What are some things I can do to encourage speech and language development?
BIRTH to 2 YEARS • Encourage your baby to make vowel-like and consonant-vowel sounds such as ma, da, and ba • Reinforce attempts by maintaining eye contact, responding with speech, and imitating vocalizations using different patterns and emphasis. For example, raise the pitch of your voice to indicate a question. • Imitate your babys laughter and facial expressions. • Teach your baby to imitate your actions, including clapping your hands, throwing kisses, and playing finger games such as pat-a-cake, peek-a-boo, and the itsy-bitsy-spider. • Talk as you bathe, feed, and dress your baby. Talk about what you are doing, where you are going, what you will do when you arrive, and who and what you will see. • Identify colors. • Count items. • Use gestures such as waving goodbye to help convey meaning. • Introduce animal sounds to associate a sounds with a specific meaning: The doggie says woof-woof. • Acknowledge the attempt to communicate. • Expand on single words your baby uses: Here is mama
