Living in a polyglot family, one of the aspects that more than others trigger my curiosity is understanding the mechanisms through which people, and especially newborns, learn a new language. According to common sense, babies are less intelligent than adults, as intelligence is thought to be something that naturally grows with age. When making such considerations, though, we must be careful not to confuse intelligence with the amount of real life experience: one of the most widely accepted definitions of intelligence is, more or less: 'the ability of solving new problems'.

If all of your friends toddlers are babbling away and your toddler is not talking yet you may have reason to become concerned. One of the things parents often use to gauge their child's development is how early they start talking. Babies start off experimenting with noises from an early age, usually consisting of babbling noises, the typical "goo goo" and "gaa gaa" sounds, these will turn into "ma ma" and "da da". These babbling sounds eventually progress into Mommy and Daddy. So how do you determine whether your child has delayed speech development and what do you do if your toddler is not talking yet?

From birth to one year your baby will go from crying to cooing to talking. Those are amazing milestones for your baby to accomplishment in such a short period of time as he develops his speech and language skills.