Help! My one year old baby is a chatterbox

Did I hear right? Yes, most babies start babbling between the age of 12 to 24 months; by this age your baby’s cries and laughter is replaced with enthusiastic babbles, buzzes and hums, with his/her vocabulary increasing eeryday. A baby is able to understand and communicate with all, with his/her vocabulary being 200 to 300 words at 2. Let’s address a few questions to understand this phenomenon better.

When a baby starts talking?

Though most babies are fairly consistent in their development stages the exact age when they hit various developmental stages varies from baby to baby; your baby is on the road to talking if he/she babbles, points to a toy and uses simple sentences though full words are not said yet.  

 Your baby between the age of 1 and 2 is chatty; both you and the child are excited at the new way of communicating when your daily interactions become more animated and is less one-sided. At this stage your child will be able to point to body parts, familiarise with people or objects when asked; he/she will also follow simple commands and understand short questions.

It is also at this stage that your child is able to listen and understand simple stories, songs and rhymes and would understand pictures in a book and point at them when they are named; story time goes to a whole new interactive level.

Your child starts chatting more and more with time till he/she starts adding new words to one’s vocabulary each month and starts asking some simple one- or two-word questions. Your baby will also be able to put together simple words and express what he/she wants.  He/she also learns new words by imitating phrases said by people around him/her.

How can we help babies in chatting/talking?  

Language milestones are just a simple guideline; most of us are born with a developmental timetable. Parents should be less concerned with when children attain these milestones and should instead focus on seeing steady developmental progress. It is best understood that communication is more important than articulation.

It is best for parents to foster that simple communication as a grunt or tug of the shirt through chatter to develop language skills. Various ways to develop this skill lies in narrating whatever you are doing or by asking questions.

It would be best here to mention that we should talk to the child as we talk to a person and avoid tailoring your language to your children. Read often to them to develop their communication and language skills.  

Help your baby to talk by asking child choice questions that provide models of the potential target words for the child to imitate; giving choices facilitate the child to imitate and repeat the new words.

As a final note, put aside your worry when you are trying to help your child communicate; focus on the connection. You would also find it helpful to maintain a journal of your child"s language development; this will make you empowered when you note changes and measure progress. It would make you feel that you care for your baby and you are doing something about it.