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As your baby develops their physical skills, they have more control over their posture, so soon they will be able to sit as well as lie on their tummy or back. Different positions and increased control of movement and vision help your baby to explore objects in more ways, and they begin ‘mulitimodal exploration’. 

Multimodal means that your baby is using a few ways to explore, so they might look at an object, touch it and bring it to their mouth. This supports their cognitive development as your baby combines information from their senses to learn about the object. 

We often talk about how your toddler brings information from their senses together to understand the world. They might look at, touch and move a new object to learn about it, but scientists have found that we can remember an object by just using the sense of touch – and this happens even when we aren’t trying to memorise what the object is like! 

When it comes to objects, we often think about what it looks like and rarely consider how touch might be part of forming a memory.  

The repetition of a syllable, such as "ba ba ba ba," is known as 'reduplicated babble'. Babbling is a way for your baby to practise sounds and oral motor skills that are needed for speech.

Adults tend to skim over details when looking at a person or around the place they are in, because they are usually familiar with what they are seeing. Your baby has little or no experience with what they should be seeing, and therefore new interactions are exciting to them. 

Biscuit? Drink? More? Your toddler might have been asking questions using a single word and changing intonation for a little while; the next step is using question words – ‘What that?’ ‘Where dog?’ Asking questions is a brilliant way for your toddler to find out more about the world, so how does questioning develop and how can you encourage questions?  

From changing tone to using questioning words – how your toddler’s questioning develops 

We wait enthusiastically for each new word our toddler says – but talking is just the tip of the iceberg! Your toddler is learning so much as you chat with them and as they see and hear people having conversations.  

Your toddler understands more than they say  

Have you ever wondered how babies learn language? Those little sounds they make right from birth is the start of their linguistic journey. 

Research shows that babies start to make sounds that resemble ‘ooh’, and ‘ahh’ and ‘ee’ first.^[1] 

An important part of communication is listening to another person – and not being distracted by all the other noises around us. As adults we can do this pretty well (most of the time), but the part of your toddler’s brain that helps them with attention is still developing. You can help.

Attention is more than listening 

It's true! Many sucking behaviours will develop in your baby as they feed and explore objects. These different movements will allow the development and control of the muscles required to generate sounds and speak. 

Your baby will be learning to move in more ways now. This is a great phase of their development and there is so much going on. While your baby is finding out how they can move around, they learn about movement, judging space, directions, effort required and safety.