When Do Babies Start Babbling?
Babbling is a very rich and complex skill for babies! It’s a skill they develop before they begin to talk. And because it’s such an important step, parents often have tons of questions about it, like: When do babies start babbling? What’s typical and what’s a concern? When should my baby see a speech therapist? Questions we have the answers to.
If you’re currently wondering when your baby will babble, worrying about why they’re not, or wishing you could get them to babble more, you’re in the right place! We’ve got answers, tips, and strategies you can try at home starting today.
We’re so glad you’re here and we hope this helps!
Interesting Facts about Babbling
Before we jump into when babies start babbling, we thought we’d hit you with some fun facts about it. Juuuuust in case you want to drop some super-cool baby knowledge during your next mom group meetup! ;)
Did You Know?
The way your baby babbles will be influenced by their language environment, and the language and culture they’re surrounded by. That means a baby born in Japan with Japanese speaking parents will babble with sounds from the Japanese language, which would sound much different than the babbling we’d hear from a baby born to Russian speaking parents!
The sounds you hear in your baby’s babbling (p, b, m, d, etc.) are likely to be the main consonants they use in their first words.
Babies who are exposed to multiple languages babble just as much as babies who only hear one language.
(Okay, we know we’re speech therapists so we might be a little biased…but sooo cool right?!)
When Do Babies Start Babbling And Cooing?
The quick answer: It’s quite a range! Babies can start babbling and cooing any time between 4 to 9 months of age.
Babbling and Cooing During Baby’s First Year
Let’s be real. “It’s a range” and “it depends” are basically the least satisfying answers ever as a parent, right? So let’s break it down and get more specific:
Newborn to 3 Months
During the first months of your baby’s life, you’re figuring out all the new rhythms together. If your baby is past this stage, you probably remember the crying as their primary way of vocalizing during that time! And, if you’re in this stage right now, you know your baby so well that we bet you can distinguish between their various cries: hungry, tired, gas pain, reflux (this one is real at Katie’s house!).
Towards the end of this phase, they start to coo and laugh. This is such an exciting time! And it starts to feel like you have a bit more of an outward connection—like you can communicate on a new level.
Cooing: Vowel sounds like “aaaaa” or “ooooo”. The first non-crying sounds your baby makes.
4 to 6 Months
Between 4 and 6 months of age, we expect that you’ll hear the beginnings of babbling! Often, it’s just a single syllable to start, like “bu” or “ga” or “da”. Even though these sounds seem simple, this is a BIG stage of development for your baby who is now engaging in what we call vocal play: experimenting with the way their tongue, teeth, and lips all work together! You might hear raspberries or tongue clicks in this stage. It’s all a result of your baby being a little scientist and experimenting with what they can do.
Vocal Play: Experimenting with the way the tongue, teeth, and lips all work together.
7 to 9 Months
Between 7 and 9 months of age, baby’s simple babbling becomes more complex as they begin repeating the same syllable a couple of times in a row. The fancy word for this is canonical babbling and it sounds like “bababa” and “dadada”.
Canonical Babbling: Repeating the same syllable a few times in a row!
10 Months
Around 10 months of age, we start to hear what’s called “variegated babbling,” which is what happens when baby puts different syllables consisting of different consonants and vowels all together. This babble is longer, and varied in intonation, so it sounds almost like a little sentence! Examples are things like “Dabuga!” and “Babegado?”
Variegated Babbling: Combining different syllable consisting of different consonants and vowels
12 Months
Around 12 months you can expect the moment you’ve been patiently waiting for to finally arrive. This is when you’ll likely start to see babbling to turn into baby’s first words!
How To Encourage Babbling
By now, you’re probably starting to see just how rich and important a skill like babbling really is for babies! It’s so much more than a cute little noise. It’s a mini baby talking milestone, and a big step toward speaking, so it’s something to look out for and encourage!
Here are some ways you can gently encourage your baby to babble more:
#1 Imitate Your Baby’s Vocalizations
Imitation is an important part of language learning, and your baby learns the concept of imitation by seeing you imitate them!
When you imitate your baby, they notice! They think “Hey, she just did what I did! That’s fun!” And then they’re more likely to do it again! And the back-and-forth nature of communication between you and your baby begins.
Related: How To Help Your Baby Babble
#2 Keep Providing Opportunities!
This might sound obvious, but it’s really not. If your baby is going to babble more, they need more opportunities to babble! Some great babbling opportunities are:
Mirror Play: Helps with imitation skills and is so fun!
Tip: Place your baby and yourself in front of a mirror. Then, try singing a song, making funny faces, or playing peek-a-boo.
Face-to-Face Reading and Talking: Presents tons of opportunities for baby to watch your gestures and expressions and communicate back.
Using Parentese (a loooong, slooow, and/or high-pitch voice) to draw baby’s attention!
You can also make a note to respond to your baby’s coos and vocalizations. It reinforces the idea that their communication matters and makes baby more excited to coo and vocalize again!
Worried About Your Baby’s Babbling?
If you’re worried about your baby’s babbling (or lack thereof), the tips in this blog post are a great place to start. Remember to keep in mind that babbling typically starts within a pretty wide age range: between 4 and 9 months old! So if your baby is under 9 months old, they might still start babbling on their own time.
But of course, you know your baby best. And parent intuition is real! Always reach out to your pediatrician, a speech pathologist, or contact your area’s early intervention program—especially if you’ve tried some of these things and you still aren’t seeing progress.
Baby Songs That Help With Babbling
We created Wee Talkers so we could teach parents of babies—parents like you!—how to support your baby at home. Because you are truly the best person for the job.
To increase opportunities for your baby to babble, we recommend reading, singing, playing, and talking together at home whenever you can. And our free baby song video download will be just the thing to help get you started!
This free video shows us singing with our babies at home. You’ll see exactly what it looks like when we do it, so you can follow along and copy our strategies!