Language Development Milestones
My goal is to help you access the resources that you need to help your child become a more effective communicator. To better help parents, I have created a collection of valuable resources about pediatric speech therapy, language milestones, and communication disorders.
Expressive Language
- Make sounds that let others know when he or she is experiencing pleasure or pain
- Coo: early vowel sounds a baby makes
- Have differentiating cries: the baby uses a different cry for specific situations (e.g. one cry says “I’m hungry” and another says “I have pain)
- Smile to communicate
Receptive Language
- Respond to being held, fed, or changed
- Recognize familiar voices
Expressive Language
- Laugh or giggle when stimulated by silly faces or tickling
- Make raspberries: a great oral exercise used playfully by babies
- Babble: combining consonants and vowels (e.g. “da da da” or “ma ma ma”).
- Speech-like babbling includes many sounds, including the bilabial (two-lip) sounds /p/, /b/, and /m/
- Use sounds or gestures to indicate that he or she needs something done (“urgent” noises)
- Vocalize with intonation
Receptive Language
- Respond to human voices without visual cues by turning head and eyes
- React to environmental sounds
- React to sounds other than voices
- Enjoy music and rhythm
- Respond to name
- Respond appropriately to friendly and angry tones
- Understand “no”
- Anticipate events
- Begin to understand basic phrases
- Understand object permanence
Expressive Language
- Protest when a toy is taken away
Receptive Language
- Listen when spoken to
- Turn and look at your face when his or her name is called
Expressive Language
- Relate “mama” and “dada” with the caregivers
- Have a change in their babbling. It will now include more consonants, as well as long and short vowels
- Use speech or other sounds besides crying to get and hold your attention
- Use three to six words meaningfully (e.g. “hi” or “bye)
- Speak their first words (probably not spoken very clearly)
- Practice inflection
Receptive Language
- Respond to request to “come here”
- Respond to “no” most of the time
- Recognize the names of common items (e.g. “daddy,” “eyes,” or “phone”)
- Recognize familiar people and action verbs
- Respond to simple requests (e.g. “give to mommy” or “more juice?”)
- Follow one-step commands with gestures
- Be aware of the social value of speech
Expressive Language
- Imitate others using gestures, speech, and noises
- Ask two-word questions (e.g. “where ball?” or “what’s that?”)
Receptive Language
- Point to pictures in a book when you name them and point to a few body parts when asked
- Understand simple questions (e.g. “where’s the bunny?”)
- Follow one-step commands without gestures
Expressive Language
- Use seven to 10 words confidently
- Combine two words in other ways (e.g. “no doggie” or “more push”)
- Have a vocabulary of 10-50+ words
- Have speech that is 25% intelligible to an unfamiliar listener
- String together many sounds, add intonation and gestures as if they are asking a question or telling a story in another language
- Have a vocabulary that is primarily nouns
- Repeat words and begin using more words than gestures to communicate
- Use jargon with emotional content
Receptive Language
- Enjoy (repetitively) listening to simple stories, singing songs, and saying rhymes
- Be able to follow simple commands
- Begin to understand contrasting concepts or meanings like hot / cold, stop / go, or nice / yucky
- Use objects appropriately in play
Expressive Language
- Use 100 words meaningfully, but vocabulary is 150-300 words
- Label familiar objects by name
- Have speech that is 50-75% intelligible to unfamiliar listeners
- Combine words into short sentences (largely noun-verb combinations)
- Make sentences that are 1.2 words on average (e.g. “bye dada” or “want juice”)
- Use two pronouns correctly: I, me, and you (although “me” and “I” are often confused; “my” and “mine” are also beginning to emerge
- Be able to use at least two prepositions (“in” or “on”)
- Ask questions with rising intonation
- Respond to yes/no questions: may only shake their head
- Produce animal sounds
- Identify at least five pictures by name
- Identify self by name
- Say “no”
- Talk to self while playing
Receptive Language
- Enjoy (repetitively) listening to simple stories, singing songs, and saying rhymes
- Be able to follow simple commands
- Begin to understand contrasting concepts or meanings like hot / cold, stop / go, or nice / yucky
- Use objects appropriately in play
Expressive Language
- Use 200 words meaningfully
- Have speech that is 70% intelligible to an unfamiliar listener
- Be able to combine three to four words to form short phrases
- Be able to identify actions in pictures
- Be able to identify the function/use of some objects
- Answer simple “wh” questions logically (who, what, when, where, and why)
- Be able to use plurals and simple prepositions (“in” and “on”)
- Make utterances that are usually one, two, or three words long and family members can usually understand them. Your toddler may ask for or draw your attention to something by naming it (“Elephant!”) or one of its attributes
- (“Big!”) or by commenting (“Wow!”)
Receptive Language
- Notice sounds like the telephone or doorbell ringing and may point or become excited, get you to answer, or attempt to answer themselves
Expressive Language
- Have a vocabulary of approximately 700-1000 words
- Have speech that is 75-100% intelligible to an unfamiliar listener
- Use pronouns (I, you, and me) correctly
- Answer more complex “wh” questions logically (who, what, when, where, and why)
- Use articles and auxiliaries (e.g. the, a, is, or am)
- Combine four or more words
- Use some plurals and past tenses
Receptive Language
- Comprehend approximately 500-1000 words
- Understand use of objects
- Understand the concept of turn taking
- Label parts of objects
- Understand simple descriptive adjectives and pronouns
- Know differences between gender
- Know simple spatial concepts (e.g. in/on/under)
- Be able to match and identify colors
- Understand several quantity concepts (e.g. one, some, or all)
- Understand most simple questions dealing with his environment and activities
- Be able to give his or her gender, name, and age
Do you still have questions or need more information from a top pediatric speech-language pathologist in Chicago?
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