How Children Learn to Speak and What to Do If You Suspect Problems

By Barbara Smith Decker

Babies can communicate pleasure or discomfort from the moment they’re born. But they learn to actually talk through interactions with their family and other social contacts. By listening to words and observing people’s actions, children come to understand that words have meaning and they develop a sense of how words fit together.

How can you encourage your child’s speech? Talk to her! Children practice what they hear. Talk about what your child is doing and what she sees. Listen attentively with interest and love to her efforts to speak. Rather than pointing out bloopers, model correct speech. For example, if your child says, “baby wobin,” respond by saying, “Yes, that is a baby robin.”

Try not to push your child to talk, slow down or repeat what he’s saying. Children develop at different rates – and they all need to learn at their own pace.

Learning to speak and to use language follows a natural progression of steps (see the accompanying chart on speech milestones). Proper speech/language development depends on mastering a wide range of listening skills, social cues, comprehension, reasoning skills, adequate attention, memory functions, word knowledge and grammar. And these are all the building blocks to later reading and writing.

Developmentally healthy children respond to sounds, make eye contact and involve others in looking at objects with them, such as a ball or a book.