Conversations with your newborn – babies understand more than you think

Forget goo goo ga ga, to encourage your baby to be a fast and confident talker, you need to ditch the baby talk and start conversations – right from the start.

We know that babies can make our the sound of voices before they’re even born – but now a new book suggests they understand more than we’d ever thought.

“You should start talking to babies as soon as they are born,” says Tracey Blake, author of a new guide to communicating with young children, Small Talk.
 
Blake says her children are more confident and chatty as a result of the techniques in the book - and says parents can see a result “within days”.

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Blake, a British journalist and mother of two, wrote the book with speech therapist Nicola Lathey - and says the Small Talk techniques mean that she and her daughter, Minnie, had “conversations” at when the tot was just ten weeks.  She adds that babies are "wired" to respond to language far earlier than most people imagine.
 
“They can actually hear you in utero - your voice calms them down,” says Blake. “From 26 weeks on, their cry is affected by the sounds of your speech. German babies, French babies and Italian babies all sound different.”

 
The key, Blake says, is for parents to use simple language, describing what they see, rather than "quizzing" children - and leaving gaps so that children have a chance to respond.
 
Blake, who also blogs about parenting, says that four to 10 weeks is the perfect time to start “conversations” with your baby.
 
“This isn’t pushy parenting - if you follow the techniques, it all just clicks into place sooner,” says Blake, “At four or ten weeks, when the “Waaah” sound starts turning into “Ooh, eeh and aah”, that’s the stage when you start having a conversation.”

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The key is to give children a “turn” talking - leaving a gap and looking at them expectantly, says Blake. Rather than speaking in sentences, parents should use simple words - describing what they see, or sounds around them. If a child is playing with building blocks, for instance, parents can say, “bang, bang, bang” rather than "build me a tower!".
 
“The really important thing is to keep eye contact,” says Blake. “Leave a gap, and they say something in response, and it just goes back and forth. My speech therapist friend, Nicola, had a conversation with my daughter Minnie when she was 10 weeks old - when everyone else was pretty much ignoring the baby.”
Blake says her techniques can yield results in days.

 
“It’s easy to talk at your children, rather than to them,” Blake says, “Take an interest - don’t boss them about. You should say what you see - very literally. If they’re climbing the stairs, say, “Up” and point. That way the sign and the word go together. The fact that you're interested builds confidence. It’s very rewarding, after a couple of days, to find them responding to you.”
 
Small Talk: Simple ways to boost your child's speech and language development from birth

by Nicola Lathey and Tracey Blake, published by Macmillan, is £8.31 from Amazon.

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