Our children's first word? Mom or Dad?
A subject that arouses a lot of curiosity if we really want to say it all, but beware do not get strange ideas! Know that your little one's choice to say one word first over another is pure chance. This does not necessarily depend on the proximity of one or the other parent. Basically, if your puppy says the word "mom" or the word "dad" first, it doesn't mean he loves one and vice versa. It can happen, in fact, that your little one even says the word "grandmother" or "baby food". One thing is for sure. The first time you hear your baby call you will have a certain effect. It'll be pure emotion. Something you don't forget in life.
Says the research
Each child is genetically predisposed to process all the sounds of the world. From birth, in fact, your child is able to recognize your voice as well as that of his father: and for this reason it is never too early to start talking to him with fairy tales or songs that talk about pure emotions and love.
In addition, a study conducted by a group of researchers at the University of British Columbia has shown that the brain of a newborn is organized in such a way that it recognizes and stores words containing syllables that repeat themselves with extreme ease. In fact, at around 2-4 months of age, the child starts with vocalisations and emits sounds such as "oh", "ah", "ghe". Then, around the age of 6 months, it begins to repeat the syllables such as "ma-ma", "pa-pa", "ba-ba", "ta-ta", or the so-called lallation. The sounds that the baby emits, usually a little more defined around 10 months, are instead vocalizations that over time will acquire the right meaning of a meaningful word.
The word "mom"
Returning to the word "mother", it is one of the first expressions that your child can say, because it takes up in a certain sense the act done during breastfeeding, then: the sound "but" is related to the movement of the lips of the baby when sucking milk, accompanied by the tone of sound inside. At this point, as the child can pronounce "but", he can also pronounce "pa" and other syllables.
Children are also very spontaneous, both in their gestures and in their words: they express what they actually feel. It is not by chance that all the sounds they emit express primary needs and are made up purely of vowels, for example "a", "e", "o".
Recommendations
Never force your child to say the word "mother" or "father". In fact, he himself will decide, regardless of your continuous stimuli, precisely because of the principle linked to their instinct. It's important to talk to him, even if he won't understand anything at first. Speaking helps to stimulate his ability to listen, to fix well in his mind the sounds of the individual vowels, to then be able to reproduce them exactly and in a sensible way.
Moreover, only when your child is about to blow out his first candle will he begin to pronounce his first real words of complete meaning, such as Mom or Dad. At 16-18 months he will already have a good luggage of 10 or 15 words, even if he does not know exactly what they mean. What is certain is that he will be able to say what he wants or doesn't want.
Lucia Franco
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