Babbling

Babbling is the preliminary stage of speaking. After the first form of communication, screaming, the baby learns to string vowels and consonants together. This creates babbling, which adults find cute and which is essential to forming words.

What is the babbling?

Regardless of whether a baby is hungry, thirsty, full of diapers or longs to be close, at first it only communicates by screaming. Only with increasing social, emotional and spiritual development does the baby learn words and descriptions of everything that it sees, hears, feels and thinks and how to use these words.

Long before the first spoken word, a baby has learned the rules of language and the use of the language just like an adult. Speech is linked to hearing. The child first learns by listening to what words sound like and later how sentences are structured.

Language comprehension is already present in the womb. The baby already adjusts to the sound of the mother's voice and its heartbeat.

First of all, the baby makes noises with the tongue, lips, roof of the mouth and the first teeth. After the first "Oohs" and "Aahs" in the babbling phase, the babbling begins.

The baby's first spoken word can be heard from around the fourth month and is an event for all family members. But before then it has to go through important linguistic development stages. It should be able to speak understandably by the age of two at the latest.

Function & task

The child's communication begins with screaming and crying. Soon the baby is differentiating different pitches. This ranges from a slight whimper to a loud scream. Over time it develops an extensive repertoire of different sounds: it coos, sighs, chuckles and giggles.

From about the fourth week onwards, it can distinguish between similar sounding syllables such as “la” and “ma”. From the fourth month it begins to babble, connecting consonants and vowels together. When babbling, the baby repeats the connected vowels and consonants several times in a row.

The child tries to imitate the language that surrounds them. The babbling is therefore not the same for all babies, but sounds different depending on nationality and language.

With these "language exercises" the infant trains many muscles and learns to refine movements, from which his speech ultimately develops. Over time, it controls its larynx muscles better and better, which has an impact on the differentiated sound formation.

For the child themselves, learning to speak is a great journey of discovery. The more he is encouraged by his surroundings, the more intensely he wants to practice. After the vowels, the baby begins to form silver and speaks the first nasal consonants (B, D, T, P).

The baby wants to express something and mainly uses the tone of voice. It is still in the proto-language, a prototype of the actual language. At this stage, language is like a playground. For fun the baby just tries out all the notes. If it receives a lot of encouragement, it comes into contact with its environment more often. Words and the rhythm of speech develop from this.

Language is collaborative action. It is therefore important for healthy language development that parents respond to your baby's voice exercises as often as possible. Your speech has a decisive influence on the language development of your child.

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Illnesses & ailments

When speaking, the nerve cells in the language center of the brain are connected. Like a computer network, it is becoming more and more powerful. In order to stimulate the formation of neural connections, parents should keep talking to their children for the whole day if possible. Most importantly, they should repeat, confirm, and offer new words what their baby has said. If this crucial step in language development is hindered or does not take place at all, it can lead to a language disorder.

There are linguistic early starters and late bloomers, so that parents should not panic if there are supposed delays. Mostly they are not a cause for concern. The language development of many children only lags behind because they are busy with other learning tasks.

A language development disorder is only spoken of if the child does not react to noises in the first year of life or does not make contact with the parents. If you remain silent even though the babbling phase should have started, a visit to the doctor is appropriate. This phase is essential for normal language development.

If the child is one year old and still cannot understand simple prompts and cannot speak the first few words, if there are no attempts to imitate them, then there is usually a language development disorder. There are many reasons for this. On the one hand, genetic reasons come into consideration, but there can also be organic and neurological causes.

Speech development disorders occur, for example, in connection with hearing loss, deafness or an intellectual disability. Psychological limitations can also inhibit linguistic development.

However, the reason can also be the lack of linguistic stimulation. The adults therefore have to talk to their child over and over again, this is the only way to develop the joy of speaking and it has the opportunity to imitate, because the baby needs incentives to speak.

Speech therapists can treat a speech development disorder. In a playful way, the speech therapist tries to arouse the joy of speaking in the child. Targeted exercises improve listening, concentration, oral motor skills and the ability to learn.

If a speech development disorder has been diagnosed, the child does not have to struggle with it all of their life. Speech therapy treatments are so mature today that after a certain period of time there is no longer any deficit.