What should a 6-month-old be saying? Sounds, not words yet.

The short answer

No words. Not yet, and not expected. The speech milestone lists from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association both place a baby’s first one or two words around the first birthday.^{3, 4} At six months, what they and the CDC expect is sound: squeals, raspberries, laughter and taking turns making noises with you.^{1, 3, 4} If your six-month-old does those things, they are already saying plenty.

What a 6-month-old does instead

The checklists are the nearest thing to a six-month word list, and every item on them is a sound or a response, not a word:

• CDC, by six months: takes turns making sounds with you, blows raspberries, makes squealing noises; also knows familiar people, likes to look in a mirror, and laughs.¹
• NIDCD, four to six months: babbles in a speech-like way with many different sounds, including ones that begin with p, b and m; responds to changes in the tone of your voice; follows sounds with their eyes; notices toys that make sounds.³
• ASHA, four to six months: makes different vowel sounds, sometimes with a consonant; blows raspberries; giggles and laughs.⁴

Understanding comes first

A six-month-old says nothing, but is not starting from nothing. In a study in which six- to nine-month-olds looked at pairs of pictures while a parent named one, the babies looked at the named picture: everyday words for foods and body parts, picked up from ordinary life, already meant something.⁵ In another, six-month-olds looked to a video of a hand or of feet on hearing the words “hand” and “feet”, following earlier work in which six-month-olds looked to the right parent on hearing “Mommy” or “Daddy”.⁶

Underneath that, the ear is already being tuned. By six months, babies in the United States and Sweden already heard the vowel sounds of their own language differently from babies in the other country; the language a baby hears in the first half year shapes how they hear speech sounds.⁷ In a bilingual home, that means both languages are at work before any word is spoken.

What is coming: babbling, then words

The next milestone is the one people mean when they ask whether the baby is talking yet: strings of repeated syllables such as “bababa” and “mamamama”. The CDC lists them at nine months, ASHA at seven to nine.^{2, 4} Nearly all babies with typical hearing have begun this repeated-syllable babbling by about ten months. In a screening study of more than 3,400 at-risk babies around ten months old, those who started late went on to have smaller spoken vocabularies at eighteen, twenty-four and thirty months, which is why its absence is worth mentioning to the doctor.⁸ After the babbling come the first words, around the first birthday; our guide to when babies say their first words picks up the story there.

What you can do

Mostly, talk back. When researchers changed how mothers responded to their eight-month-olds’ sounds, babies whose mothers answered right after each sound produced more complex, more mature vocalizations than babies whose mothers responded at unrelated moments, and the change lasted after the session ended.⁹ The CDC’s own tip for the babbling months is the same idea: repeat your baby’s sounds, then say a simple word with those sounds in it, “bababa” and then “book”.²

• An answer to each sound. A squeal gets a squeal back, or a word. Answering right away is what made the difference in that study.⁹
• A name for what they are looking at. The banana, the dog, the light. Six-month-olds are already collecting these words before they can use them.⁵
• Your own languages. Both of them, if you have two. The sounds of each are being learned now.⁷
• Songs. They give the same words again and again with a tune to hang them on.
• A face rather than a screen. At this age the learning comes from someone who answers; our guide to screens under two has the current guidance.

When to ask

Hearing first. Most babies in the United States have a hearing screen before they leave the hospital, with the goal of screening by one month, diagnosis by three and support by six. If your baby did not pass that screen, or missed it, and has not had a full hearing test since, that test is worth arranging now. Hearing loss can also begin after birth, so if you ever think your baby may not be hearing well, at any age, the CDC’s advice is to ask the doctor for a hearing test as soon as possible.¹⁰ That includes a baby who does not react to loud sounds or follow sounds with their eyes.³

Beyond hearing, a baby who does not calm to your voice or does not make sounds back is worth mentioning at the next visit, and no repeated syllables by ten months is worth a conversation on its own.^{3, 8} Any concern is a good enough reason to ask, and the CDC’s page on what to do if you are concerned explains the free evaluation you can request.¹¹

A note on apps

At six months, Their First Words is for you, not your baby. Its first stage covers birth to two years, and at this age it works as a prompt list: see the word, hear a native voice say it, then put the phone away and say it to your baby. The picture that matters is your face, and the voice is yours.