Prepare to be listened to very intently.
When do babies first tune in the sounds of speech?
A few decades ago, many people would have answered that babies start listening to language at birth – or even when they begin to say their first words. Over recent years, however, there’s been a lot of interest and research into the way babies develop language, so we now know much better.
While parents naturally focus on when their baby actually starts to make sounds and words, studies have told us that producing language sounds is in fact one of the later stages of a process that begins long beforehand.
It turns out that babies start listening to language some time before they are born. They mainly hear their mother’s voice but can also hear sounds and voices from the wider world.
How do we know?
Observations – based on the varying intensity of babies’ sucking – were first carried out in the ‘80s on newborns whose mothers had read the same story out loud, twice a day, for the six weeks before birth.
This research found that the babies preferred that particular story – previously only heard while in the womb – over a story they hadn’t heard before.
So even before birth, we are latching onto the patterns of speech sounds and the musical qualities of language – and absorbing them.
What can parents-to-be do to help their baby’s development?
If you’re interested in speaking and singing to your baby before birth, don’t hold back. As well as helping the bonding process, it will give your newborn a wider range of familiar language to recognise – which should help to increase their wellbeing once they’re out in the world.
Can dads and other family members get in on the act as well?
They certainly can – foetal hearing in the range of human voices is becoming well developed by 27 to 30 weeks, allowing the unborn child to hear other family members.
So by talking and singing to the bump in the later stages of pregnancy, partners and siblings will be able to make their voices more familiar to the newest member of the family, too.
More from the Baby Listen blog:
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Did you know that Spanish has only 5 vowel sounds? Compare that with the 12 in English (think cat, heart, head, heard, heat, hit, book, two, bought etc.) and you realise that for those picking up the language, having just 5 is a bonus!
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