0–3 months

Newborn & Pre-Verbal

Baby can't talk back yet — but they're already tuning their ears to you.

The first twelve weeks are a haze of feeding, sleep and getting to know each other — and developmentally, your newborn isn't trying to understand words at all yet. What they are doing is tuning into the sound of language: pitch, rhythm and the melody of your voice. Research on infant-directed speech (the natural sing-song "parentese" most parents fall into instinctively) shows newborns already prefer this exaggerated, slowed cadence over flat adult speech, and that early exposure to it supports later sound discrimination — in any language. There is nothing to teach yet, and nothing baby needs to do back. The only job in this stage is building the habit: narrating the routines you're already doing, in Chinese, so the sound of the language becomes as familiar and safe as your own voice.

• Daily routine narration (feeding, nappy changes, sleep)
• Exaggerated, sing-song 'parentese' — newborns prefer it from birth
• No pressure for baby to respond — input only
• Building a habit for yourself as much as for baby