I don’t know about you, but I was looking forward to Riley saying Ma Ma! I have enjoyed all the sounds she has been making since the beginning, (even the screeching phase where she sounded like a pterodactyl) but I was most looking forward to the babbling stage or as I like to call it the Ma Ma stage!
At Riley’s six month appointment, the pediatrician asked if Riley was babbling. Now I feel like babbling can be interpreted in many ways. Riley certainly had been making vowel sounds and all sorts of noises, (she wasn’t quiet thats for sure) but was she truly babbling using consonant sounds, no. I think of babbling as those consonant sounds-ba ba, ma ma, da da, pa pa, and so on. We had and continue to talk to Riley all throughout the day as they tell you to do. It is very important to immerse your child in everyday conversation as it helps their language development greatly. We would imitate Riley’s sounds when she made them modeling how to have a back and forth conversation. We would add in babbling sounds such as b aba, ma ma, and da da to see if she would start to imitate us back. She didn’t and that’s okay. She wasn’t there yet.
To encourage Riley to begin babbling I decided to focus on one sound with her rather than overwhelm her with many choices. I of course choice ma ma. For two weeks, I would speak and sing ma ma. When she was getting a diaper change, I would sing ma ma to the tune of her favorite nursery songs such as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Row, Row Your Boat”. When Riley was eating her solids, I would imitate chewing while saying ma ma making sure Riley was watching my mouth as I formed the sounds. (This is probably why when Riley chews she says ma ma instead of nom nom or mmm mmm. Haha) While snuggling I would whisper ma ma in her ear and against her check so she could feel the vibration of the sounds. During play time, I would have back and forth conversations with Riley and after I would imitate her sound I would follow it up with ma ma. The sound ma ma became a sensory experience as Riley heard it, felt the vibration of the word against her checks, hands belly, and feet, and she saw how I formed the sound. Of course, I still spoke to her and read to her and used normal words, but I also added in ma ma whenever I could. Her bedtime songs were all ma ma to the tune of different songs. Riley began to find this all very funny and would often laugh when I started singing Ma ma to the tune of Twinkle twinkle.
One night, Riley mumbled ma ma while we were spending time together as a family. Thomas and I looked at each other in great excitement and started saying ma ma back. Riley didn’t say it again that night and Thomas began to doubt what we heard, but I stand by the fact that she said ma ma. Ma ma started to crop up every now again in her conversations until one day she just exploded with ma ma and then ba ba. Riley has experimented with other sounds such as brr brr, pa pa, na na. We are currently working on da da using these same techniques.
