a lot of pediatricians, they think of infants as being passive that they're just sitting there waiting to observe, or I'm sorry. Absorb. Whatever you teach them. Well, we want to entice them to pull their weight. Right. To attend. That's active. That's doing something they're focusing in on you. They're engaging with you. They're now going to have vocal play. And they're striving to expand upon that. And if we reinforce that in real time, that's another reason why I discourage screens. There's no engagement. That's totally. Totally. Totally passive. It does not help your baby or your toddler. So, yes, we have some built-in primitive reflexes, some pre-wiring that helps to get the ball rolling, but you mama, you daddy. You grandma. Or nanny or your primary people. We need to nudge them along. So check out the links below. I'll have an outline. I have some YouTubes that you can refer to. I'll have some links to ages and stages and babbling and all of that. Don't forget to subscribe and help me reach more moms just like you, her in it, looking for answers, looking for encouragement. Looking for their own community. people that think alike. Thanks for sharing your precious time with me and remember, eat, talk, play with meaningful intention every single day. God bless you. God bless your family and your little, little babies. See you next week.