The baby's first words usually appear between 10 and 13 months of age, and are mostly single words. But did you know that it is important that you have conversations with your baby even if he still cannot speak or say prayers?
A recent study found that talking to babies from their first years of life can bring great benefits in their long-term development.
The study
Published in the journal Pediatrics, the study analyzed the impact it had on children to listen and talk with their parents during their second year of life, finding that those who spent more time doing it had better language skills and higher levels of IQ a decade later, compared to those to whom they did not respond.
To reach this conclusion, more than 9,000 hours of daily recordings of 146 children between two months and four years of age were analyzed, as well as their interactions with their parents. Subsequently, being between nine and 14 years old, they were tested to measure their cognitive and language skills.
The audio recordings were made for six months, through a device placed in the clothes worn by the children, and that stored the conversations for a whole day. The software they used was programmed to count the vocalizations of children and the verbal stimulation they received from their mothers and fathers.
Be measured interactions between parents and children, such as those in which the father or mother said something and the child responded with a word, babble or sound within the next five seconds, as well as those in which the baby emitted some vocalization and the parents responded within those five seconds .
According to the results, conversing frequently during the first years of life, it helped them gain verbal understanding up to 27% higher ten years later.
It is concluded that speech and verbal interaction from an early age, especially between 18 and 24 months of age, can predict and improve cognitive and language outcomes when children are older.
Talk to the baby even if you don't talk yet
These results show and remind us of the importance of conversing with our children from an early age, even since they are babies and still do not speak, because doing so helps improve their cognitive and language development. They may think that it doesn't make much sense to talk to them if they still don't, but it was shown a few years ago that babies "talk" in their mind, even before they can pronounce their first words.
And how can we talk to the baby? One of the easiest ways to start is explaining everything we do. For example, at bath time we can tell you everything we do: "Now, I'm going to drink some water to wet your body and then lather you", and continue to narrate it in a natural way, even asking simple questions like"Do you like water?".
At the beginning the conversations will be unilateral, but with the passage of time little by little they can begin to answer us, with small words or gestures. And when this happens, it is important to correspond what they tell us, even if they are only babbling or sounds.
So now you know, start talking to your baby from his first years of lifeWell, not only will you stimulate their language, but this will give you long-term development benefits.
