Speech and Language Development Building Skills at Home Talking
and reading to your baby and, later, encouraging conversation
are vital contributions to your child's speech and language
development. The size of a 2-year-old's vocabulary is directly
related to how much parents and other caregivers have spoken to
that child from infancy. Newborn babies are programmed to learn,
and most parents are naturally excellent language teachers. The
kinds of interactions and conversations parents normally engage
in with their children, from "baby talk" to repeating words,
happen to be perfect language lessons. Talking, reading,
listening, and responding to babies and young children usually
are all that is needed to help them learn to talk. Teaching sign
language to babies 6 months or older could also help them in
several ways. Signing gives babies a way to express their wants
and needs when they can't talk. And it gives you another way to
bond with your child. Using sign language has not been shown to
get in the way of l