by Carol H. Morgan

Created on: April 30, 2008

Human language is the most complex skill in the universe. Other intelligent mammals have trouble even learning rudimentary aspects of it; who hasn't tried to try to direct their dog's attention to something by pointing, only to have Fido stare intently at their finger? Diexis (reference by pointing) is only one of the cognitive breakthroughs that children make toward learning how to speak in their first few months of life. Often babies say their first words before they even learn to walk without the assistance of furniture.

So intertwined with being and thinking like a human being is language, in fact, that parents often look to certain milestones to make sure that their child is 'normal.' And it would seem natural that with such a complex skill as speaking - necessitating articulatory, grammatical and vocabulary proficiency of very young children - that not every child always meets every developmental deadline. And many time this doesn't mean there is anything to worry about. But there are several things to watch for when assessing your child's speech development, and in assessing whether the ways that they differ from the normal language trajectory are cause for alarm.

NORMAL COURSE OF CHILD LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

While all children learn language slightly differently, there is a certain developmental trajectory that most of them follow, with stages that are very consistent among language learners.

1. 0-12 months: The pre-word or babbling stage

By about six weeks your baby will be making eye contact with you and probably will be smiling. The result of this face-to-face communication, which babies obviously prioritize as one of their favorite waking and alert activities, is that eventually they make themselves heard with little cooing sounds. These will consist of mostly vowels, like "aahhh" and "oooh."

At about six months, the child will start combining a consonant sound with these cooing noises, usually producing something like "babababa" or "dadadada." Then the older babbler will mix it up a bit, producing strings like "babaGADAnanababa." The child in this stage is likely practicing intonation, meaning making strings of speech have the tune or contour of the adult speech spoken around him.

A few things the child does during this stage are preparatory to saying actual words. Unlike other animals, the child masters deixis or the fact that one thing refers to another relatively early in their lives. They will soon learn to track the direction of a pointing finger

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