Every Child Counts

During the first 1000 days a baby needs adults to talk to them constantly. It is only by hearing people talking to each other and by being talked to that a baby discovers that people communicate with each other in this way.

From the beginning they know how to communicate their feelings by making noises such as gurgles of pleasure, grunts of effort and crying with discomfort and pain.  But it is only through talk that they learn that certain sounds (words) have meaning.

Did you know that -

• By 12 months a baby can pick up on the emotions behind words. He or she can also respond to simple words like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and can recognise his name.
• Over the next 6 months or so he or she is going to understand more and more words. They will start looking and pointing at common objects when you name them: things like ‘table’, ‘spoon’, ‘bottle’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘nose’, ‘mouth’, ‘hand’.
• By the end of this period he or she may be able to use some words themselves and understand many more. For example, one estimate is that they may be able to use about five words and understand about fifty.
• By two years of age they may be able to understand 200 words and use more than 50.  They may even be able to put a couple of words together to make a very simple sentence like ‘boy run’. And they will be able to understand more complex sentences or questions himself.
• Over the next year, their use of language is likely to grow very quickly indeed.  Soon they know hundreds of words and are adding more every day.
• But it is not just a matter of adding more words. They are starting to get a feel for words like ‘Before’, ‘behind’, ‘later’, and describing words like ‘big’, ‘small’, ‘round’  are starting to take on meaning also.
• By the time they are six, they are likely to have a vocabulary of 13,000 words!

Check out key reason no.5.