At what age do children speak

When Do Babies Start Talking? – Children's Health

It's such a joyful moment when your baby speaks that first precious word.

But when should that happen? And should you worry if your baby doesn't speak as early as other children?

Kaleigh Loeffler, a speech-language pathologist with Children's Health℠, explains speech milestones to watch for in babies and toddlers and ways you can encourage your child to talk.

At what age do babies start talking?

Most babies say their first word sometime between 12 and 18 months of age. However, you'll start to hear the early stages of verbal communication shortly after birth.

"From birth to 3 months, babies make sounds. There's smiling and cooing," explains Loeffler. "Once your baby hits 6 months, you may hear more speech-like babbling. Your baby might make the 'puh' sound, the 'buh' sound and something that sounds like 'mi. '"

As your baby grows, you can expect these early speech milestones:

Between birth and 3 months: Babies make cooing noises.
Between 4 and 6 months: Babies laugh, giggle and make playful sounds.
By 12 months old: Babies make longer strings of sounds like ba-ba-ba-ba-ba or da-da-da-da-da or mi-mi-mi.
At 12 to 18 months old: Many babies start using single words. They name familiar people and objects – such as ma-ma, da-da, ball and cat.

"Typically, right before that 1-year mark, babies experiment with different sounds, and then you might hear a few words," says Loeffler. "But don't worry if your baby is not forming complete words by age 1. Sometimes the babbling continues well into the next year of life, with pointing and gesturing. That's OK. Your baby is still communicating."

Speech development chart

After age 1, Loeffler advises parents to watch for yearly speech milestones.

By 12 to 18 months: Baby says single words.
By age 2: Child says two-word phrases, such as "Dog sit." "Mommy go."
By age 3: Child has words for almost everything and speaks three-word phrases.

Each year after that, children should form longer and longer sentences.

How many words should an 18-month-old and 2-year-old say?

At 18 months old, babies may say anywhere between 10-50 words. If your child has not hit that mark, you don't necessarily need to worry. Children develop at different rates.

"Instead of focusing on a specific word count for each age, consider: Is your child's vocabulary growing? Are they learning more words each week?" advises Loeffler. "If you're seeing continuous growth, that's an indicator that speech is going well."

Talk with your pediatrician if your child does not speak about 50 words by age 2.

What factors affect your baby's ability to talk?

Sometimes language development is delayed if your baby has certain medical issues or diagnoses, such as:

Autism Spectrum Disorder
Cerebral palsy
Down syndrome
Hearing impairment

Environment also plays a factor in speech development. If children are not brought up with a rich exposure to language – where people interact with them often – they may be late talkers.

Has the COVID‑19 pandemic or masks affected babies' speech and language development?

At this point, there's not much research on how masks affect speech development. However, we know that a baby's face time with parents, caregivers and siblings is extremely valuable.

"In the first months of life, it's important for babies to see your face and mouth and learn to imitate your facial expressions," explains Loeffler. "Babies and toddlers with diagnosed speech problems need those visual cues. So, for them, masks could be especially challenging."

Long quarantines or isolation may also slow speech development in certain children if they don't get enough social interaction with others at home, preschool, daycare or playdates.

It's important to remember that masks and social distancing have played a critical role in keeping your child and family healthy. Loeffler recommends that parents raising babies and toddlers during the pandemic take steps to encourage speech development, such as:

Spending lots of time interacting with your little ones at home without masks. Let them see your face so they can imitate your speech and facial expressions.
Making plans for your children to play safely around other children – possibly outdoors in your yard, at a park or on a play date.

Are bilingual children delayed talkers?

There's a common misconception that children who grow up in bilingual homes and learn two languages will have speech delays. However, Loeffler says there is no evidence to support this. "If a child knows 10 words in both English and Spanish – water and agua, for example – we would count that as a 20-word vocabulary," she says. "Developmentally, they're on track."

How to teach your baby to talk

The best way to encourage your child to talk is to spend time talking and interacting with them. "Give your baby lots of face time and one-on-one interaction. Children learn language by watching and imitating your facial expressions. They're like sponges, absorbing everything around them," says Loeffler.

