There is nothing quite like the first moment your baby speaks. When a newborn calls his or her mother or father for the first time, the parents’ faces light up and they are ecstatic, but the path to this point is arduous for the child. Your child must acquire language skills in stages, month after month. This article will provide a timeline of what your baby should be able to say and how their speech develops throughout their formative years. Keep on reading! This is a baby talking timeline to keep track of your baby’s speech development.

1. Birth To 6 Months

Your infant has been attentive to you from birth. Infants often begin to identify their mothers’ voices while still in the womb. So, they learn to correlate distinct noises with their origins. They quickly discover that the household dog barks and that the father’s voice is deeper than the mother’s. Crying is your infant’s first form of communication. Babies cry when they are hungry, want a diaper change, are exhausted, or are in discomfort. Nonetheless, they will rapidly imitate a few noises they often hear. Soon, they will use their mouth, lips, and palate to produce gurgles and lengthy vowel sounds like as “oo,” “aa,” and “ee,” which are predecessors to their first words. Bear in mind that infants as early as four weeks old may differentiate between similar syllables such as “ma” and “na.” And by the age of 2 months, babies may begin connecting certain sounds with particular lip motions (1). Such a remarkable feat!

2. 4 Months To 6 Months

This is a fun period for babies and their parents as your baby’s sight will give way to a lot of babbling. You’ll hear them make all kinds of sounds like the back of the tongue consonant sounds such as “g” and “k” and some interesting lip sounds like “m”, “w”, “p” and “b”. This is also the time when your baby will start to focus particularly on familiar words that they hear often like their own name or the words “mommy” and “daddy”. They even use them as clues to break up a sentence. However, it’s important to keep in mind that around the 4-month mark your baby will only recognize their name as an important word like “Hi” and “Bye”. It is just something that is familiar to them. It isn’t until they reach 6 months that they realize that the name actually refers to them (2).

3. 7 To 12 Months

This is the period when your child’s babbling will finally start to turn into actual words. They will intentionally start to repeat sounds over and over again simply because they find it fascinating. They usually pick sounds that are easy to imitate like “gaga”. At about 9 months they’ll start to understand why gestures are used (2). They will even start to point and grunt to indicate their wants. At about 10 months, they’ll gain more control and combine sounds, even using their own invented words. Babies usually say their first word around the 12-month mark according to experts (3). They can also start to say common greetings like “hello”, “hi” and “bye” or may stick to concrete words like “mama” and “dada”. They may even start to recognize the family animals calling them “doggy” and “kitty” and can name foods that they particularly like, for example, “cookies”, “milk” or “juice”. Your baby, at this stage, is starting to slowly recognize and comprehend a few familiar words, such as names and everyday objects like “bottle” or “crib.” They will also start to hone in on intonation and recognize that a sharp tone means “no” or “stop” (4).

4. 13 To 18 Months

As soon as your baby starts to say that first word, they will try to say more. Their vocabulary builds slowly at first with just a few words per month but they will soon start to catch on. Children seem to prefer nouns, then gradually add verbs and adjectives to their dictionary. And soon just saying “cookie?” will expand to “May I have a cookie?”. They will also start to learn how fun it is to say “no” much to the dismay of their parents. They will start to grasp one step instructions like “put down the ball” or “Don’t throw the food on the ground”.

Listening to your baby start to speak and express themselves can be a very rewarding and fascinating thing for parents to be a part of. This is when their personality starts to come through and you get to know your child. Now that you know the long road your baby takes to these important milestones, you’ll learn to look out for them!