Brilliant Brains - how your baby communicates through gestures

Trish (health visitor)

Daniel is now about 11 months?

Mum

Yep, nearly twelve.

Trish

And are you getting quite a lot of babbling and talk from him? How does he try to indicate when he wants something or what gestures does he tend to use?

Mum

If it's something he can see, there's lots of reaching and grabbing, crawling towards it and shouting.

Cristina

Before your baby can speak, they already have lots of things that they want to tell you and share with you. When your baby doesn't have the words they might use body language and gestures to show you what they mean. They soon discover what great tools their hands and fingers are. They may start reaching out to get your attention and tell you what they want. Alongside these gestures, your baby might start to use some familiar sounds. They might use an 'uh uh' noise to try and get your attention or use sounds like 'mama' and 'dada'.

Trish

When Daniel's pointing to something it's really important that you name the thing that he's pointing at and that gets him to go through the process of connecting the two things.

Mum

Car, you're right, car.

Cristina

Gestures and language rely on the same parts of the brain but it takes a while for all of the connections to develop between the temporal and the frontal lobe. Emerging speech and gestures help support one another over development and strengthen the connections in the developing brain. As time goes by, the cerebrum and cerebellum are getting better at controlling how your baby thinks, moves and understands the world, and because your baby has been watching and listening to you for months, they start to piece together how familiar actions like reaching, pointing and waving go together with familiar sounds and their meaning.

Trish

Oh that's a good sound! And a clap of the hands as well?!