Recently, I completed a class for work that discussed assessment strategies and how we as teachers use these tools to help us plan for the children we care for. Many may think that there is little to assess when the children are the young infants that I spend my days with, but there is so much more than even I realized before I began working exclusively with infants. People, there is A LOT! Children learn so much in the first five years of life. And if you think of a child going from a helpless newborn to a walking, talking, doing 12 month old in just that 12 months.... It boggles the mind.
One area in particular that I have been putting some thought into is the development of speech in infants. I am a huge fan of Infant Sign Language, and don't know where teachers were before the connection to teach hearing children signing was made. Incidentally, ISL provides an unintended benefit in giving children a visual cue to go with a spoken word- allowing them to connect the word with meaning much sooner. :) While I was in college, I took a class in Speech and Language Phonology and Audiology. To make that mouthful simpler, it was basically a look at how speech is acquired, and the physical structures of our vocal folds that allow for speech. I had a great professor for this class, and several things that he mentioned still stick with me now.
\According to this professor (and, unfortunately, I am unable to recall his name), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the International Children's Education Department there are patterns to how children learn language in the first several years of their lives. The DHHS site has a list of common speech and communication milestones, while iCHED outlines the patterns in which phonemes (the smallest sounds in speech) are acquired. Most of these have goals for fluency in the toddler years, with several moving into the preschool and early elementary years. Also, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has some good information here and a speech development milestone chart here (linked to ldonline.org). There are steps that children go through to learn language, and teaching them to hear or respond to the incorrect sounds can set them up for future difficulties.
As an infant teacher, this information motivates me to encourage and insist that the staff with me enunciate to our infants as clearly as possible. Infancy is one of the building blocks for future learning, and not offering words children will need to know for future learning correctly only creates frustration for those children who hear incorrect speech so often that they don't understand when they hear correctly articulated speech.
I knew a child who wouldn't look around for us (the caregivers) unless we deliberately mispronounced her name, because she heard the mispronunciation more than her actual name. I know that there are children out there whose parents use a nickname more than their child's given name, but when the name is one that the child will need to know as they grow, it really isn't doing them any favors to hear their name wrong all the time. It also doesn't encourage children to learn correct enunciation of language if what they are hearing is consistently incorrect.
That said, there are many things that you can do to help your child learn speech. Begin by looking at your child and responding to their coos. Read, read, read! You can never read too much to your child. Begin with things that interest you to be reading. Your newborn won't care if you are reading the stock market report, they just want to hear your voice. As they grow older, you can offer choices and they can choose books they enjoy. Point out speech and words in the environment and community around you. Street signs, bill boards, advertisements tacked up at the grocery store. All of these is an opportunity to talk to your child and encourage their understanding of words and their uses.
Speak clearly to your child. They will hear the sounds of speech they need to learn to be able to speak for themselves better if they are hearing you enunciate clearly. Don't mush up your sounds or encourage baby talk (NOT the same thing as babbling with your child) Again, this encourages your child to distinguish mispronunciations as the correct speech to learn. Do encourage and participate in babbling with your child. When they can make sounds like, "mamama", "dododo", "bebebe"- talk back to them. This gives them practice with that sound, even as it shows them that they are able to carry on a conversation with you.
It all begins with you. What your child hears from you, they are going to want to imitate. You are your child's first and best teacher. :)
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