Cooing

At two or three months of age infants begin what is called "cooing". They start experimenting with making vowel noises, sometimes preceded or ended with an easy-to-make consonant noise such as m or g.

Moreover, the infant delights in having its noises echoed.

This was a delightful development with our son, for as parents it was the first truly interactive activity my wife and I had with him. Before the "echo game" he might smile in response to something we did, but usually our stimulus that prompted his smile was of a different kind: not a smile but a silly noise, funny face, or tickle. Now he and we could do the same thing back and forth at each other.

(At about the same time he began to smile regularly in response to our smile. So by week nine smiling also felt socially interactive. But the "echo game" came first for our son.)

I've added some videos of his "echo game" to our Picasa movie album. Enjoy!

Movies