When babies are born, one thing is clear to them. They know perfectly well who their mother is: they know her voice and the rhythm and intonation of the language she speaks. But how do babies communicate?

One human ability is the ability to communicate. We are social beings and dependent during the first years of our lives, so it is very important that we begin to understand and communicate with the world around us from birth.

Babies do not know how to speak at birth, and it is a milestone that will not be reached for 8 months to a year, but the fact that they do not know how to speak does not mean that they do not know how to communicate with adults.

In this article, you can read more about breastfed babies’ typical behavior, but here, let’s see the stages of language development:

How do babies communicate up to one and a half months old?

The first stage, which goes from birth to one and a half months old, is called the first “phonatory stage.” Babies produce reflexive, automatic sounds. These are in the form of little noises that sometimes surprise and that they often make while breastfeeding.

During this stage, the most remarkable thing is the use of crying to communicate. Babies do not all cry in the same way; there are variations depending on the language they speak. Babies’ cries have characteristic elements of prosody (that is, rhythm, accent, and intonation) of the native language.

Next comes the smile

Also, from this point onwards, babies start to smile. There are different types of smiles depending on their age, and they evolve. They begin as a reflex; the baby smiles while asleep without relation to anything you have done.
Later on, the active, intentional smile appears, which is also called the social smile. As its name indicates, it’s produced when you do or say something to a baby that causes them to smile.

This is a period of expansion and exploration. They may laugh while breastfeeding, look at you, and try to suckle while smiling, which activates communication between mother and baby.

From 4 to 6 months old

A little later, they reach 4 to 6 months, when the vowel game appears. That is, they begin to say the vowels or at least something that resembles them, which will be joined by consonant sounds. As the mouth musculature is not yet fully developed, the sounds are not precise, but you can recognize them: ga, ba, ta… and so on.

The start of babbling

As babies continue to grow, from approximately 6-7 months to 10 months of age, babbling appears, characterized by the use of long chains of sounds with constants and vowels: such as “atta”, “abba”, “agga” and so on.
This will expand and improve as the child grows. They repeat these syllables constantly as practice. If you repeat these sounds, look at each other face to face, and play conversation, you will help them develop their language skills.

Therefore, it is very important that from the beginning, mothers and carers talk and communicate with their babies; doing so will make it easier for them to learn and establish so-called joint attention.
Joint attention in child development refers to the ability of children to share attention with other people towards an object, event, or experience. This involves the child being able to direct another person’s attention to something that interests them and, in turn, being able to pay attention to what another person is showing or pointing to.

Does how you talk to them matter?

Between 6 and 9 months, there is also the influence of MOTHERESE, which is the mother’s way of addressing the baby: she speaks to her baby at a slower pace and in a higher-pitched tone, repeating simple phrases.
At this moment, the baby is attentive to the mother’s eyes and movements, which favors the beginning of the first protoconversational interactions.
In this video, you can see a wonderful example of a protoconversation.

• There is joint attention
• Respect for each other’s speaking time
• A “dialogue” is established
• Gestures and expressions are used with the hands and arms to point out

From 10 months onwards

From 10 months onwards, the first proto-words (attempts to pronounce meaningful words) appear, which differ from babbling as they are more stable and invented and are usually accompanied by pointing gestures, showing interest in the world, in the objects they contain, and the desire to share this interest with adults.

From this moment on, babies learn words, and a new stage in communication begins in which the mother/carer will often interpret the baby’s words, and both will give them meaning.

As you can see, even though your baby does not yet know how to talk, they know how to and can communicate with you. So don’t hesitate to talk to your little one and pay attention to what they say; besides having a good time together, you are participating in their development and learning.