Speech and Language Milestones

Your baby is listening to all of the sounds around them and beginning to associate different sounds with their sources such as your voice or the family dog's bark. Your baby's first form of communication will be crying until he begins to learn how to use his tongue, lips, and palate to gurgle and make long vowel sounds like "oo" and "ee" at around 2 months. Your baby will also begin smiling and responding to your facial expressions around this same time.

During this time your baby will start recognizing and responding to his name and other important words like "mommy" and "bye". Your baby will also begin babbling using back of the tongue sounds such as k and g and lip sounds such as m, b, p, and w. This is also the time your baby will start laughing or giggling and making different sounds when he is happy or upset.

Your baby will turn and look in the direction of sounds, as well as look where you point. Your baby will recognize and understand common words like "cup" "truck" and "dog" and start to respond to simple words and phrases like "no" "let's go" and "want more?". Babies at this age enjoy listening to music and playing games like peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake. Your baby's babbling will start to sound more like real words and he will begin using gestures like waving bye, reaching for "up", and shaking his head no. Your baby will also start imitating different speech sounds and words and eventually produce his first word such as "hi", "mama", or "uh-oh" around his first birthday.

Your baby will understand way more than he can say! He will understand basic sentences and questions like "Where is your bellybutton?" and follow simple commands like "Go get your shoes". During this time, your baby will continue babbling and changing his intonation to sound like real speech. By 18 months he should have a vocabulary of 20 words or more! 

Your baby will begin listening to stories with pictures and pointing to the pictures you name. Your baby should be able to point to several body parts and may even be able to follow simple 2 step commands such as "Go in your room and find your shoes". At around 19-20 months your baby will have a language explosion and begin acquiring new vocabulary words each week. By 24 months your baby should have a vocabulary of 50 words and begin putting them together to make meaningful phrases such as "more cookie". Your baby will also start asking questions like "where's mommy"  and "what's this?". 

During this time your toddler should have a word for almost everything even if he doesn't pronounce it correctly. He will begin to use words like "in" "on" and "under" and will talk about things that aren't in the room. At this time, your toddler should be putting 2-3 words together to talk about and ask for things. Your toddler will also begin to ask more questions, including "why" and should be able to learn new words quickly.  

Your child will begin understanding basic concepts such as shapes and colors. Your child should be able to answer simple "who" "what" and "where" questions and ask "when" and "how" questions. By 4 years old, your child should be using appropriate pronouns like "I" "you" "me" and "they" and some plurals like "dogs" and "cars". Most people should be able to understand your child at this age and they should be using 4-5 word sentences. 

Your preschooler should be able to understand time and order words such as "next" "last" "today" and "yesterday" and follow a wide variety of directions. Your child should be producing all speech sounds in words but may make mistakes with harder sounds such as "r". He should be able to participate in conversations and tell simple stories. At this age your child should be speaking in complete sentences that include pronouns, nouns, articles, and verbs. 

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