How To Encourage Babbling
Last Updated: August 29, 2024
Babbling is an important part of language development that can help predict when a child will say their first words.
If your baby babbles a lot, this can be exciting—a sign that their language development is on track and that their first words are coming!
But if they’re not? You might be worried or wondering if you should be doing more with them at home.
Either way, we’ve got you. In this post, we’ll briefly explain how and when babbling starts and help you understand if your baby is on the right track. Then, share speech therapist-approved tips to help you encourage your baby to babble more.
FREE BABY MILESTONES CHECKLIST
Because babbling is such an important “pre-talking skill” or “milestone”, tracking its development and encouraging your baby’s babbling progress is a great idea. Our free baby milestones checklist makes tracking easy so we highly recommend downloading a copy. Pair it with the tips in this post, and you’ll have everything you need to encourage babbling at home.
When do babies typically babble?
From birth to four months, babies typically stick to using a few standard sounds: cries, grunts, squeaks, and coos (which are vowel sounds).
Then, at around five to ten months old, they start to pair consonant sounds with vowel sounds—also known as babbling. Often, babbling sounds like “Bababa,” “Mumumum,” or “Didididi”.
Related: when do babies start babbling? breaking down the babbling milestone
BABBLING IS AN IMPORTANT PRE-TALKING MILESTONE
Babbling is a rich and complex skill for babies. It’s a skill they must develop before they can begin to talk. Sometimes, your baby will babble sounds that seem completely random. But pay close attention! You may notice that they’re trying very intentionally to communicate with you.
HOW TO ENCOURAGE BABBLING
By now, you’re probably starting to realize just how rich and important a skill like babbling is for babies! It’s so much more than a cute little noise—it’s a baby talking milestone and a big step toward speaking, so it’s something to look out for and encourage.
Here are some ways you can gently encourage your baby to babble more:
#1 PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES TO BABBLE
This might sound obvious, but it’s not. If you want your baby to babble more, they need more opportunities! One way to do this is through mirror play. Just place your baby and yourself in front of a mirror. Then, try singing a song, making funny faces, or playing peek-a-boo. We also love imitation and face-to-face reading and talking. (More on these strategies below.)
#2 GET FACE-TO-FACE
Have you heard of mirror neurons? They’re a certain type of cell within our brains that mirror what we see those around us doing. And because babies are born with these cells, they’re born with the ability to copy us! (Pretty amazing, isn’t it?)
When your baby sees you babbling and communicating with them, their mirror neurons will activate, and they’ll want to try and copy you. Take advantage of this by spending lots of time face-to-face with your baby.
Put it in action: It’s easy to spend time face-to-face when you’re feeding your baby, changing their diaper, or dressing them, so these are the perfect opportunities to encourage babbling! You can also kneel or lay down to join them while they play on the floor, sit across from them at the table when they start to eat solids or try reading books to them while facing them.
#3 IMITATE YOUR BABY’S VOCALIZATIONS
As we mentioned above, imitation is an important part of language learning. But while inspiring them to imitate you matters a lot, your baby only truly learns the concept of imitation by seeing you imitate them.
When you imitate your baby, they notice. They think “Hey, she just did what I did! That’s fun!” And then they’re more likely to do it again. This is how the back-and-forth nature of communication between you and your baby begins.
#4 USE PARENTESE
This one might feel silly... but if you want to encourage your baby to babble, babble to your baby!
We recommend using real words when talking with your baby—but include some fun sound play too. Babies love watching your face when you babble and talk. And doing this is a way to play with them. (Play doesn’t just involve toys!)
Put it in action: Try babbling to your baby, and then PAUSE to give them a turn.
#5 HAVE FUN!
Make kissy faces, smack your lips, blow raspberries, and make other fun sounds! Your baby will be fascinated just by watching your face, which can encourage them to make sounds as well. And don’t forget to sing to your baby, too! There are so many benefits to singing with your child.
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT BABBLING
Before we duck out, we thought we’d hit you with some fun facts about it. Juuuuust in case you want to drop some super-cool baby knowledge during your next mom group meetup! ;)
DID YOU KNOW?
The way your baby babbles will be influenced by their language environment and the language and culture they’re surrounded by. That means a baby born in Japan with Japanese-speaking parents will babble with sounds from the Japanese language. This would sound much different than the babbling from a baby born to Russian-speaking parents!
The sounds you hear in your baby’s babbling (p, b, m, d, etc.) will likely be the main consonants in their first words.
Babies exposed to multiple languages babble just as much as babies who only hear one language.
(Okay, we know we’re speech therapists so we might be a little biased…but so cool right?!)
IF YOUR BABY ISN’T BABBLING YET…
Take heart! There is a huge range for when babbling develops. Anywhere between four and nine months is common. (That’s five out of the first 12 months of life, which is big!)
Even if it turns out that your baby does need speech therapy, we like to say that as parents, you are never to blame. You did nothing wrong! But, on the flip side, there’s so much you can do to support them going forward from home.
Our advice: be kind to yourself and trust your gut. If you think your baby may be behind on milestones, speak to your pediatrician. And don’t get defeated, okay? Stay in the game by learning to encourage babbling (and any other skills required) from home.
FREE DOWNLOAD: SONGS THAT ENCOURAGE BABBLING
We created Wee Talkers to teach parents of babies—parents like you!—how to support your baby at home. Because you are truly the best person for the job.
Whether you’re concerned or being proactive, we recommend reading, singing, playing, and talking together at home whenever possible. And our free baby song video will be just the thing to help get you started!
This free video shows us singing with our babies at home. You’ll see exactly what it looks like when we do it so you can follow and copy what we do!
ABOUT WEE TALKERS
Run by speech-language pathologists Carly Tulloch and Katie Sterbenz, Wee Talkers teaches parents how to help their children communicate more—because we know you’re the best ones for the job! Our simple, kid-friendly tips help you connect and communicate with your child even more each day. So you can encourage language and literacy development from home, without adding tons to your plate.
Katie is a pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist with a Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), licensed in Arizona. She holds a Master’s degree from Arizona State University and has over 13 years of experience in early intervention, working with kids ages 0-5 in hospitals, clinics, schools, and private practice settings.
Carly is a pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist with a Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), licensed in British Columbia. She holds a Master’s degree from California State University (Long Beach) and has over 15 years of experience working with kids ages 0-5. Carly specializes in early intervention, holds additional certifications from PROMPT (levels 1 and 2), and has completed Hanen’s It Takes Two To Talk and More Than Words training programs.
References:
McGillion, M., Herbert, J.S., Pine, J., Vihman, M., dePaolis, R., Keren-Portnoy, T., & Matthews, D. (2017). What Paves the Way to Conventional Language? The Predictive Value of Babble, Pointing, and Socioeconomic Status. Child Development, 88(1), 156-166.