Southern Babble

Your Baby Loves to Say WANT! Southern Babble

This is their second book written and illustrated by speech-language pathologists. Your Baby Loves to Say WANT! guides readers through a baby's language journey by illustrating how he uses one of the most common WANT! through gesturing.




With so many "first word" books containing nouns, numbers and letters, many families need to know that most toddlers only use nouns 20 percent of the time. The other 80 percent of their vocabulary are, what speech- language pathologists, consider functional core words. These are the words promoted in speech therapy and in this book.




Based on the study by Banajee et al. in 2003, the word WANT was one of the top 5 words toddlers used during daily routines and familiar environments. This word is simple to say, can be expressed easily through gesturing, and paired easily in phrases with other functional words.

The colorful illustrations showcase these simple but powerful words promoting language development through gestures, words and phrases.




"I loved working with my child on these core words. I am excited to have another book to work on more functional vocabulary. My child loved to say THAT! when we read her last book." - Rebecca Coyne, teacher and mother of 2