Your Baby's Language Skills

For your baby, language acquisition is an innate skill - babies' brains are programmed to learn language.

The critical window for speech development is from birth to age three.

Here are some milestones to look out for:

• By his first birthday your baby can produce most of the vowel sounds of English, and about half of the consonants.

• Between 12 and 18 months, your baby slowly accrues new vocabulary items.

• At around 18 months, your baby's vocabulary hits a critical mass and she acquires one new word every day or two.

• By the time he's six, your baby understands around 13,000 words.

If intelligence is defined as the ability to learn, then babies are geniuses. Her brain has such high plasticity that for your baby, language learning is effortless. Simply by providing positive mental stimulation, you can help strengthen the neural pathways that lay the foundation for her cognitive, emotional and social intelligence.