Imitate sounds or gestures that your infant makes. Allow time for them to imitate your sounds and gestures too. New Jersey Birth to Three Early Learning Standards. (2013). New Jersey Council for Young Children. Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Bornstein, M. H., & Baumwell, L. (2001). Maternal responsiveness and children's achievement of language milestones. Child development, 72(3), 748–767. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00313 Snow CE, Burns S, Griffin P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
The mutual ability between the caregiver and the child to imitate the actions of others is an important mechanism for social learning (i.e. for acquiring new knowledge) and language development. The child's ability to imitate is also important for what it tells us about child’s prior knowledge. A study of 40 mother-child dyads (pairs) found that the extent to which mothers imitated their 13-month old children predicted the timing of the children’s later language milestones. For instance, a mother might respond “Ball!” to a child’s vocalization of “bah”. Such responses at 13 months uniquely predicted the timing of children’s 50 words in expressive language, combinatorial speech, and first use of language to talk about the past.
A study of 100 children aged 14-20 months showed correlations between the frequency of mothers imitating their children and the frequency of the children using imitation. As maternal imitation increased, spontaneous imitative behaviour increased in their children’s speech as well.