From the moment your baby is born, he is learning to communicate. Observing the world around him and listening to your speech is helping him establish the foundation of what will eventually be a pretty large vocabulary. Although it may seem like you're speaking two different languages now, you'll eventually begin to understand each other and even be able to engage in conversation. If what your baby is saying is finally start to make a little sense, you may be wondering, how does a baby know when to babble?
To an adult with a vocabulary of thousands of words, learning to talk may seem like no big deal, but this process is no small feat. In the beginning, crying is your baby's only form of communication. But, as Baby Center mentioned,the cries evolve into different combinations of sounds at 4 months — i.e. babbling — or until he eventually speaks his first words around 6 months. According to Babble, the vocal tract is controlled by 80 muscles, and your baby will need to work to control those muscles and his breath in order to produce speech.
While baby is trying to get the hang of the whole talking thing, the babble will sound like adorable gibberish to you. But you should know that your baby is working hard to imitate the sounds he hears from you and eventually be able to say something you'll actually understand. As Today's Parent noted, babies learn how to make words by relying on feedback from their caregivers. So if you respond to their calls for "mama," they'll learn to use the word to identify you.
It's never to early to help your baby begin to babble. You can help your baby's language development by reading together and talking to her as much as possible. By describing your daily actions, you will help her associate the appropriate words with actions and objects. Once she starts talking, it will be a whole lot easier to understand what she needs. Who am I kidding? You'll never be able to understand her.
