Most of your child’s speech and language development occurs in her/his first few years! Here are some guidelines on what to expect for your child’s early speech development.
Around age one, your child should:
- Recognize their name
- Say 2-3 different words
- Understand a simple direction (i.e. “Wave bye-bye!”)
- Point to objects
- Imitate familiar words or sounds like “uh-oh” or “mama”
Between ages one – two years, your child should:
- Use at least 10-20 different words
- Understand what “no” means
- Point to simple body parts when named (eyes, nose, etc.)
- Begin putting two or more words together when talking (i.e. “More cookies!”)
- Produce the sounds “b, d, h, m, n, p” in the beginning of words
- Begin to put sounds on the ends of words (saying “cat” instead of “ca”)
Between ages two – three years, your child should:
- Begin asking simple questions (i.e. “Where’s daddy?”)
- Know all common body parts
- Have a vocabulary of 450 words
- Uses nouns and verbs in phrases (i.e. “eat pizza”)
- Produce the sounds “f, g, k, t, w”
Between ages three – four, your child should:
- Use four or more words in a sentence
- Be able to tell a story
- Have a vocabulary of 1000 words
- Can follow directions such as “Put your doll in the toy box.”
- Be able to tell you their first and last name
- Produce “s” in words
*The following speech sounds can sometimes develop later and should be produced correctly by the ages listed:
- “l” and “r”: between 3-6 years old
- “ch, “sh”, “j”, “v”, “th”: between 4-7 years old
These are just an overview of some of the speech and language milestones expected at a certain age. If you have any concerns regarding your child’s speech and language development, please contact our office to schedule an evaluation at 704-523-8027.
For more speech-language resources, visit our Resources For Families page. For more tips and tools, visit CSHC’s YouTube channel.
Blog written by Kelly Broady. Kelly is a Speech-Language Pathologist at Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center.