How to Promote Babbling with your 6 Month Old
Should my baby be babbling at 6 months?
6 months may sound early, but between 6-7 months is actually when we typically do see babbling begin to emerge. There will still be a lot of silly sounds and vocal play, but don’t be surprised if those vowel sounds your baby is making start to have consonants in front of them! Babies typically produce reduplicated babbling first, which means that they begin to repeat syllables of one vowel + one consonant sound (Lanza & Flahive, 2008).
Reduplicated babbling: /ma ma ma/ , /ba ba ba/
This is the type of babbling we would expect to see emerging around 6-7 months. Variegated babbling, or combining different syllables, starts to emerge around 10 months (Lanza & Flahive, 2008).
Variegated Babbling: /mabida/
What sounds should my 6 month old make?
The earliest developing sounds we typically hear in babbling are /p, b, m/. These are called bilabial sounds, because you produce these sounds by using both lips. You may also hear other sounds such as /d/ or /t/. Especially when they begin to produce those high frequency words like “dada!”
How can I get my 6 month old to babble?
For more specific ways on how to encourage your child with babbling, see this post! An activity that I have done with babies who are not babbling yet in therapy and something I am doing with my own son to encourage his babbling is making and using a box of toys that encourage babbling.
This is a box filled with fun and engaging toys that I use to help encourage babbling. Spoiler: These are all toys that start with /p, b/, or /m/ but you could do this with any sound!
Sometimes I separate them by sound and other times I combine them all together depending on the child’s specific’s needs.
You want your box to fun! You can do something brightly colored, or you can also use wrapping paper to make the box more visually engaging. The box I like to use has fun black and white wrapping paper – babies love those high contrast colors!
Here are some different toys/items I’ve included in my box just from what we had around the house:
P
puppy
pumpkin
bubbles (“pop”)
B
ball
book
bottle
bib
bunny
truck (“beep”)
bubbles
sheep (“baa”)
M
monkey
cow (moo)
mirror (can use “mirror” or “me!”)
music
Now for the fun part – play with your baby! Pull out each item, label it, and babble to them!
Example: “Wow, here are some bubbles! (Blow bubbles) buh-buh-buh-buh bubbles!”
“Look, I found a cow! Cow says “moo.” Muh-muh-muh (or) moo-moo-moo”
“The bubbles are popping! They go pop! pa-pa-pa-pa pop!“
Any time you are playing with something or making sounds in your baby’s face, they will most likely think you are the most interesting thing ever and want to engage with you. This early back-and-forth that you develop with them is so reinforcing and helps to build those early communication skills.
There’s all sorts of ways that you can do this – have fun being creative with it!
Happy babbling,
-Jess
Reference:
Lanza, J. & Flahive, L. (2008). Communication Milestones. Linguisystems.com.