To help your baby talk, try these tips:

When your baby coos, respond. Say: "Oh, are you happy? Are you sleepy?"
When baby smiles, smile back. This back-and-forth interaction is communication. Your baby learns to pick up cues and respond.
Narrate what you and baby do – as you do it. For example, say: "Daddy's changing baby's diaper." "Baby is holding a spoon." "Baby's kicking the ball." This parallel talk helps babies learn vocabulary.
Read a book. Point to the pictures on each page. Talk about the colors and objects.
Sing songs and nursery rhymes. To capture your baby's attention, dance or gently rock your baby as you sing. Act out "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Jack and Jill." Your baby will associate movement with words.
Play. Any type of play – with balls, toys or pots and pans – contributes to babies' language development. They imitate what you do and say.
Continue the conversation: As your baby becomes a toddler, teach them to put together new words by expanding on what they say. For example:
- When your child points to a dog and says the word "dog," you can say: "Yes, that's a big dog. That dog is running outside. Hear the dog bark."
- If the child says "airplane," say: "That's a big airplane. That plane is flying high in the sky."

Using toys and apps to promote speech development

Many parents are curious if certain toys or apps can help their baby learn to talk. Loeffler recommends choosing toys that display cause and effect. This can help children develop their thinking skills, which is necessary for language growth.

Some examples of cause-and-effect toys include:

You put a ball in a hole, and it goes down a slide.
You put a coin in a piggy bank, and it sings a song.
You wind up a box, and a stuffed animal pops out.

If you use an app, be sure to engage with your child and carry that activity over into the child's real world. Face-to-face interaction is best for speech and language development.

What are signs that your child may need help with speech and language development?

Consult your pediatrician if your baby does NOT:

Show interest or attempt to communicate (such as pointing or gesturing) by 15 months
Imitate a variety of sounds and words by 18 months
Follow simple directions by 18 months ("Get the ball.")
Use word combinations by age 2 ("Mamma go." "Baby drink.")
Identify people and objects in their environment

Other signs of potential speech issues in children include:

Your child seems to have a good vocabulary, but you cannot understand the words by age 2. 5 or 3.
Your child has a sudden loss of speech and language skills.

If you're concerned about your child's speech development, talk to your primary care doctor or pediatrician. If needed, you'll get a referral to a speech-language therapist for an evaluation. Sometimes, your child just needs a little extra help. Early intervention can ensure your child thrives.

Learn more.

At Children's Health, the Speech Therapy program is home to experts who specialize in helping children overcome speech and language impairments. Our multidisciplinary works with patient families and providers to help children develop the skills to successfully communicate, socialize and learn. Learn more about speech language pathology or see more information about developmental milestones in babies.

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cognitive, coronavirus, development, developmental delay, infant, newborn, therapy

When should my child start speaking?

Children develop at varying rates in all sorts of ways, from when they take their first steps to when they understand that their own perspective might be different to someone else’s. Language is no different so there is no set age at which a child should start talking.

There are, of course, certain milestones which most children achieve in their communication at certain ages and it can be a daunting time for parents who see their friend’s children begin speaking earlier than their own. For most children, this is likely just the natural variation in when children achieve their own milestones. For others, this could be a temporary language delay which will eventually see them catch up without any intervention.

But for some children a delay in early language milestones might be the first sign of a long-term disorder of language development. So what should parents look for if they are concerned about their child’s language development?

Read more: Surprising facts about how we talk to babies

It’s not all about speech

Generally, children begin to babble from around the age of six months and say their first words between ten and 15 months (most start speaking at about 12 months). They then begin to pick up increasing numbers of words and start to combine them into simple sentences after around 18 months.

It is important to note that language is not just the sounds we make with our voice. The idea that language is only speech is a huge misconception. We take it for granted, but understanding the language used by those around us is a very complex task. We need to have knowledge of the words being used, have a concept of what those words mean in different contexts and understand the meaning of a sentence based on the order of the words. These are called receptive language skills.

Parents should be aware that from the earliest stages of language development, children understand more than they can communicate themselves. Indeed, it is through children’s understanding of the language surrounding them – in other words, what parents, siblings and caregivers are saying – that they build their own language skills.

Some conditions affecting speech, such as a stutter, are highly noticeable. In contrast, the problems children have when they are not developing language in the typical fashion can sometimes be hidden. Sometimes seemingly complex instructions can be readily understood due to the overall context. For example, telling your child to “go and get your coat and boots on” may be understood due to the context of getting ready to leave the house and understanding the words “coat” and “boots”.

Other instructions with a less clear context, such as “get the blue and black book that is under the blanket on the chair”, require a better understanding of the language itself and might be harder for children with language difficulties. It is often difficult to identify an underlying language problem in many children, particularly when they are good at using the social context.

