At early months, Chesska knew only mama, papa, tete, baby - just to name some, but as days, weeks, and years passed, she had already learned lots of words, which I am very proud of. How fulfilling, right?
Like all babies/toddlers, Chesska's means of communication starts first from cooing, crying, making noise, or even whining. But when she reaches 6 months old and onwards, she begins uttering a handful of words. I can tell that lots of factors can make a
baby to begin utter words. What she hears and sees around can stimulate her brain to talk - music, toys, sounds, or even conversations.
As tips for moms, this is how I encourage my baby to talk. I would always name the objects anything she held or pointed to. For instance, when she wanted to drink her milk, I would point the bottle first before I handed over to her and would associate with a question, "Want to drink your milk?". Or sometimes, I would make a command like, "Get your Dora inside the cabinet.", or "Please pick up your toys".This way, she could easily understand what I am trying to tell her, and vice-versa.
One quiet afternoon, I saw my 18-month-old baby inside our room, knocked down on her pillow, looked tired, after pulling out all things inside our cabinet. Our room is completely scattered and messed up! It's like, it was hit by a typhoon, signal no.1 (lol). In fact, she is adventurous but buggy. She likes to learn every part and corner of our house. Everything she sees catches her attention. She tastes and bites anything she holds. Grab the things and throw them anywhere.When I pick them up and return to the place where they belong, she again grabs them and throws them back. I try to discipline her by telling her to put the things back to the proper place, she follows for a while, and I affirm by clapping my hands for becoming obedient but later, she does scattering again. She also tries to reach everything in sight, like our calendar hangs on the wall. She rips it like a confetti.
Something caught my attention as I watched my 12-month old baby playing. She held a box and filled this with small toys. Few minutes later, she took the toys out, and when the box was empty, she filled it with toys again, and she did the same thing over and over again. Another thing, she pulled and pushed the small table. Later on, questions entered my mind "Why did she do that? Was that a baby instinct or what?" So out of my curiosity, I searched over the internet. I opened Google and began typing a keyword, but it took me a while what to search; I asked myself "what would I type"? In a sudden moment, it came a thought typing "Baby’s characteristics at 1 year old". In the search results, I have read many, but one topic caught my attention "Baby Developmental Milestones".