Raising Kids

This is an exciting time for both you and your baby! Between 3 and 6 months, communication literally explodes. While your little one may not be saying words yet, he or she is actively learning to understand and express themselves. Here’s a glimpse into what you can expect:

Understanding:

Recognises familiar voices:

Your baby will likely turn his or her head towards the sound of your or other familiar adults’ voices.

Tips for supporting and expanding: Talk, sing and chant! Your baby will love and smile at hearing your talking voice, and he or she will not be judging your singing talent! You can sing to your hearts content, perhaps some lovely nursery rhymes you remember from your childhood, or festive songs like Jingle bells !. Or you can simply make up your own little songs and chants alongside all the daily activities you do with or for your baby. You could have a ‘nappy’ song, a ‘let’s get you ready for the park’ song, a ‘I’m hungry’ song or a ‘mummy’s cooking soup’ chant. It does not have to be beautiful but what does help is having little rhymes and rhythms to your singing. Your baby will love it and soak it all up.

Begins to understand ‘no’:

Your baby may pause or stop an action when you say ‘no’ and shake your head at the same time.

Tips for supporting and expanding: I don’t think that at this stage you will have much cause to say ‘no’ to be fair but you could do it playfully and bring it into a ‘no more’ situation so that your baby can make the connection between ‘no’ and ‘finished’ or ‘stop’ or ‘done’. Feeding might be a good opportunity for this one. You could also ask ‘who is it’ when someone is ringing the bell or coming down the stairs, e.g. ‘oh I hear footsteps! Is this daddy??…. no it’s not daddy no it’s grandma! daddy’s gone out!’

Responds to his or her name:

Your baby will start to show a reaction when you call his or her name.

Tips for supporting and expanding: Try calling your baby’s name a lot, and get different family members or visitors calling your baby by his or her name and calling his or her name before saying ‘look’ or ‘peek-a boo’ etc.

Use Baby Signing: You can introduce simple gestures and signs such as ‘milk’ ‘nappy’ ‘sleep’ ‘dog’ ‘cat’ etc to help your baby make the connection between what you are saying and what he or she is seeing.

Expressing:

Cooing, gurgling and babbling:

These sounds are more than just adorable! They are your baby’s way of experimenting with his or her voice and learning to control his or her vocal cords.

You might hear sounds like ‘ba-ba-ba’ or ‘ga-ga-ga’. This is a huge milestone!

Tips for Supporting and expanding: This is a wonderful time to copy your baby’s sounds, celebrate them and show your baby that you are listening to his or her sounds and you are understanding everything he or she is saying! This is also a brilliant time to start reading to your baby. You can read any children’s books you fancy. Again your baby will adore the sound of your voice but increasingly he or she will also look at the pages of a book and try and understand and make connections between the words you say and the pictures he or she sees.

When you hear your child babbling you can try and give it meaning where possible, for example your baby says: ‘ba ba ba’ you could fall into ‘Baa Baa black sheep have you any wool’ song or you could say ‘mmmh banana!’ And show a banana that’s lying on the table. Or you could just say: ‘baba baaaaah you are saying ba! That’s so great!’ Anything goes really at this stage!

Facial expressions:

Your baby uses smiles, frowns, and other facial expressions to communicate his or her emotions (happy, sad, angry).

Tips for supporting and expanding: Try and make interesting and exaggerated facial expressions yourself when you are talking to your baby! Try and be a little bit clowney and really practise showing ‘surprise’ ‘boo’ or a big grin, smile, purse your lips, blow raspberries, open and close your mouth and make funny faces. Copy your baby when you see his or her facial expression change. When your baby looks confused, say ’oh we don’t know what’s happening we are confused!’. When your baby looks happy, say ‘you look soo happy! What a lovely smile!’

Eye contact:

Your baby will start making more and more eye contact with you during interactions.

Tips for supporting and expanding: Try and get ‘face to face’ a lot with your baby. When cuddling your baby look at his or her face and often make sure that it is easy for your baby to see and look at you. If you can lower your position so that your face is in line with your baby that will make things easier for you both.

Good games to play: ‘People-Games’ these are games where you do not need any toys to have a good time. All you need is the other person: Peek-a-boo, bumping your baby up and down on your lap with a song, Row Row Row your boat, tickling games, catch you games etc.

Now we are at 6 months another very exciting stage has arrived: feeding SOLIDS to our baby! More of this in my next post!

When to Seek Guidance:

If you have any concerns about your baby’s communication development, please don’t hesitate to consult with me. Early intervention can make a significant difference and really help your baby making progress.

Remember: Every baby develops at his or her own pace. These are general guidelines, and some babies may reach certain milestones earlier or later than others.

I look forward to seeing you! Get in touch with me via my contact form.

Sonja McGeachie

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Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.