Eight-Week-Old Baby Tells Mom ‘I Love You’ Causing Her To Double Take

Jan 02, 2023 by apost team

There is a lot of work that goes into parenting. From feeding and taking care of a child to speaking with and teaching them all about the world, parenting is more than a full-time job.

Speaking with children is an important part of raising them and contributing to their development. But what about speaking to babies, who aren't able to speak back yet? Although babies can't fully understand their parents it's important nonetheless to chat with them, as it contributes to parent-child bonding.

The sweet moments between a parent and their infant were captured in a 2018 video that showed an 8-week-old baby girl's interactions with her mom. The mom seemed to tell her, "I love you," and it seemed as if the baby told her, "I love you" back! But considering her young age, many wondered whether she did really say her first words or whether her simple baby noises just sounded like words.

The clip reopened a debate about what you hear when babies talk. Are they making sounds, unable to form words? Or are they saying things like "I love you" because they hear their parents say it?

The short clip, which runs for less than one minute, featured the mother of the infant telling her daughter how much she loves her and jokingly asking her if she had a good Christmas. The baby appeared totally enamored with her mom, as she smiled and made responsive noises back to her parent.

But it's right at the end of the clip that it appeared the baby said "I love you" after her mother told her she loves her.

The baby's words weren't clear and even the mom giggled as she said, "Aww did you say 'I love you'"? But although the baby was too young to properly enunciate the words, the video has brought up the discussion of what babies' goo and ga-ing means. An article from The Atlantic sheds some light on this mystery:

“Such early utterances have a lot of social work to do — they’re more about enabling an interaction than about referring to something specific. So it seems as if ka (baby sounds) was less an act of naming than the on-switch for a shared experience.”

Whether or not you think this baby is saying "I love you," the fact she is trying to communicate is a sign of her brain development. Not long after the video was made, the baby girl would have been talking just like her mom, asking "why?" questions and exploring the world, hopefully with her parents' guidance.

An article by Very Well Family gave more pointers to parents about babies' developmental stages. In the first year of an infant's life, babies begin to make cooing and gurgling sounds at around 3 months old, babbles and sing-song sounds at around 6 months, followed by babbles with inflection — which can sound like talking — at around 12 months. This is also when they might say their first word.

In their second year of life, babies can usually say two to five words or more at around 16 months, and by 18 months, they can do the following: say eight to 10 words other people can understand, repeat words heard in conversation, have a vocabulary of around five to 40 words, which are mostly nouns, and use "please," "hi" and "bye" when reminded.

apost.com

What do you think about the meaning of a baby's first sounds? They're adorable, but can they be classified as conversation? Let us know your opinion, then pass this on to others to find out what they think too!