Help Your Baby Learn to Talk

What's the best way to help your baby learn to talk? Follow your instincts.

By Melissa Balmain

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Introduction

Eager for your baby to start talking, you read her eight books a day. You recite the alphabet nine times, play pat-a-cake ten times, and sing "Old McDonald" until you're too pooped to moo. And still you fear you're not doing enough. Should you try "genius" videotapes? Flash cards?

Relax. "People worry about teaching infants to talk, but it's unnecessary," says Lise Eliot, Ph.D., author of What's Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life (Bantam, 1999). "If children are raised in a normal, emotionally healthy environment, they will learn to speak." In fact, as more and more research shows, babies gain a surprisingly complex understanding of language in their first year alone. To help, all you really need to do is act on your loving instincts.

Next: Instinct #1: Talk to Your Baby

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