Let’s Wrap Up The Milestones!
Greetings everyone. Today I am going to wrap up the speech and language milestones section in my blog. We have spent the past few days discussing what your baby or toddler should be understanding/babbling/saying at certain stages in their development.
We will conclude this with a discussion of the 25-36 month old:
At this stage, your toddler should or be beginning to:
- use I, you, and me
- use three word sentences
- understand and respond to questions dealing with their immediate surroundings
- understand more than he or she can express
- be more and more intelligble/understandable to the unfamiliar listener
I hope this section has been helpful to you. Stay tuned for more ways to enrich your baby or toddler’s speech and language skills.
Let me leave you with this thought: Strong speech and language skills can lead to strong academic skills…get baby talking!
More Milestones…
Hello again..we are going to be covering the speech and language milestones of a 19-24 month old toddler.
So, what should your 19-24 month old be understanding and saying? Let’s jump in!
Your baby should or be beginning to:
- name common objects
- use two or three prepositions like on, in, or under
- put two words together (noun + verb)
- be approximately 65% intelligible
- use “my” and “mine”
- point to five body parts on self or doll
- say name on request
O.K. parents, please remember I am sharing general milestones and that there is great variability among children and how they devleop. I don’t want anyone freaking out if their child is not meeting these milestones yet! Use these as guidelines to monitor your child’s speech and language development. If you really start to see your little one lag behind, maybe it’s time to go get a speech and language evaluation. Again, refer to the Red Flags section I did in September/October for when it’s time to consider an evaluation.
Tomorrow, we are going to wrap up our speech and language milestones with the 24-36 month old…stay tuned!
Milestones Continued for 12-18 Month Old!
At 12-18 months, your baby should:
- have an expressive vocabulary of between 5- 20 words
- follow simple directions
- use mostly nouns
- be aware of the value of communication
I hope these speech and language milestones are helping you. If you have concerns about your baby or toddler’s communication development, you should check out the Red Flags section in my blog…
Remember, get baby talking!
Milestones Continued!
At 9-12 months, your baby should be demonstrating the following speech and language milestones:
- react to others’ moods
- show off to get attention
- may use first true word
- turn head immediately to own name
Stay tuned all this week for more communication milestones!
Speech/Language Milestones Continued!
Alright…let’s continue on with our speech-language milestones.
At 6-9 months, your baby should:
- respond to ‘come here’ (That’s pretty funny!)
- comprehend ‘no’
- become more outgoing with familiar people
- increase babbling and variety of sounds during babbling
Stay tuned for more…
Time To Review Important Speech/Language Milestones
I hope you are off to a fabulous start in this wonderful New Year! I thought I would take some time in my blog to review some basic communication milestones for the next several days.
At 3-6 months, your baby should:
-smile spontaneously to human contact
-smile when playing alone
-smile at faces of several family members
-stop crying when spoken to (Hopefully!)
-show different responses to different family members
-begin simple babbling
-laugh (And there is nothing a like a baby belly laugh to brighten your day!)
Stay tuned for more important communication milestones.
Remember, get talking, rather…get baby talking!
Shouldn’t I Talk To My Baby Like A Little Adult?
One of the most popular questions I receive as a speech-language pathologist is: “Shouldn’t I talk to my baby like a little adult?”
Yes and no. You should use proper grammar and sentence structure when speaking to them, but make your sentences a little shorter and to the point.
But you should also use that sing-songy quality that most people naturally do when conversing with babies, otherwise known in my profession as ‘child-directed speech’ or ‘parentese’, or in other words, baby talk!
Baby talk doesn’t mean using improper grammar or making speech errors when talking with your baby, i.e. Oooh, I just wuv your wittle toesies (read: Oh, I just love your little toes!), but it does mean using clearly pronounced words with that high-pitched melodic quality that comes naturally to us adults as we encounter a beautiful little baby!
So, don’t be afraid to use baby talk as I just defined it. Scientific studies have shown that babies are more interested in sing-songy speech than just plain speech.
Get talking!
Happy New Year!
Welcome 2008! Aren’t you ready for a fresh start? I get excited about the new year and all the things that go with it: resolutions, goal-setting, a clean slate! Often times though, our great expectations start out with a bang and end with a fizzle…
But that doesn’t have to happen this year! Make reasonable, achievable, and measurable goals for yourself and your family. Then you will be more likely to hit the target.
So, I bet you can guess what I am going to tell you to do more of this year with your baby… You got it! Talk! I know I might sound like a broken record, but a good thing is worth repeating over and over and over.
One of my personal goals is to be more consistent with my blog writing, so stay tuned for more Beyond Baby Talk. And, don’t forget, I’m real close to launching my first educational product. I’ll keep you posted!
Happy New Year!