Help! My little one has no words.

Jan 17

If you aren’t hearing your little one make consonant sounds or words, or they aren’t trying to imitate you orally- that can send you into a PANIC.

Especially since your best friend’s sister’s baby said his first word at 6 MONTHS (it’s true, she SWEARS it). But on the other hand, your Aunt Susie said that your cousin Michelle didn’t talk until she was FOUR and now she’s a neurosurgeon, so it’s FINE! (Um, ok Aunt Susie).

Ultimately, I am going to recommend that if you are concerned about your child’s development, you should talk to a pediatrician and a speech-language pathologist. BUT that doesn’t mean you can’t do something about it in the meantime!

First, let’s get an idea of what is expected at different ages. In terms of expressive, oral language, your child should:

Have early consonant sounds that are produced randomly (e.g., “ba, ma, ga”) around 6 months of age
Start to reciprocate sounds directed at them and attempt to imitate early sounds around 6-9 months of age (e.g., attempting to imitate raspberries, “ba” sound)
Produce and try to imitate reduplicated strings of babbles (e.g., “ba-ba-ba, ya-ya-ya”) around 9-10 months of age
Produce long strings of various babble sounds that sound like speech (e.g., “ba-ya-ya, da-da-ma) around 10-12 months of age
Produce and imitate single words or word approximations (e.g., “ba” for “ball) around 12-14 months of age
Have at least 1 true consistent and independent word by the end of 12 months of age

Imitation is the first step to expression. Let’s read that again:

Imitation is the first step to expression.

If your little one is not imitating you orally, we need to find something that they will imitate to work up to imitation of sounds. Where should we start?

With gross motor skills. Prompt your little one to imitate big body movements (that are appropriate for their level): jumping, dancing, stomping feet, crawling to a certain item.

Then move to fine motor skills: clapping, turning a page in a book, putting a block in a shape sorter, pointing.

Then to oral motor skills: blowing horns/bubbles, blowing raspberries, making funny faces, sticking out tongue.

Then to speech: animal noises, elongated vowels (“oooooo”), soft sounds like “shhhh” and loud sounds like “ahhhhh!”

Starting with bigger, easier body movements teaches your little one the expectations of imitating, and then once they understand the expectation, you can move to more complex movements (AKA speech!)

Remember to implement the pause method (CLICK HERE for that blog), as imitation will only work well with a PAUSE!

If you have a question about your child’s language development, don’t be shy! Email me or fill out a contact form and we can chat!