Read more: Before babies understand words, they understand tones of voice

When to seek help

For the children themselves, it can be very frustrating when they are unable to express their thoughts or when they don’t fully understand what is going on around them. A child that has temper tantrums but finds it hard to say why they are distressed may have an underlying language difficulty. This might signal language delay, which is not uncommon. If you notice that your child finds it hard to follow simple instructions this could be due to a difficulty in understanding language, which may indicate a more persistent problem.

About 70-80% of children with expressive delays catch up with their language by the age of four. For others this might highlight developmental language disorder (DLD), a long-term impairment of language skills. Even experts find it difficult to tell language delay and disorder apart before primary school. DLD is thought to affect 7.6%, or one in 15 children. DLD can affect expressive and receptive language skills and it lasts into adulthood.

All children have the capacity to thrive, but children with DLD may need extra support to achieve their full potential. Rather than “wait and see” it is a good idea to seek professional advice, particularly if your child is between 18 and 30 months and appears to have problems understanding language, uses very few gestures to communicate and is slow at learning new words. The first step is to contact a local speech and language therapy service.

Boosting language skills

Language is flexible and there is no such thing as too much language input. Whatever level of language development your child has, there are always things that you can do to boost their language skills further.

For example, when you are playing with your toddler, watch where their eyes are going and label the things they see. If they say “horse running”, you can build on this with: “Yes, the horse is running! Where is he running to?” This helps children to learn new words and concepts as well as learn about how better to structure sentences.

Reading books together is great for building language skills, as you can find new words in books for things not often seen in real life, such as zoo animals. It is also valuable in promoting attention and listening skills. Be sure to ask lots of “why” and “how” questions to get more language out of your child, rather than questions which can be answered with a “yes” or “no”. Watching videos or children’s television can be similar, but only if you are watching and discussing the videos or shows together.

It sounds simple but having back and forth conversations with your child can help enormously. Not only can this be incredibly rewarding socially, but it can help build and expand their language and wider social communication skills. Try to build this into regular activities, such as talking with your child while doing the supermarket shop.

At what age should a child speak?

Reviewer Kravtsova Elena Mikhailovna

93604 views

November 23, 2021

Speech is one of the important skills of a child, and its formation begins long before the baby speaks on his own. The baby perceives the speech of the parents and the adults around him, imitates it and subsequently relies on the acquired experience. When should a child start talking and how to help him?

Standards for the development of speech in children

The development of speech occurs gradually. Each child is individual, so it can either be ahead of the age norms or a little behind. It is believed that girls start talking earlier than boys, and parents of boys do not always understand whether to worry or just wait. The reason is in physiological features: the maturation of some brain structures of girls is faster. Because of this, they improve their vocabulary at an early age. But not only the number of words, but also other signs are important for assessing the speech development of the child. They are universal for both boys and girls.

The speed and quality of speech development in children are individual, and the normative boundaries are conditional. To understand that everything is in order with the baby, the pediatrician will help. For a preliminary assessment of the development of speech, one can focus on the norms described by the Soviet psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky ^[1].

Up to year

In the first months of life, the baby listens to his parents and the adults around him. He distinguishes the voices of people who are talking to him, turns his head towards the sound. First, the child masters vowel sounds, then by the age of three or four months, consonant sounds appear, and the baby begins to walk.

At the age of 6-12 months, the child imitates the sounds of adult speech more actively. Babble appears - the baby pronounces the same syllables, for example, “ma-ma-ma”, “pa-pa-pa”, “dya-dya-dya”. At about ten months, babies get used to responding to their name. By the age of a child, the first short meaningful words appear (“on”, “give”, “mother”). Vocabulary ranges from 3 to 20 words. In addition, a baby of this age responds correctly to requests to show or give something (performs or shakes his head negatively).

One to two years

In a year, the baby repeats words that he often hears, adjectives appear in speech. The child uses sounds and gestures to attract attention, skips or replaces complex combinations of sounds, adapting speech for himself, for example: “bad - groin”. The kid moves more, begins to move independently and accumulates knowledge about the world around him. Vocabulary is actively replenished: up to one and a half years the child uses 30-40 words, closer to two years - 300-400. In girls, by the age of one and a half, in boys, by the age of two, phrasal speech begins to form. It arises and is primarily used for questions and the expression of simple needs ("Give me a drink").

