Parents sometimes question whether their child’s speech and language development in the early stages of their lives is on par with other children of similar age. Whilst children develop at different rates, there is a general pattern to a child’s speech and language development. Set out below is a summary of the key speech and language developmental milestones of a child.
At 12 Months
- Understand about 10 words
- Respond to their name
- Recognise greetings and gestures, such as ‘hi’ and ‘bye-bye’
- Recognise a few familiar people and objects (e.g., mummy, blankie, teddy)
- Make eye contact
- Start to use sounds, gestures, and say a few words
- Continue to babble
- Copy different sounds and noises
At 18 Months
- Understand up to 50 words and some short phrases
- Follow simple instructions (e.g., ‘throw the ball’)
- Point to familiar objects when named
- Point to some pictures in familiar books
- Say 6 to 20 single words – some easier to understand than others, but becoming more consistent
- Copy lots of words and noises
- Name a few body parts
- Use objects in pretend play (e.g., hold toy phone to their ear and say ‘hello?’)
At 2 Years
- Follow simple two part instructions (e.g., ‘give me the ball and the car’)
- Respond to simple wh-questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘where’
- Point to several body parts and pictures in books when named
- Understand when an object is ‘in’ and ‘on’ something.
- Say more than 50 single words
- Put two words together (e.g., ‘bye teddy’, ‘no ball’)
- Use their tone of voice to ask a question (e.g.,‘teddy go?’)
- Say ‘no’ when they do not want something
- Use most vowel sounds and a variety of consonants (m, n, p, b, k, g, h, w, t, d)
- Start to use ‘mine’ and ‘my’.
At 3 Years
- Follow more complex two part instructions (e.g., give me the teddy and throw the ball)
- Understand simple wh-questions, such as ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘who’
- Understand the concepts of ‘same’ and ‘different’
- Sort items into groups when asked (e.g., toys vs food)
- Recognise some basic colours
- Say four to five words in a sentence
- Use a variety of words for names, actions, locations and descriptions
- Ask questions using ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘who’
- Talk about something in the past, but may use ‘-ed’ a lot (e.g., ‘he goed there’)
- Have a conversation, but may not take turns or stay on topic
At 4 Years
- Answer most questions about daily tasks
- Understand most wh-questions, including those about a story they have recently heard
- Understand some numbers
- Show an awareness that some words start or finish with the same sounds.
- Use words, such as ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘because’, to make longer sentences
- Describe recent events, such as morning routines
- Ask lots of questions
- Use personal pronouns (e.g., he/ she, me/you) and negations (e.g., don’t/can’t)
- Count to five and name a few colours
At 5 Years
- Follow three part instructions (e.g., put on your shoes, get your backpack and line up outside)
- Understand time related words (e.g., ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘now’ and ‘later’)
- Start thinking about the meaning of words when learning
- Understand instructions without stopping to listen
- Begin to recognise some letters, sounds and numbers.
- Use well formed sentences to be understood by most people
- Take turns in increasingly longer conversations
- Tell simple, short stories with beginning, middle and end
- Use past and future verbs correctly (e.g., ‘went’, ‘will go’)
- Use most speech sounds, but still may have difficulties with ‘s’, ‘r’, ‘l’ and ‘th’
