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In baby?s first year, the conversation can feel a little, how shall we put it, one-sided" That?s especially true if you?re the only adult in the room for long stretches of time. But it?s important to keep up the chatter, because you?re building up your child?s language reserves every time you narrate the day (?Let?s go for a walk,? ?Is that a bird up there"? or ?Time for lunch!?) or tell a story.
The coos and babbles may be all you get for many months, but you need to keep talking. ?A lot of kids are late talkers,? says Nair. (And early talkers don?t necessarily do better in school.) By 18 months, kids should have 10 to 25 words they use consistently. ?If there are concerns at any of these times, it would be important to rule out a hearing problem and refer them to a speech therapist,? Nair says. What to watch for

Babbling (eight months), and saying ?mama? and ?dada? plus one word (12 months): In speech, there is a definite order to development, says Minhas. ?They?ll coo before they babble and babble before they start forming words, and it will build up from there,? he says.
While it can happen as early as 10 months, by 12 months, most babies will use ?mama? and ?dada? correctly (she may say ?mama? as early as eight months, but she won?t be actually referring to her mother), plus one other word. That third word can be what?s called a ?word approximation.? If ?ba? always means bottle, that counts, says Nair.
What parents can do

Keep talking. ?We kno...