More than just words

Babies’ communication and language development begin before they are even born, with evidence to suggest that they can respond to familiar sounds or voices that they hear while in the womb.

Communication and language are so much more than the words that we say. They encompass how we interact and share meaning with others, and how we express our inner thoughts and feelings. Babies are born with an innate drive to connect with others – they are social beings after all – using their faces, bodies, babbles, and cries to communicate and interact with others around them.

Babies need adults to respond sensitively to their attempts to interact with the world and to recognise how their ‘voice’ can be heard much earlier than them learning to talk. The best start for life: a vision for the 1,001 critical days report (2021) tells us that “some of the most important experiences that will shape the architecture of a baby’s brain come from their interactions with significant adults in their lives”. The quality of interactions that babies and toddlers receive from adults around them at a young age will help them to develop essential communication and language skills that they require to become effective communicators and grow into confident talkers.

Engaging in face-to-face interactions encourages babies to begin to interpret nonverbal communication such as smiles, facial expressions and gestures – which often provides more meaning for them than the words that we say alone – and can help support their understanding of language.

When adults mirror babies’ attempts at communication, whether that be returning a smile or copying their babbles, babies feel heard and are more likely to repeat their attempts to interact in future, as they’re filled with ‘feel good’ hormones from such positive responses.

Have you ever stopped to consider the power of pointing as a form of communication? When a young child outstretches their index finger and gestures towards an object, they have the ability to shift someone else’s attention to whatever it is they are interested in or wanting to engage with. They’re communicating a want, need or desire in that moment without a single word being spoken.

It's the way that we, as adults, interact with such forms of pre-verbal communication that can influence children’s future language development.

Department of Health and Social Care (2021), The Best Start for life: a Vision for the 1,001 Critical Days, [online] GOV.UK.

Available at: bit.ly/U5-best-start-for-life-gov.

If you’d like to explore this topic further, why not book onto our upcoming Virtual Classroom, Supporting babies’ pre-verbal communication skills, Tuesday 29 April, 6.30pm -8.30pm: bit.ly/U5-preverbal-skills.

This session focuses on how early years educators can tune into the many ways that babies and young children communicate with us, prior to developing spoken language, and explores how adults can support children to become effective communicators through the interactions and experiences that they provide.