Babbling

One of the first stages infants learn. Usually between five and seven months they start to babble, they produce a large number of sounds of their own creation. The sounds they produce are similar to the sounds they hear. Often they repeat syllables like ‘da da da da da’ or a mix of sounds ‘da da du bi da ma’. Over time the sounds will narrow to just the sounds around them. Hearing children, deaf children, non-deaf children or deaf parents may produce their sounds differently. For example if they are exposed to signing they may use gestures and like language over time they will restrict their gestures.

Two Word

At around 18 to 24 months old, children start to combine two words together. For example Dada chair or Bye-bye goat. These words contain the context words and because there are no grammatical bits in the words we have to interpret it using the context. Two words could indicate possenion or a statement of location like Dadda Chair. But it can be quite tricky to determine what the child is wanting or stating. By this time children are being creative and experimenting with new words and phrase rather than just mimicking.