When did your babies talk and how did they start?

[Bambinobaby]

My LG is 13 months this month and can say ‘ca’ for cat but that’s it although she babbles non-stop. She truley has conversations with us and herself, I just don’t know what she’s saying.

Im obviously not worried about it right now, but I am curious to know how babies start talking? Please ignore the stupid questions but I’ve never been around babies or small children so I don’t know how this works.

We read books daily, and we talk about her wooden puzzle pieces a lot. I describe animals and the sounds they make, as well as describe what we’re doing all the time like ‘we’re going up the stairs’, ‘can you see the birds in the sky’.

So what happens now, does she randomly just start saying things eventually? Will one day she just repeat back a word I’ve said? What sort of ages did your babies start saying words? I have no idea how this all works!

You’re doing all the right things. Lots of talking, reading, and singing. She’ll gradually just pick up words and phrases.

Babies/toddlers only tend to be able to develop one skill at a time. My son talked loads, very early, but couldn’t walk until he was almost 18 months. My daughter was running around at 10 months but didn’t talk much until later on.

I agree, you're doing all the right things to support speech.

In my experience, next she'll start adding more single key words (or rather, approximations of words, like 'ca' for 'cat'). Pronunciation isn't important at all at this age, any sound she uses to consistently mean the same thing is a 'word'.

Usually the first words are a combination of simple nouns (cat, mama, dada, favourite foods or toys, that sort of thing), animal sounds, and things like 'up', 'more', 'no' (maybe 'yes' if you're really lucky). Then they'll start putting two words together ('more milk', 'go park', etc.) and then little sentences (but all that development takes a year or two). Pronunciation is also a work in progress for a couple years yet (and even then some sounds won't be correct yet).

Think mine both had about 20 words at 18 months, but it accelerated after that. They're now 16 and 14 ...

You’ll notice she’ll start consistently making the same sounds for some words (like she does for cat).

”More” was one of my DS first words.

It was quite slow, felt like a long time when he only had 2 or 3 consistent words. And every new word was noticeable. Then it got to a point where it rapidly accelerated and he could say a new word after hearing it just a few times... I forget when.. maybe closer to 2.

My 13 month old has just started coming out with a few random words. Her absolute favourite thing to say though is row row row, because of the row your boat song we sing with her, and she knows when she says that we will sing the song. Also says 'heh' and pats her head to ask us to sing heads shoulders knees and toes. So I'm no expert but would recommend singing!

She also often says 'peez' when she wants something because we kept saying please every time she reached for things

At about 11 months my daughter suddenly said “sitch” for switch when she heard me click the light on. I was amazed.

After that she took off, however she was a very late walker.

At 3yrs and 10 months she started kindergarten. I was worried she wasn’t reading by 5 then whoosh, she took off with that too.

Don’t worry mum. Everything in the fullness of time.

You're doing everything right. They just pick it up eventually and sometimes have their own words for things for a bit. My nearly 2 year old goes mental if we call peas peas, they MUST be balls!

Be prepared for the language to look like it is suddenly developed really well and then appears to go backwards.

So she might start to say simple phrases, eg "cat went out" and then that changes to, "cat goed out" this is the way children develop language.

The first phrase is grammatically correct, but the 'goed' is the child applying 'ed' endings to verbs in the past tense.

DS will be 13 months tomorrow and he says dada and hi at the moment. He will also shake his head if he hears no but doesn't actually say it yet.

The babbling, ca for cat etc sounds perfect. Don't worry!

DD is a similar age and I’m finding the language development fascinating. Like your little one, she definitely has full conversations with such expression and intonation in her voice, just in babble. I’m amazed at all the different sounds she comes out with.

She makes lots of mamamama and dadadada sounds. She has said ‘buh-bye’ a couple of times. If we say no she shakes her head and nods when we say yes, very cute.

We do lots of narrating our day to her and singing.

My son was talking very early, and is very clearly spoken with a big vocab. I did a running commentary all the time & spoke to him since birth. He didn’t walk until much later, though.

