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Language

Development
During infancy, infants
responsiveness to their parents
voice and speech, encourages
parents to talk to their babies.
Doing so strengthens infants
language processing. When
parents continuously talk with
their babies, their babies will
eventually understand and
determine positive and negative
emotions.
Around 6 months old, babbling
appears. Babbling is when
infants repeat consonant-vowel
combinations, often in long
strings, such as babababababa
(Berk, 2013). When a baby
continuously hears speech, their
babbling develops further.

Physical
Development
After a baby is born, their
physical appearance is odd-
looking. The average
newborn is 20 inches long and
weighs 7 pounds (Berk,
2013). They typically have
large heads and small bodies.
By the end of a childs first
year, a typical childs height is
about 50% greater than at
birth. As the childs body
continues to grow, different
body parts begin to grow at
different rates. Usually, the
head develops first, then the
body or trunk follow suit
(Berk, 2013).







INFANCY AND
TODDLERHOOD




Cognitive
Development
During infancy, between birth
and eight months, infants
become aware of physical
objects. They begin to have the
ability to problem solve, for
example, finding hidden objects
after searching several
locations. They also gain
control over their own actions
(Berk, 2013).

Toddlers begin to sort objects
and are aware of some videos
and pictures as symbols of
reality. Toddlers also gain the
concept of make-believe. They
begin to realize that make-
believe is a representational
activity (Berk, 2013).

Atypical
Development
When a baby or toddler does not
respond to language or sounds, they
may be facing some challenges with
being hearing impaired. In hearing-
impaired babies, these speechlike
sounds are delayed and limited in
diversity of sounds produced
overtime (Bass-Ringdauhl, 2010;
Moeller et al., 2007) (Berk, 2013).
Because of this, an infants babbling
may stop completely.
I always wondered why
babies spend so much time
sucking their thumbs. Then I
tasted baby food.
Robert Orben


How can parents
help?
Parents can help with
language development, by
responding to their childs
coos and babbles. They can
also, Read to children often,
engaging them in dialogues
about picture books (Berk,
2013), to encourage
language.

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