Early Parent-Child Communication

Before a child can accomplish his first words, he must rely on other means of communication. This does not mean, however, that it is not receptive to language. On the contrary, the more often parents talk to their child, the better it is for his start in his own speech career.

Conversation and chit-chat fulfill an important task in human interaction. The American behavioral scientist Robin Dunbar has put forward the thesis that the flow of speech fulfills the function for humans that “grooming” has for the apes related to us: mutual cuddling and grooming. Communication creates community, shapes moods, and expresses feelings.

Newborns are still far from being able to participate in social chatter with their first words; language in the narrower sense does not appear until the second year of life. Until then, however, there is no communication emergency: a baby can very well send signals, express needs, and respond to its parents’ reactions through its motor activity, crying, and eye behavior. The relationship between parent and child develops through this complex body language and spoken language – and embedded in it is the beginning of spoken language.

Talk, Talk, Talk…

When a baby experiences language, it creates social bonds and essential foundations for language development.

What parents can look out for:

1. Talk a lot with your child: about what you are doing, what is on their mind, what they have experienced or are planning – just about everything. Listening to speech awakens curiosity about language. Over time, the baby will become more interested in “chatting along”.
2. In everyday situations such as diapering, feeding, bathing, comment on their actions, name objects – soon the baby will associate certain terms with certain situations.
3. Do not impose “themes” on your child. Follow his interests, for example, when he accompanies an event with his first own sound creations or plays with a rattle.
4. Crawling verses, finger games, naming body parts, rhymes and poems appeal to even the youngest children and help them to practice using language in a playful way.
5. Sing to your child, even if you are not a master singer. The harmonious, melodic, and slow presentation of language encourages them to pick out and imitate elements.

The natural Love Of Language

No acoustic stimulus interests a newborn as much as the human voice. Even in its first hours of life, it shows curiosity, reacting more strongly to female voices. Its facial expression becomes attentive when it hears someone speak, it moves less or even more, and it will soon try to make isolated sounds of its own. It reacts very intensively to the way someone speaks: Is the voice angry or friendly?

The baby is particularly good at following a particular type of speech: Sentences with exaggerated melodic lines, pronounced stresses, many and stretched vowels, and pauses. Dahingeflötete remarks like “Yes, who do we have here? You can kick priiima!” or “Well, you’re really a cute little sparrow, and what a pretty little cap you have!” are neither embarrassing nor silly – they are just right to get the baby’s attention. If the speaker also makes googly eyes and a pointed mouth, the child feels all the more stimulated.

The Root Of Nurse Talk

American anthropologist Dean Falk argues that nurse talk evolved with the upright walk of humans 1.6 million years ago. When the ancestors of modern humans lost their body hair and began to move on two legs, babies could no longer cling to their mothers’ fur. Therefore, mothers had to keep putting their babies down while foraging for food or doing certain activities. A spoken language helped them calm the infants during this time. According to Falk, the mothers who could best keep their children calm had a greater chance of survival. This allowed the soothing singsong of “baby talk” to slowly evolve into a real language. Today, linguists observe this mode of speech in all cultures. It is most pronounced in the U.S. and France, while in Japan the pitch and frequency vary less – perhaps because it is less acceptable to show emotion in these countries.

So Beautiful: The First Smile

When a gentle smile flits across the face of their peacefully slumbering infant in the first few weeks, parents are blown away. However, this reflex, known as the “angel smile,” is not yet voluntary. The first “real” smile appears at around six weeks of age. Whereas previously only the muscles of the lower half of the face were active, now the eyes laugh along with it. If his parents smile back, the baby soon beams more often and more and more: a valuable pre-linguistic form of communication between parent and child emerges.