Speech Therapy

SPEECH & LANGUAGE MILESTONES

 

 

 

 

 

0-6 Months: What you can expect

• Cooing and babbling

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

• Uses eye gaze to indicate interest

• Smiles when sees familiar family members

Talking Tip: Have hearing tested if infant appears unresponsive to environmental or speech sounds. Use lots of intonation with child, and short simple language. When your infant is feeding, take "turns" talking -- caregiver talks to infant, then the baby drinks/eats. This is an early form of turn-taking. The sing-songy speech of a mother to her child is an excellent way of getting and maintaining your baby's attention. It makes the child more aware of human speech and encourages early social interactions.

 

7-12 Months: What you can expect

• First true words appear (they are often people or nouns)

• Same syllable is repeated (mama, dada, baba)

• Turns and looks in direction of sounds

• Listens when spoken to

• Recognizes words for common items like "cup", "shoe", "book", or "juice"

• Begins to respond to requests (e.g. "Come here" or "Want more?")

• Uses gestures to communication (waving, holding arms to be picked up)

Talking Tip: Respond to your child's vocalizations (e.g., if child says "mama", you could respond with "mama, yes, I'm mama"). You may provide a language rich environment by talking about your daily routines through out the day in simple language (2-3 words at a time). This helps to build receptive language skills. Use lots of speech/routine games such as "Pat-a-Cake", "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and singing. Use lots of intonation and gestures when you are interacting with your child. Watch, as well as listen to your child's responses, and respond to all intentional communication both nonverbal and verbal (a smile, movement, vocal attempt, or actual word).

 

12 Months: What you can expect

• 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)

Talking Tip: Label items frequently. When child reaches or shows interest in an item or action, label it using 1-2 words. Provide choices with 2 items such as "want juice or milk" while holding carton of each. Continue with nursery rhymes, colorful books, "Peek-a-Boo", "Pat-a-Cake" and songs. Narrate everything you do in front of your child (e.g., "Mama put milk in cup).

 

18 Months: What you can expect

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

• Recognizes pictures of familiar persons and objects

•  Points to pictures in books when named and a few body parts when asked

• 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

• Follows simple commands and understands simple questions ("Roll the ball," "Kiss the baby," "Where's your shoe?")

Talking Tip: Talk using simple, clear language. Imitate your child frequently in both action and sound, and model correct language. You do not have to "correct" the child, just model an appropriate response. Discuss what your child is feeling, hearing or doing throughout the day. Don't forget to praise your child's efforts to communicate.

 

24 Months (2 Years): What you can expect

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

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

• Uses two- or three- words to talk about and ask for things

• Child will refer to self by name

• Labels pictures

• Final "s" is used for plurals (e.g., cats)

• Follows two requests ("Get the book and put it on the table")

Talking Tip: You can use some questions to stimulate additional thought and language, however limit the use/frequency of questions you use. Too many questions can be demanding, and frustrating if the child is unable to formulate a response. Frequent "commenting" often elicits as much or more language from a child! Give your child time to respond! Waiting as long as 10 seconds for a response is often needed. Introduce new vocabulary through reading books that have a simple sentence on each page. Make sure requests are simple (i.e., "touch your nose").

 

30 Months (2.5 Years): What you can expect

• 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

• Begins to identify objects from a group by their function and parts (e.g., "which one has wheels?", "which one can we eat?")

• Begins 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

• Child will name at least one color

Talking Tip: Model pronouns such as "I, he, she" with short phrases (e.g., "I like cookies"). Read familiar and/or repetitive stories and encourage child to tell what is going to happen, or respond to simple questions about the story. Remember, you don't have to read "the words" in a book, sometimes simplifying the language and personalizing it to the child can be more beneficial for kids!

 

3 Years: What you can expect

• Child will often talk during play, or when alone

• Child can tell a basic story or idea

• Answers simple "who?", "what?", "where?", and "why?" questions

• Can identify items in a familiar category or group (e.g., "show me the animal")

• Talks about activities at school or at friends' homes

• People outside of the family usually understand child's speech

• Uses a lot of sentences that have 4 or more words.

• Child can have a vocabulary of up to 1000 words;

• Children are often able to tell their name and street

Talking Tip: Encourage vocabulary development by providing a language rich environment at home. Using simple sentences at or just above the child's level (i.e. 4-5 words ) when talking around the child. This will help to build an understanding of language and show how words can be used together to formulate sentences. Children learn a lot of language through play. Play with child as if you are a child (e.g., model dolls "talking"/carrying out familiar routines. ,"drive" toy cars to the "store" to get milk, then "drive home" and put away the groceries or prepare dinner). Children will use a lot of pretend play and carryout early social sequences. Playing with other children is also a good way to develop social and language skills. A child may not have all the sounds, however he/she should be intelligible by age 3. If a delay is suspected, discuss it with your pediatrician for a possible speech/language evaluation.

 

4 Years: What you can expect

• Child will follow 2-3 step commands

• Child pays attention to a short story and answers simple questions about them

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

• Child talks in a minimum of 4-5 word sentences

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

• Child will talk in the past tense correctly

• Names some letters and numbers.

Talking Tip: Start to classify objects into bigger categories such as "animals, things to wear, things to eat." To do this, you can visit the zoo (talk about animals), discuss what you will eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner (talk about foods), plan outfits for particular occasions (talk about clothing), etc. You can talk to your child in longer sentences, and read longer stories. Making up, or telling stories to each other can help to build language skills. Speech sounds may not be perfect yet, so remember to model the correct sounds.

 

5 Years: What you can expect

• Child defines objects by their function

• Identifies spatial concepts such as "on, behind, beside"

• Child understands many opposites

• Child uses 5-6 word sentences

• Tells stories that stick to topic

• Communicates easily with other children and adults

• Says most sounds correctly except a few like l, s, r, v, z, ch, sh, th

Talking Tip: Listen to your child when he/she talks to you, and encourage child to discuss feelings, ideas, or thoughts. Try to stimulate, and carry on a conversation. Comment frequently on what you think your child is feeling/thinking to encourage conversation. Use longer, adult like speech with your 5-year old. They will generally understand more than they can say.

 

6 Years: What you can expect

• Child is developing phonological awareness skills (sound/letter), and sound/word segmentation skills

• Says rhyming words

• Can generate creative sentences

• Understands time/space concepts such as "before/after, first/second/last"

Talking Tip: Begin or continue with phonics/phonological awareness activities. letter-sound matching, segmenting words into sounds, and blending sounds back into words, rhyming, counting/clapping out syllables, and break larger words into their component parts (suffixes and prefixes, compound words) are all good phonological awareness activities that will help to develop reading and spelling skills.