Engaging With Your Infant: It Starts Before They Can Talk

Talk to your baby. Play with them. Look at them. Respond to them. Something that may leave you feeling like you are crazy, but is crucial to social and language development in your baby: narrate what you’re about to do before you do it. Here we are going to explore this radical idea and how this small habit of treating them like someone whose experience matters as an infant is one of the greatest gifts you can give them.

The Radical Idea Behind “I’m Going to Pick You Up Now”

Early childhood educator Magda Gerber spent decades advocating for what she called respectful infant care. One core principle: don’t just pick your baby up and do the thing, tell them first.

“I’m going to pick you up now.” “I’m going to change your diaper.” “I’m going to wipe your face.”

Give them a beat to respond, let their body prepare. Let them be a participant in their own care, not a passive recipient of it.

This might feel strange at first, especially with a newborn who can’t respond in any obvious way, but Gerber’s point was never that the baby would reply with words. The point is that the practice of pausing, narrating, and waiting builds the relational foundation that everything else grows from.

Why This Tiny Habit Matters So Much

Gerber believed, and research has supported, that babies are whole people from birth who deserve to be treated as active participants in their own lives, not objects to be managed efficiently through a care routine.

When you narrate your actions, make eye contact, and wait for your baby’s response before proceeding, you’re communicating something profound without a single word they can yet understand:

• Their experience matters
• Their responses are worth waiting for
• They have a say in what happens to their body

That’s the beginning of autonomy and trust, and it arrives much earlier than most people think.

Every coo you respond to. Every gaze met and held. Every feed, every bath, every diaper change narrated with warmth instead of rushed through in silence. All of these small moments work together to build a sense of self in your baby.

What This Actually Looks Like Day to Day

You don’t need special equipment or extra time. You need to slow down slightly and talk out loud to a person who can’t talk back yet, trusting that it matters anyway.

• Before you lift them: “I’m going to pick you up now.”
• Before a diaper change: “Time to get you cleaned up. Here we go.”
• When they make a sound: respond to it. Mirror it back. Treat it like the beginning of a conversation, because it is.

Research on early language development shows that the number of words a baby hears in their first years, and crucially the back-and-forth conversational quality of those interactions, directly predicts language development, cognitive growth, and social connection later in childhood. These are not meaningless momentary exchanges, you are building a brain.