Communication
Communication Milestones For Your Child
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Language and Communication: Overview (0-6 Months)
People are born to talk to each other, and nowhere is this more apparent than in a developing child. Babies
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Getting In Tune with Baby
How do I know what my baby wants? Everyone knows that babies cry when they are upset. They smile when
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Parentese: Why It’s Never Too Early to Start a Conversation (0-6 Months)
Researchers call the special way we talk to babies “motherese” or “parentese.” This sing-song speech, often accompanied by exaggerated facial
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Talking to Baby (0-12 Months)
How do you talk to your baby? Would you say, “hellooooo, sweeeeetie! How’s my baaabeee? Such a pretty baaabeee.” Does
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Prefers Sounds of Familiar Language to Those of Other Languages (0-3 Months)
At birth, infants can respond to human voices. They are also capable of distinguishing between the sounds of different languages,
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Can Discriminate between Syllables within Words (0-4 Months)
Within the first few days after birth, infants are sensitive to the stress patterns or rhythms of the words they
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Can Discriminate Mother’s Voice from Other Women’s Voices and Prefers Her Voice to Other Women’s Voices (0-4 Months)
At birth, infants can respond to human voices. They are also capable of distinguishing among the voices of different people,
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Capable of Spontaneous “Ooh” Sound (0-4 Months)
In their first months, infants start making sounds other than crying. Cooing sounds often occur when a baby is quiet,
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Heavy Reliance on Communication through Crying, which Can Occur for Several Hours a Day (0-4 Months)
For the first several months, crying is an infant’s most common form of vocalization. Some cries may sound different from
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Pays More Attention to Human Voices than to Other Sounds (0-4 Months)
At birth, infants show the ability to respond to human voices and speech. In one experiment, infants only a few
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Smiles at the Sound of a Familiar Voice (0-4 Months)
Babies prefer human voices to other sounds and are especially drawn to the voices of their caregivers. After 1 month,
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Talking with Infants (0-9 Months)
Infants start communicating right from birth. Crying, smiling, vocalizations, looking at your face, and looking away are all ways your
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Babbling Commences (1-3 Months)
Many infants begin babbling routinely at around 4 months, often entertaining themselves for long periods by producing new sounds (for
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Attempts to Imitate Some Sounds (1-4 Months)
After 2 months, some infants begin repeating a few of the exaggerated vowel sounds they hear when their caregivers speak
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Coos Back and Forth with Caregiver (1-4 Months)
In their first months, most babies begin to make cooing sounds. Some believe infants at this age begin to participate
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Begins Grouping Language Sounds into Specific Categories (1-6 Months)
Long before babies begin to learn specific words, they engage in an important sound-sorting process that enables them to distinguish
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Careful, Frank: Communicating through Emotional Expressions (2-24 Months)
As adults, we do this all the time to obtain feedback from the world around us, but it’s fascinating to
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Begins Lip Reading (2-8 Months)
When infants are spoken to, they will often pay special attention to a person’s lip movements. Even at 10 to
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Language and Communication: Overview (6-12 Months)
Between 6 and 12 months, babies are actively processing the language sounds they hear. They are learning to take “turns”
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Capable of Responding to Own Name (4-5 Months)
A baby’s name is generally used much more often than other words. Studies show that babies are early as 4
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Attempts to Respond to Sounds by Making Sounds (4-7 Months)
By 4 months, many babies begin listening for the individual sounds in words, noticing how vowels and consonants combine into
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Can Verbalize Happiness and Displeasure (4-7 Months)
Babies begin voicing their emotions and desires frequently at 5 or 6 months, laughing to show pleasure and crying when
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Capable of Responding to “No” (5-7 Months)
Although children don’t yet understand what words mean, they may stop doing something when a parent or caregiver says “no.”
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Mommy, Is This Okay? (6-12 Months)
Guiding your baby with your facial expressions and words. Eleven-month-old Cameron can walk, and he can go just about anywhere
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Responds To and Begins To Map Sounds of Language (6-12 Months)
Between 6 and 12 months, babies can literally “hear” the specific sounds of all languages spoken. When compared to adults,
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Snuggle Up for Reading (6-24 Months)
“Mommy! Mommy! Book! Book!” he says before you tuck him in for an afternoon nap. You grab his favorite book,
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Babbling Includes Short Strings of Consonants (6-9 Months)
By 4 months, babies begin listening for the individual sounds in words, noticing how vowels and consonants combine into syllables,
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Learns to Wait until Someone Else Is Finished Talking before Beginning to Speak (7-10 Months)
During their first 6 months, infants will often coo or babble while their caregivers are talking to them. By 7
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Can Respond to Simple Verbal Requests (8-10 Months)
Even though babies often say their first words at around 12 months, most have learned quite a few words by
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Begins to Use Gestures and Sounds to Communicate (8-11 Months)
By 8 to 10 months, babies attempt to communicate with others using gestures and pre-verbal sounds. There are two common
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Capable of Uttering “Dada” and “Mama” (8-12 Months)
Between 8 and 12 months, babies may stumble on words like “mama” and “dada” accidentally, learning what they mean when
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Begins to Understand that Words Can Refer to Physical Objects (9-12 Months)
Around 9 months, many infants understand that some words refer to specific objects. Although they can’t yet speak words, many
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Babbling Appears Less Random; Inflections Apparent (9-14 Months)
Between 8 and 12 months, the coos, gurgles, and other “baby” sounds become more like the sounds of the home
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Language and Communication: Overview (12-24 Months)
Around their first birthdays, many children say their first words. Within six months or so, many children have a “word
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Begins to Imitate Spoken Words (10-14 Months)
At 10 months, some infants will begin to repeat back words they hear, although they may not yet know that
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First Words Are Often Spoken at This Time (12-19 Months)
The remarkable achievement of using words to represent things usually begins around 12 months, but babies can vary by several
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What a Chatterbox
Naming objects is the First step If you’ve spent much time around young children, you’ve probably had conversations like this:
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Keep Talking: The Importance of Conversation (12-60 Months)
Talking with an 18-month-old is hard for those who don’t speak toddler language! Some words toddlers say sound just right.
