From First Steps to First Words: How Walking Sets the Stage for Talking
As a parent, nothing is more thrilling than your child’s first steps and first words. These important milestones often appear at around the same time, which has led researchers to ask whether these two skills are related. And the answer is...they are! Walking opens up a new world for infants, allowing them to explore their environment in new ways.
And this exploration influences how parents speak to their child. These changes set
the stage for a child’s communication to grow.
Here are some things to know about the impact of walking on children’s communication development, and some tips for interacting with your child during this important time in their life.
The path to first steps
First steps don’t happen overnight. But once infants are up on their feet, there’s no turning back! Here are some highlights about how this process unfolds: [1, 2]
The advantages of walking
Once infants start to walk, they prefer walking to crawling, even though they are initially unsteady and fall often. Compared to crawling, walking has many advantages for infants, as it allows them to:
- travel further and quickly
- move around with their hands free
- access objects located further away
- carry objects from place to place
- see more of their surroundings [1, 2]
These advantages open up a new world for the infant, which also means new possibilities for communicating.
What happens to infants’ communication when they start walking?
Walking gives infants new access to the people and objects in their environment, giving them many more opportunities to communicate and interact [1]. For example, they can walk across the room, look for something and pick it up, then carry it back to show their parent. This provides infants with new ways and new reasons to communicate about their interests.
Compared to infants who have not started walking, infants who walk do more in the following areas [1, 2, 3]:
- Interaction – Walking infants interact more with adults.
- Gestures & sounds – Walking infants use more gestures and sounds, and direct these messages towards caregivers.
- Communicate while moving – Walking infants communicate more while moving (crawling infants communicate more when stationary).
- Looking – Walking infants look at caregivers more often and from greater distances.
- Showing – Walking infants bring objects to show their caregivers.
- Words – Beginning to walk is accompanied by vocabulary growth (regardless of the infants' age when they start).
Researchers have also noticed that the earlier infants start walking, the faster their vocabularies grow [1, 4]. Learning to walk seems to speed up the pace of learning to talk.
Parents change how they talk once their infant starts walking
When infants start walking, they are suddenly sending messages more often and they’re doing so while they’re up on their feet. This helps parents notice when their child is communicating, and it clarifies what the infant is trying to communicate [2]. Parents can then fine-tune their messages to match what the child wants to communicate about. Also, once infants are upright, it makes it easier for parents to show them things and point things out [1]. As a result, parents change how they talk with their child.
Once children start walking, their parents do more of the following [1]:
These changes to the way parents talk shape the child’s language-learning environment, making it rich with language that is related to their child’s interests. Responding to what a child wants to communicate about using a variety of words and gestures supports the child’s continued communication development.
Tips for talking to your child once they start walking
When your child starts to walk and they begin to communicate more often and in new ways, you can make the most of this important time in their development by following their lead. Click the boxes below to find out how:
- Stop what you're doing and wait without talking for your child to show you what interests them
- Observe what your child is looking at, touching, and doing
- Listen carefully to any sounds they make
- Being face-to face with your child helps you notice what interests them
- If your child is walking, you might kneel, sit on the floor, or sit on a small chair so that you can be face-to-face
- Once your child sends a message, respond right away by saying something
related to your child's message (e.g., if your child brings an object to show you,
talk about the object) - This shows your child you're interested, and your child might take another turn
- Put into words what you think your child is trying to tell you. For example, if your child brings you a toy car to show you that it's missing a wheel, you could interpret by saying "Oh oh, the wheel is gone." Or if your child notices some blocks on a shelf and points to them, wanting to play, you could interpret by saying "Let's get the blocks!"
- As children start to walk, they explore the objects in their environment. You can use a variety of words to talk about these objects, such as action words (go, spin, jump, push), description words (big, hot, soft), and location words (up, down, in, on). Use these words in short, grammatical sentences to talk about your child's interest in the objects.
- Use gestures, hold up objects, and point things out while you talk to your child. This helps them understand what words mean.
These tips are based on content from the It Takes Two to Talk® program, which provides parents with strategies to build their child’s language learning during everyday activities and routines.
For more ideas about how your can support your child’s communication development, sign up to receive our Language-building Tips for Parents
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