Two to three years

At this age, the ability to speak in sentences of 2-3 words is actively developing. The child begins to use pronouns and prepositions. His speech becomes more understandable to adults, he can fulfill their two-part requests, for example: "Take your toy and give it to me." Vocabulary is replenished by 100 words per month. At two or two and a half years, the baby asks questions: “Why?”, “Where?” etc.

Three years

At three years old, a child actively communicates with adults and peers using simple sentences. He can explain his desires in words. The kid begins to use unions and uses almost all the main parts of speech, including generalized names (“animals”, “things”, etc. ). At the same time, the child may still make sounds indistinctly. The kid likes to listen to familiar fairy tales and poems. He remembers the text well and reproduces it. Vocabulary is replenished every day ^[2] .

How to help a child speak

When children begin to speak the first words, they themselves really like it. The main way to help your child talk is to communicate with him as often as possible. In infancy, the baby understands speech on an emotional level, so you need to speak with him expressively. All activities associated with it - bathing, massage, feeding, etc. - accompany with emotionally colored words. Call the baby by name, pronounce the names of things, talk about what the child himself does and how well he does it, and also pick up and repeat all the sounds that he makes.

As they grow older, it is better to use short and clear sentences so that the child can observe the movement of the lips and apply knowledge in his speech. You need to maintain a conversation with the baby, ask him questions and try to have a long conversation.

Read books and sing songs. You can read a book to your child and show the characters in the pictures. They will attract his attention, and auditory perception will help memorize new words. Joint learning of new songs and short rhymes develops the speech apparatus, and also strengthens the bond with the baby.

Develop fine motor skills. Fine motor skills - this is the performance of small movements with hands, fingers and toes, for example: sorting through cereals, playing with beads and buttons. The centers of the brain responsible for motor skills and speech are located next to each other, so when motor skills are stimulated, speech develops faster.

Develop vocabulary. You can show and name the surrounding objects to the child: at home, in the park, at a party. The meaning of objects should be explained in simple terms. So the child will expand knowledge about the world around him, learn new words and will learn to speak faster.

Abandon body language and mangling words. It is better for adults to refuse to distort words, because the child learns to speak on the basis of the speech that he hears around. If the baby replaces words with gestures, you can pretend that they are incomprehensible. This will encourage him to speak. You should not bring the child to crying or hysteria. It is worth acting gently - asking leading questions, pronouncing words one after another.

Games for the development of the articulatory apparatus

Musical games help the child to develop speech breathing and provide an opportunity to develop a long pronunciation of vowels and a clear pronunciation of consonants. The following activities may help:

songs with repetition of syllables, for example: “Pee-pee-pee-food! And only then - wake up-pi-nutrition ”;
toys that reproduce the sounds of animals - they should be repeated together;
musical instruments in the game: you need to ask the child to say the name of the instrument and repeat the sounds it makes.

Finger games are the image of any rhymes or stories with the help of fingers. Such activities help to quickly engage the speech center. In finger games, various hand movements are used - raising and lowering the palms, clapping, as well as bending and unbending the fingers. Familiar to everyone since childhood, “Ladushki, patty” and “Geese flew” are perfect for such exercises. More examples of finger games in the article.

Articulatory gymnastics is aimed at developing the mobility of the speech organs. It includes exercises for the tongue, cheeks, lips and facial expressions. Suitable for the following classes:

Grimaces: standing together in front of a mirror, smile broadly, show tongue, puff out cheeks.
Simple games for breathing: blow off the candy wrapper from the palm of your hand, blow soap bubbles, blow on a dandelion.
Games with the tongue: hide and show the tongue, make circular movements with the tongue like a clock hand, try to reach the tip of the nose with the tongue.

When to see a doctor

The development of speech in each child occurs individually, and it does not matter at what age or at how many months mom or dad started talking. In order to timely detect the backlog, you need to regularly undergo scheduled examinations with a pediatrician.

If during the next appointment the doctor reveals signs of a speech disorder, you should contact a neurologist and a speech therapist. Specialists will draw up a correction plan. It is important that parents actively participate in the treatment process and provide support to the child - the effect of the classes will depend on this.

Advice to parents

List of sources

1. Vygotsky L. S., Psychology of child development, M: Publishing House of Meaning, Publishing House of Eksmo, 2004. - 512 p. (Series "Library of World Psychology")

2. Stages of development of the child's speech and the reason for contacting a specialist L. G. Sokolova, FMBA of Russia

Reviewer Kravtsova Elena Mikhailovna

Psychologist, child and adolescent

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