The Miracle of Language: Jeri’s First Intentional Language!

It happened when she was 7 months old! Now she’s a bit over 9 months already!! We were visiting our granddaughter in Atlanta–another miracle in and of itself during the pandemic since she lives so far away. Let’s just say I could get a job as a truck driver given all the miles I’ve driven over the past 9 months!!

When I visit my granddaughter, I spend time with her doing what all grandmothers do: cuddling, tickling, reading, playing with favorite toys, feeding her bottles, but I really make a point of trying to develop her oral language skills. She watches everyone and everything with every passing day.  So when I visited in early March, she was babbling away–mostly open mouthed vowel sounds like /ah/, /ee/, etc. Surprisingly, she could also babble using her tongue to say /lah/!  I say surprisingly since the liquid /l/ sound is typically one of the final consonant sounds children learn to produce.  So, stuck in the house on a dreary, wet day, I began to have her look at me while I made various consonant sounds.  Lo and behold, she seemed to seize onto the /bah/!  

We were sitting at the dinner table when I requested Alexa to play the song “Barbara Ann”-Beach Boys version.  I joined in with the famous ‘Ba, Ba, Ba, Baba Ran’ chorus; soon enough, all 4 adults joined in—and guess who talked back??? Yup, our baby girl!!  Her mom gleefully exclaimed, “That’s Jeri’s first intentional language!” That’s the miracle of language.

“That’s Jeri’s first intentional language!”

Jeri’s Mom

A day later, 5 of us sat out on the screened in porch–me, my daughter-in-law (her mom), Baby Jeri, and my daughter (Jeri’s aunt) on FaceTime. We began to say, “Ba Ba Ba” to each other…and then initiated what I call a ‘Ba Ba Conversation’ with each other, mimicking a real conversation using length, pitch, and cadence using only those syllables. We all took turns with an introduction to each person’s name, and when it was Jeri’s turn, what do you think happened??? You guessed it–she took her turn in the conversation. It was such a wonderful moment–again a miracle of language. I am sad to say that I was unable to video this moment since FaceTime occupied my phone, so you will have to believe me on this one, which went on for about 3 rounds of 5 people taking turns. The formal word for this is discourse.

Jeri has responded to her name since around that time and continues to babble away. Her mom and I spent a good deal of time last week consciously working on a very important word: “Mama”!!!  I kept trying to get Jeri to mimic the English phoneme (sound) /m/ all week long to no avail. Another miracle of human language: it’s a continuum and each baby develops somewhat at their own pace within that continuum. It will happen soon enough.  

The National Institutes of Health note that the human brain develops most intensively in terms of the acquisition of speech and language from birth to age three. That said, it is vital that babies are constantly exposed to sounds, speech sounds and language, and sights from their environments.  The miracle of it all is that babies are able to recognize the sounds that comprise their native language by six months of age! Yet another miracle of human language.The National Association for the Education of Young Children suggests parents talk as much as they can to their babies, and even mimic the sounds and babbles babies make. It’s a great idea to add to what babies say in addition to mimicking them. Be sure your baby is watching your mouth as you speak and make various sounds–this is more important than you might think.

While I am on the topic of babies watching their parents’/caretakers’ mouths, continuing this practice as your child grows is a great habit to get into–even toddlers and preschoolers need this reinforcement. Here’s a quick tip: if your child makes an error when speaking, it’s a good idea to model the correction and ask your child to “say ____.” That said, suggest you don’t overdo it…once is enough, but do it every time or nearly every time. Repetition is the name of this game.

In my work with children with dyslexia (and some with speech/language disorders), I have found that some children continue to have difficulty articulating certain sounds.  This spills over into literacy development for both reading and spelling.  I shall never forget one young man in the fifth grade who continued to read the words ‘with’ as ‘wif’, ‘bath’ as ‘baf’, etc. as I modeled his reading lesson one afternoon.  I gave him a handheld mirror while describing and demonstrating the differences between the /f/ (teeth touching bottom lip while allowing air to flow) and the /th/ (tongue between and protruding out between upper and lower teeth while allowing air to flow). His response: “No one ever showed me that or told me about that before.”  I think he learned a lot that day in school. I hope it stuck!