First DS said bugger all for so long that I got worried. To reassure me my parents constantly told me that Winston Churchill story (WC was non-verbal until a very late age and apparently the upshot was he was so well attended to that he only eventually spoke (in perfect sentences) when there was something infant WC felt needed corrected). Anyway, that was balls and DS did turn out to have hearing issues.

I did raise it with the HV when he was two (he was quite quiet generally, didn’t do much babbling) but they weren’t overly interested and just said a lot of toddlers weren’t clear speakers. It got noticed at nursery and eventually investigated. Is now almost finished secondary and sounds like a continuity announcer, other adults frequently comment on how well-spoken he is. Maybe something to do with the early effort in enunciating, I don’t know.

By contrast, DD didn’t babble either, just started going rarrrraarrrrarrarrrrr like Animal from the Muppets at about nine months. By eighteen months was speaking in sentences. She could also whistle, weirdly, although she lost the knack as she got older.

Your DS sounds like he’s doing all the right stuff at the right age, clearly they’re all very different 🤣

*DD and she, sorry!

My DD did exactly the same with "row row row"... she could say that before "mummy"! And EIEIO was the other one

I agree kids tend to be better at either walking or talking. My DD was a brilliant talker could say Dad, Nan, car, cat, ma, dub a dee (cup of tea) every time she saw me with a cup of tea, and dog all by 1 year. She couldn't walk until 14 months though. DS barely said a word just Dada, and Day for my sister Kaye. He could run by 10 1/2 months though. DS2 said Mummum most of the time and couldn't say Dad until 13 months. Ha he's still a bit of a Mummy's boy as an adult.

Both of mine said 'Hello' as their first word. In various pitches and in response to absolutely everything for a while 😆

13 Months and pretty much saying cat seems good to me! She's just warming up, all the rest will start to follow now (even if she does call dogs and birds 'cat' for a while too! ☺️)

My oldest had a tongue tie that I didn't know about but the midwives did and did nothing about, so his speech was affected/delayed for years. He ended up having to get a speech therapist to help him when he was four. He's fine now, but couldn't speak much at all for years.

Son was talking very early but walked fully at 16 months. All different

My DD started around the same age and all she could say was 'peppa' 🤦🏼‍♀️ then mama came for a few months. Then at around 16/17mo she started having conversations with herself thinking we could understand and you could see how frustrated she was getting that we couldn't understand her. She then suddenly within the space of about a week started with words you could understand it's crazy how quick their words suddenly come! She's now 20mo and can put 3/5 words together as a sentence and is a massive lover of repeating everything I say 😂 it sounds like you're doing everything I was doing with DD and with her it just kinda came from one/two words to loads within about a week! My DD now never shuts up and even chats to herself while asleep. Not sure if it's helped but DD is a massive lover of songs so the cocomelon and bebefinn on Netflix and toddler songs stuff on prime. She now sings along which is super cute and 100% makes up for the times where I think wow will you ever be quiet for more than 30seconds?! Haha.

My 2 year old doesn’t say a word and doesn’t walk or play - she’s very happy and draws circles all day. The health visitor is so blasé ‘she’ll be alright’ but I worry. My son was really advanced, I was thinking I’d better start applying to Mensa but then he regressed massively and has several diagnosis’ but apparently dd is too young to have any support with anything and ‘she’ll be alright’ anyway 🙈

We didn't get much more than babbling and random sounds out of Dts until just before they were two. They did seem to be able to communicate with each other.

They turned two when we were on holiday and when we came back they were talking in complete sentences and haven't stopped for a second since

Like @idontlikealdi my dd just babbled until one day at 18 months she pointed at a duck and said duck! We all laughed and it's such a funny good memory. Not stopped since and we invented "long story short" in her honour 😂

My dd talked really early but my 18m old can only really say 'teeth' and can woof like a dog 🤷‍♀️

I found that teaching my kids to point really helped with their language as they then linked sounds with specific words.

Once they could point we knew their understanding was there (we could
ask them Eg “where is the cat” in a book and they would point to the cat, then over time they’d start to say cat.