Prince William reportedly said that he thought his son’s first word would be ‘bilby’ after nine-month-old George met one of the big-eared marsupials at an Australian zoo while on tour in the country.
However speech therapist Nicola Lathey put him straight saying in the press last week that Prince George’s first words are more than likely to be ‘daddy, mummy or baby’, and he probably won’t actually say a full word before he reaches his first birthday.
Speaking to the Daily Mail she said: “When Prince William said last week, “I suspect George’s first word might be ‘bilby’, because ‘koala’ is harder to say,” I couldn’t help but smile.
“He may be in line for the throne but, just like all doting parents, William is clearly desperate to hear what his son’s first utterance will be and just can’t help wondering and guessing.
“As a speech and language therapist specialising in children under five, I can confirm that William is right that bilby is easier to say than koala because there is a developmental pattern to the way that babies acquire speech sounds.”
Dr. Cathy Hamer, policy and communities manager at the National Literacy Trust, developed a research review for the National Childbirth Trust on the importance of parent-child communication from birth.
In the review it says: “Babbling (repeating the same sound over and over) begins to emerge at around the age of six months and occurs particularly when they are alone.
“Children generally use gesture to communicate before they use words, typically starting to produce their first gestures, such as, reaching, clapping and waving ‘bye bye’ between nine and 12 months of age. The gestures they produce are predictive of the early stages of spoken language development. The more the child gestures, the earlier they are likely to use language.
“By 12 months babies are typically able to babble strings of sounds and first words, such as ‘ma-ma, ‘da-da’, emerge. Actions, such as gazing and pointing, are starting to become matched and referenced to the actions of those around them and children typically move on to point to objects, to engage with adults, following their lead and initiating shared attention.”
Dr Hamer adds: “Evidence is now both established and growing every year to show that mothers who are attuned to their baby promote their attachment and communication skills. The home learning environment, and in particular the communication environment, for babies and toddlers during the first 24 months influences their language acquisition and their performance at school entry. This in turn is associated with their later educational attainment.
“Research shows that what parents do with their children before they are three years old plays an important part in their development, having more of an effect, even than social background, on a child’s readiness for school. It is important that practitioners and parents are aware of the impact of parent-child communication and, in particular, the influence of the home learning and communication environment in the early years.”
Speech therapist Ms Lathey also says that first words are often the everyday things we refer to, so our babies take on board this constant repetition and eventually begin to say the words themselves.
In the Daily Mail article Professor Leslie Rescorla, Director of the Child Study Institute at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, reported that the most popular 25 words spoken by two-year-olds are: Mummy, Daddy, baby, milk, juice, hello, ball, yes, no, dog, cat, nose, eye, banana, biscuit, car, hot, thank you, bath, shoe, hat, book, all gone, more and bye-bye.
Ms Lathey added : It takes over 500 repetitions of a word for a child to begin to attempt to say it himself and I imagine that George is probably nearing that with dog and, hopefully, if Kate and William are ‘tuned-in’ to his attempts at speaking, they’ll reward him when they hear any sounds that resemble the word dog (it could be anything from ‘doh’ to ‘Dod, dod’ and model the correct word back to him, Yes, dog!’”
From my own experience as a speech and language therapist while interacting with babies and very young children their first words can be unclear so sometimes you think they have said a certain word but aren’t always sure. When they are learning to talk children also like to make animal noises so you’ll often hear sounds such as ‘moo’ and ‘baa baa’ when, for example, reading a story book together. I’ve also noticed that babies really love it when adults sing to them and appear almost mesmerised by the adult who is singing and will often smile and laugh in response.
To read the full article go to: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2610346/Prince-George-cute-genius-Top-speech-therapist-dashes-Prince-Williams-hopes-sons-word-bilby.html#ixzz305u89XfW
For more information on the review for the National Childbirth Trust go to: www.literacytrust.org.uk
Written by Rachel Harrison
Speech and Language Therapist
on behalf of Integrated Treatment Services.
April 2014