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Recognition of Sounds of Own Language Complete; May Have Difficulty Discriminating Certain Sounds of Foreign Languages Later (13-22)
Between 6 and 12 months, babies can literally “hear” the specific sounds of all languages spoken. When compared to adults,
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Identifies Names of Familiar People, Objects, and Body Parts (14-24 Months)
Although there is a tremendous variation in the age that toddlers begin speaking recognizable words, their first few words generally
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Can Correctly Identify a Picture with its Spoken Name (14-25 Months)
Toddlers make visible progress in their comprehension skills early in their second year, demonstrating their growing understanding of language with
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Commonly Uses Two to Four-Word Sentences (15-25 Months)
At the end of their second year, toddlers begin communicating in two- to four-word sentences. This process begins when children
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Typically Has a Vocabulary of 200 Words (16-24 Months)
Research has shown that children at 2 years can have a vocabulary of around 200 words, although some normal children
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A Rapid Increase in Vocabulary Begins Now: Infants Add 10-20 Words per Day during This Period (18-24 Months)
Sometime around 18 months, most children experience a “word spurt” (or “naming explosion”) that leads to large increases in their
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Begins to Use Combinations of Words in Meaningful Ways (20-26 Months)
Before they reach 20 months of age, many children begin to add single words together when they speak. These early
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Language and Communication: Overview (2-3 Years)
In their third year, children’s language skills continue to grow at an astonishing rate. They begin to use pronouns (“I”
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Can Utter a Grammatically Correct Declarative Sentence (24-31 Months)
As children learn to speak in sentences, they also begin to use basic forms of correct grammar. Although children may
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Keep Talking
Building language every day. Learning to talk is harder than it seems. If your child makes mistakes, don’t worry, he
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Strangers Can Understand Most of the Words Spoken by the Toddler (26-36 Months)
By age 3, most children speak clearly enough that strangers can understand most of what they say. Despite this, children may
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Uses Pronouns (I, You, Me, We, They) and Some Plurals (26-36 Months)
During their third year, children begin using pronouns and plurals in their speech and understand the concept of “mine.” They
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Look Who’s Talking
Is that babbling and cooing designed to make us melt? The house is quiet. The baby has gone down for
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Two Languages Spoken Here
Learning two languages“Daddy? Can I have some cookies?” Maria asks.“I don’t know Sweetheart. Go ask your mom.”Maria catches her mom
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Understands Physical Relationships such as Under, Over, and In (28-37 Months)
It takes some time before young children can grasp the meanings of words that describe physical relationships. But during the
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Can Say Name, Age, And Gender (29-38 Months)
Most children delight in knowing and proclaiming their name and age. References: Shelov, S. P. (Editor-in-Chief). (2004). Caring for Your
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Understands Most Of What Adults Say (30-36 Months)
By age 3, children can generally understand most sentences and most of what adults say. References: Shelov, S. P. (Editor-in-Chief).
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Vocabulary Consists Of 1,000 Words (32-39 Months)
Around age 3, most children have a vocabulary of around 1,000 words. However, this may vary by a large amount,
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Language and Communication: Overview (3-5 Years)
It’s storytime! By age 5, most children can communicate effectively, and many enjoy telling creative stories. Their sentences get longer
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Can Ask a Grammatically Correct Question (35-41 Months)
Before age 3, children’s questions are generally incomplete, depending on words like “where” or “what” and a rising tone at
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Inserts Articles, Auxiliary Verbs, and Grammar Not Previously Seen (37-44 Months)
In the third year, children use language in increasingly sophisticated ways. This includes making sentences that use articles (“a” or
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Understands the Concept of “Same” and “Different” (39-48 Months)
During their fourth year, children begin to compare things in terms of similarities and differences. This is an important analytical
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Capable of Speaking in Sentences of Five to Six Words (40-48 Months)
At age 3, most children have active vocabularies of 300 or more words, talk in sentences of five or six
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Speaks in Complex Sentences (51-59 Months)
Language skills blossom around age 4, and preschoolers can now pronounce most sounds of the English language. Their vocabularies expand to