You do a lot of things with your baby. You give them a baby bath, you encourage them to start taking their first steps, and you also provide them with some baby talk as well.

But, one milestone that parents are eager for their child to achieve is when they start uttering their first words.

Truth be told, our babies actually ‘talk’ to us in a certain way- not what you expected. When they cry, that is actually them trying to communicate to us. The same thing goes when they squirm and other baby activities.

Some parents would say that you should start reading to them some bedtime stories so that they can start uttering words more quickly than usual. But, I would stay with the facts in that babies would require at least 1 year or so for them to start uttering their first few words.

Today, I am going to talk about some fun and exciting ways to get your baby to talk. Just remember that all these activities are by no means forcing your baby to talk to you and it is just a means to help them do so.

Make Conversation

One of the best and fun ways you can get your baby to talk is to actually allow them to listen to you. Making conversation while your baby is around- either by directly talking to them or talking to someone with their presence- can actually help them improve their speech development.

You see, babies are perceptive in that they are trying to analyze the sounds and the voices that they hear. Think of their speech development as a garden where the words are the flowers and continuous conversation is the water that provides sustenance.

There are a variety of ways you can do this. Aside from directly talking to your baby, perhaps you can do karaoke or some singalongs as well.

Total Exposure

Here’s the thing: the more words your baby is exposed to at an early age, the better their speech development becomes. Therefore, you want to expose your baby to a variety of different sounds and speech communication as well.

You can go on a leisurely stroll with your baby and allow them to hear the different sounds that are emitted by their environment.

If you do not believe this to be true, then I highly recommend that you read the seminal study outlined in the 1995 book called, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.

Party Time

Whenever your baby responds to your questions, you can try giving them an incentive for doing so. Perhaps giving them a clap for every time they jive with you could be a good start.

According to Nancy Tarshis, a speech and language expert, if you do more one-on-one conversations with your children and asking them questions like, “what do you see in this picture?”, would always elicit a response.

When they do respond to you- either through nonverbal cues or mixed words- give them an incentive for doing so. These interactions can actually help them to talk as there is always a reward for doing so.