Your Infant and Our Voices

Your child discovered her voice when she announced her birth with a good cry. Isn't it amazing that from that very first moment, she's had sufficient control over her vocal cords to be able to turn them on when she has a complaint and turn them off when life is good? It's only a matter of weeks before babies start using their vocal chords to express pleasure through babbles and coos. A few month later those babbles turn into vowel sounds such as ahhh, oooh, and eeee. With a bit more strength and control in the tongue and lips, the first consonants come in: Puh, Buh, Muh, and Duh. (Try making those sounds yourself and notice what your lips and tongue need to do.) Some trickier consonants, such as R and L, may not show up until first grade. Even as your infant is making sounds she's listening as well. She's imitating the sounds that you make with your voice. She's also associating sounds with objects, and when she has the pairing straight you'll hear that first dada or mama or cookie.