Does your, or did your DC seem to speak their own babbling language?

DS (10m) will start speaking gibberish out of nowhere. He has no "real" words yet .. (DH wont let me count bamama as word )

Is it bad thing that I play along and have a gibberish conversation with him? He gets such a kick out of it. If I just speak and say "I like your talking, your saying something neat!" He'll just look at me. If I play along, he keeps doing it, and I think it gives him more practice. DH and my mom tell me I should do it, that it will delay him speaking real words. We are also teaching him 2 main languages (and a few others) but more like 2 on consistent basis.

We speak plenty real words and he's understanding vocabulary is huge in both languages, he can point and look at whatever you tell him to. Its just I love to hear him babbling like that, its so cool He has been just growling and screaming for months, finally the babbling is back!

What do you think? Okay to play along?

Re: Does your, or did your DC seem to speak their own babbling language?

i do the same thing sometimes, and i think its so freakin cute too. might be doing him a slight disservice. i'd like to know what others might thnk on this too. ds is 10 months.

Re: Does your, or did your DC seem to speak their own babbling language?

What you are doing is perfectly fine and is actually beneficial. While you may not be using real words during your conversations, the "back and forth" it encourages is helping your LO to learn what are called the suprasegmental aspects of speech. These are the changes in pitch and intonation that occur in conversations, like how when you as a question your voice pitch gets higher. Also that we "take turns" while communicating.

Keep doing what you are doing!

Message edited 1/14/2011 9:43:19 PM.

Re: Does your, or did your DC seem to speak their own babbling language?

Its so funny, DS babbles all the time, walks around the house like he's having a conversation. Sometimes i'll babble back to him silly and he laughs. and other times i'll go" oh yea, thats interesting" or "really..what happened??"

i can tell he understands more every day even though he's not speaking yet..he has a few words..mama, dada, baba, uh-oh, and that..i almost got "yellow" out of him when we were doing colors, it sounded like "wewwo"..LOL.

but i think whether you are babbling or speaking, the back and forth helps them learn and i can tell by the facial expressions when he's babbling to me its like he's having a real conversation.

Re: Does your, or did your DC seem to speak their own babbling language?

I think it's fine at that age. But as they get older and should be speaking real words, not so much.

Why do I say that? I read in a pamphlet that I received re children with speech delays (When my DD was 18 mths) to NOT encourage jibberish or made up language, or to pretend to understand. To simply say, "I am not sure what you are saying, Johnny." So that is what I have always done with my DD, who was lacking verbally. SHe never babbled as a baby, and was very quiet. Now at 2 she is on track verbally (she never had speech intervention, she just picked up verbally in time) and I still might say "I am not sure what you are trying to say to me". She then repeats what she is trying to say, so for me, I agree with this train of thought.

But again, I think this is more directed towards older children who "should" have real words.

Message edited 1/14/2011 10:17:17 PM.

Re: Does your, or did your DC seem to speak their own babbling language?

My DD did this around 9 mos. We used to joke that she was speaking alien. DH used to do it back to her. But, I always tried to talk to her using real words and trying to get her to say the real words. Not sure which method is better honestly! I can't remember about my DS but, I think he did this as well and I did the same thing. DD is now 11 mos and does this very rarely and has a bunch of words now - she started with the words besides mama and daddy at about 10.5 mos. So I def. think the babbling is a precursor to them talking!

Re: Does your, or did your DC seem to speak their own babbling language?

Who am I to speak.. AJ starting truly speaking late.. but.

Yes, she babbled like a CHAMP! like she was having complete conversations. Sometimes it looked like she was giving me the low-down on daycare gossip.. "can you BELIEVE Mindy took Tommy's crayon when all she really wanted was the paper, now I would NEVER do that, can you imagine? Do you think its possible red and orange are the same color, cause I'm not really sure ya know?"


I'd just say "oh really?" "Oh I totally agree' "no way!" haha sometimes she'd look at me like "OMG you GET it!" others times she'd look at me like "MOM! pay ATTENTION" and she'd rattle off some more.

meh