Begins to babble

After producing lots of single-syllable sounds, Your Child now combines sounds and babble.

Babbling is Your Child’s attempt to combine sounds together without any significant meaning. It is a huge step in speech learning. You may hear multiple “ma-mas” and “da-das” during this stage, but chances are, those sounds are just coincidental and Your Child hasn’t figured out their meanings yet.

How to support this development
Keep talking to Your Child in parentese and allow your little one to observe your mouth movements when you speak — for language development, seeing the other person speak is as important as hearing them.

Have pretend conversations by smiling while copying the sounds your baby makes. Wait for your little one to make another sound and then respond with that same sound. You can also sing songs with contrasting high and low notes to the little one.

Note: All children develop differently and at their own pace. For children born preterm, the referred timeframe for achieving the various developmental milestones might be incorrect.

Source: The information and graphs about when children reach specific milestones are taken from various sources, including the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Denver Developmental Screening Test, and the State Institute of Early Childhood Research, Germany (IFP).