Baby Language

My toddler, fast approaching the terrible two’s has now turned our lives into a series of several unpredictable screaming fits. This, along with other demands of modern living, seems to put me on edge half the time. Thankfully, the screaming and temper tantrums are sometimes tempered with cute baby cooing, and humming as he sings along to music and rhymes.Just as his cooing and ‘singing’ indicates pleasure, every now and then he feels the need to scream the house down and demand to be heard as toddlers often do. Unfortunately sometimes I just cannot figure out what the matter is. My mother said I was always a screamer with plenty of tantrums so I had plenty of notice to pray against that in my own child. But my boy is truly his mother’s son! Even now as an adult I sometimes find myself letting out a little scream in frustration or excitement. According to Marshall Klaus’ book The Amazing Newborn, newborn babies have been found to show a kind of “memory” for sounds they have heard prenatally. Research has shown that the development of spoken language in humans begins in the third trimester of pregnancy. The experience of a newborn baby in ones arms after waiting expectantly and sometimes even anxiously for nine months (sometimes more) is nothing short of a miracle. To think that as early as the third month of pregnancy a fetus is already hearing and recognizing sound patterns is almost magical!The evidence suggests a third trimester fetus hears as much as 60% of the sounds around his mother. These studies have shown that newborn babies respond to human voices and to music. This is probably the earliest form of attachment – baby listening to mom listening to music. Hearing is fully evident at birth, and newborn babies show a decided preference for human sounds, leaning towards human sounds, again enabling them to establish attachment to the mother/primary caregiver. It is therefore only rational that where there is hearing, also language will develop. A baby’s cry at birth is the first “spoken language” by infants. It is through crying they attempt to express hunger, pain, fatigue and any other kind of frustration. Attentive parents soon learn to tell and understand the baby’s form of expression. They will hear their baby’s cries and be able to interpret the message the baby is sending. As the baby grows, sometimes as early as 9 months old, he begins to experiment with human speech. He may begin with babbling and cooing noises, which are a universal sound. At this stage babies from all over the world sound alike. With time, he begins to use different pitches and intonation, making sounds that are more like the language he hears around him. At this point, the child may have some idea of what he is trying to say. Eventually, the child is able to produce proper language sounds. He begins to use these sounds in a way that reflects his meaning. His language sounds have evolved to the point that they are useful in communicating concepts and meaning. A child whose language has evolved to this point is released from the frustration of being unable to express himself. The temper tantrums and crying decrease because now, the screaming frustration has turned to language.More talking and less screaming - O how I long for this stage!