Fantastic Phonics

Babies are born with an innate desire to communicate. Many years ago it was thought that babies were unable to see at all when they were born. It is now accepted that a new born baby can see images (albeit perhaps blurry shapes initially that sharpen with time) approximately 20cm away. This is about the distance that a mother’s face is from the child when it is feeding in her arms.

With this is in mind, babies enjoy eye-to-eye contact at close quarters. They instinctively try to copy the face they are watching, how else at around 6 weeks old would they know how to smile without having copied it?

As a baby watches a face it will see the persons mouth move into different shapes as they talk, smile or laugh. The baby learns that a moving mouth produces sounds and words that it can hear.

Babies, although they cannot speak, have their own way of communicating a need. Babies have a variety of different cries that as a parent or carer you learn to decipher. There is a shrill high pitched cry of pain (e.g. trapped wind or a toe caught in a blanket awkwardly), a cry of hunger, one for when they are tired, perhaps one for I need a clean nappy and one of ‘I’m bored / lonely come and talk to me please’. All these different cries are a baby’s built in ability to communicate with others without words from the minute they are born.

When talking to a baby, talk to them about ANYTHING - literally ANYTHING, the weather, washing up, talk about a shopping list, what you are passing as you drive along, politics, read them a newspaper article and explain how you are making a cup of tea – anything and everything! It doesn’t even have to make total sense – just the sound of a voice and words will interest a baby, and stimulate them to try to communicate with sounds and eventually words. Perhaps the only exception to talking to a baby incessantly, is during night feeds when you maybe do not want them to be stimulated and too awake, so as they fall back to sleep easily!

When talking to a baby maintain eye-to-eye contact and ask them questions as you would anyone else, but leave pauses for them to learn that there is an opportunity for them to reply. This ‘reply’ may take a few days or weeks to come but they will respond with gurgles, coos and other noises they can make. Using this approach the baby learns the very first skills of conversation – taking turns, listening and replying.

Try not to feel self conscious or silly about talking to a baby about anything, anywhere. Walking down the street pointing things out or pushing them in a supermarket trolley talking about the items you are buying or the lights on the ceiling they can see. It is a very important stage of learning that will build a strong basis for the rest of the child’s language and communication development.

Each of the following sections will give you some ideas of how to talk to and give a baby a rich environment of the use of words and how we use vocabulary.

Case Studies.

Our son realised that when we poked our tongue out at him, that he too could move his tongue to try and mimic us. I found it amazing that he could work out that the pink blob we were moving was the same as his tongue. I believe that babies are far more intelligent than we really give them credit for.

My aunty was reported to have run out of things to say to my cousin when she was a baby and so started reading the side of cereal packet to her so that she continued to hear speech.

My father – who was never quite sure about talking to a baby (he preferred it when children could talk to and have a ‘proper’ conversation with him) found himself talking to our daughter and son about the current economic situation, political debate and many and varied farming practices. All of which they listened intently to!

My (long suffering) husband often will laugh at me for babbling on about anything that pops into my head when pushing a buggy or driving. The number of times that I ended up talking to myself as one or other of my children has fallen asleep in the car or buggy and I have not realised until I have stopped or parked the car! Perhaps I bored them to sleep, but in my opinion at least they had words floating around them as they drifted off to sleep!