Babble Boot Camp Ⓒ (2month – 2 years)
Babble Boot Camp is a weekly caregiver coaching program designed to support the development of the earliest communication skills for babies born with risks for communication delays. Rather than a “wait and see” approach, we are working to build your babies interaction skills right away!
Here’s how it works:
You will take about 3-4 minutes of videos of your baby interacting with you or a family member, and send these to the SLP via an easy to use and secure link 24-36 hours before your appointment each week.
We meet online for 20 minutes per week, to review the videos of the amazing ways your baby is communicating with you. We will talk about current communication we notice in the videos, and discuss ways to continue building these early language skills with your baby in your everyday routines.
Babble Boot Camp was created in 2017 and is currently running research with groups of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome and Classic Galactosemia. Early results are demonstrating positive results in the development of communication skills.
Here are some links to more information about the research being conducted by the Babble Boot Camp program at Arizona State University:
What is Babble Boot Camp? https://sites.google.com/a/asu.edu/peterspeechlanguagegenetics/home/research/turning-knowledge-of-genetics-into-action-the-babble-boot-camp
Early Results of Babble Boot Camp for Children With Classic Galactosemia https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-21-00098
Early Results of Babble Boot Camp for Infants With Down Syndrome https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2024_AJSLP-24-00271
Late Talkers (12 – 36 months)
Speech Sounds
It takes time for children to learn to pronounce speech sounds the “adult” way. Some sounds are easy to learn – like “m”, “b” and “d”. Others can take longer – like “L”, “ch” and “r”. Along the way, it may be hard to understand your child’s speech. So how do you know when your child needs help?
A general guideline is that by 3 years old, familiar people understand a child’s speech most of the time and by age 4 years old, strangers can usually understand most of a child’s speech. This doesn’t mean that your child should sound like an adult yet! The following table from ASHA.org (American Speech and Hearing Association) shows when most English speaking children typically develop speech sounds. It is important to remember that if your child is learning a different language or more than one language, they may develop sounds earlier or later:
| By 3 mos | Makes cooing sounds |
| By 5 mos | Laughs and makes playful sounds |
| By 6 mos | Makes speech-like babbling sounds like puh, ba, mi, da |
| By 1 year | Babbles longer strings of sounds like mimi, upup, bababa |
| By 3 yrs | Says m, n, h, w, p, b, t, d, k, g, and f in words Familiar people understand the child’s speech most of the time |
| By 4 yrs | Says y and v in words May still make mistakes on the s, sh, ch, j, ng, th, z, l, and r sounds Most people understand the child’s speech most of the time |