Pointing is one of the most important preverbal skills that children need to acquire before saying their first words.  

Pointing is so important for speech and language development for many reasons:

1. When I child points to something, it makes us look at what they are pointing to.  When you and your child are looking at the same thing, you are engaged in joint attention.    Joint attention is a very important communication and social skill.
2. It makes us label what they are pointing at.  When a child points to something, we typically label the item of interest. For example, if your child points to a bird in the sky, you probably will say something like “Look! It’s a bird!”  Children learn the meaning of words by hearing the label of what they are interested in.
3. It makes us describe what they are pointing at.  After you have labeled the bird in the example above, you may find yourself describing it. You might say, “It’s a bird.  The bird is flying up in the sky!” Now your child is learning more words like “flying, up, and sky”.
4. It makes us ask them questions about what they are pointing at.  In addition to labeling and describing, you may also ask your child questions about the object.  For example, you may say “Do you hear the bird chirping? It’s going chirp, chirp, chirp!” Or when the bird flies away, you might say “Where did the bird go?  Bye bird!"
5. Research also shows that the more children point early in their development, the better their language abilities are later on because of the association between pointing and social communication.