Development

As speech/language pathologists, we are constantly asked, "what should my child be doing at this age?"  I have found many speech and language developmental milestones on the internet, but I liked the way the milestones were laid out on the speechdelay.com website.  They also have listed many great "talking tips" that parents can use at home.  The link is below!

http://www.speechdelay.com/milestones

To briefly summarize what they have said at speechdelay.com, I put their milestones here...

0-6 months:
Cooing and babbling;

Continual awareness of sound (turns to sound, stops crying when spoken to);

Uses eye gaze to indicate interest




0-7 months:
First true words appear (they are often people, or nouns);

Same syllable is repeated (mama, dada);

Child demonstrates increased understanding of daily routines.




12 months:
Child says 3-5 words;

Child recognizes his/her name;

Understands simple instructions;

child may use both gestures and vocalizations together

Child understands common objects and actions (e.g., cookie, eat, juice).




18 months:
Child uses about 10-20 words at age 18 months including names;

Recognition of pictures of familiar persons and objects

Early 2-word combinations of words emerge;

Needs are requested verbally such as "more, up";

Child will point, gesture, follow simple commands, imitate simple actions, hum or sing;



24 months (2 years):
Child understands simple questions and commands

Identifies familiar actions/activities in pictures (i.e. "sleeping, eating")

Follows directions to put objects "on, off, in"

Puts two words together on average

Sentence length of up to three words

Child will refer to self by name

Labels pictures

Final "s" is used for plurals

Vocabulary may jump to 300 words during the year!  In fact between the ages of 2 and 4, kids may increase their vocabulary by as much as 2 words per day;



30 months (2 1/2 years):
Child has about 450 word vocabulary;

Child is able to give his/her first name;

Child uses past tense, plurals, and combines nouns and verbs;

Begin to identify objects from a group by their function and parts (ie. "which one has wheels?", "which one can we eat?");

Begin to use verbs with "ing" endings (i.e. "eating");

Early concepts such as "big, little" are identified;

Child will use "no, not" and answer "where" questions.


3 Years:
Child will name at least one color;

Child will often talk during play, or when alone;

Child can tell a basic story or idea;

Child can use 3-4 word sentences;

Begins to understand "not";

Can identify items in a familiar category or group (i.e. "show me the animal");

Child can have a vocabulary of up to 1000 words;

Children are often able to tell their name and street.


4 years:
Child will follow 2-3 step commands;

Child will ask many questions, including "who/why";

Child talks in 4-5 word sentences;

Understands and verbalizes spatial concepts more readily such as "on, under, next to..";


5 years:
Child defines objects by their function;

Identifies spatial concepts such as "on, behind";

Child uses 5-6 word sentences;

Child understands many opposites;

Child can use different tenses (past, present, future), and many sentence types.

Child will talk in the past tense correctly.