Language development is one of the most profound areas of development in toddlers. Kids transform from babbling infants to talkative little beings by the age of 3.
Babies & toddlers use gestures to communicate
Children communicate with gestures and body language long before they communicate with words. It’s a type of innate form of speech we often overlook. The most common gesture is pointing. Even babies will communicate their thoughts by pointing at something they want you to look at. Other common gestures include hand grasping (opening and closing the hand to indicate they want something), reaching (the two arm “hold me” or “come to me” gesture, often combined with hand clasping), shoulder shrugs, and so forth.
A child’s first words
A child’s first words may come as early as 8 or 9 months, and as late as 15-18 months. But they typically utter their first words sometime between the ages of 11 and 13 months. Some parents claim their children begin saying words as early as 7 or 8 months, but there’s considerable debate on this; most feel that when it comes to babies this age, parents are merely spotting ‘words’ in the random babbling their baby makes and then reinforcing them through gestures.
The first words to emerge are typically nouns describing common people, places, or things: Momma, Dadda, house, car, kitty, etc. After that will come simple verbs and action words: go, come, fun, walk, make, eat, sleep, and so forth. Or my personal favorite: “Ut-oh” (frequently uttered as they’re busy creating the ‘Ut-oh’ moment). Then they’ll begin to start putting nouns and verbs together to form simple sentences: “Mommy go” or “doggy eat.” They’ll often reverse the order of these words, saying “eat doggy” when what they really mean is “the doggy is eating.”
Children learning to speak
When first learning to communicate children will often combine gestures with words. “Toddlers who are just learning to talk may utter ‘Mommy’ but point to a hat,” writes Susan Goldin-Meadows. “This behavior does not mean that the toddler thinks Mommy is a hat. Instead the toddler is combining gesture and speech as if to say ‘Mommy’s hat.”‘ In studies conducted by Goldin-Meadows, such behavior was a sign that a child was on the cusp of their first two word sentences, which in the study typically emerged 2-3 months later. (Goldin-Meadows, 2010)
Language development absolutely explodes around the age of 2, during which time children can acquire as many as 8 new words per day. (Gormly & Brodzinsky, 1993) By this age most children will be speaking in 2-word sentences, and many will already be stringing together more complex statements. If they aren’t as of yet, they will be shortly.
By age 3 the average child will be speaking in full sentences, and adults should be able to understand the majority of what they say. If your child’s language skills at this age are still rudimentary, or others struggle to understand what they’re saying, you may want to have them checked out by a specialist to determine if something is wrong.
Promoting language development in toddlers
Here are some ways you can give your toddler’s language development a boost:
A) Read lots of books and stories. There simply is no substitute for reading to your child. Parents who read more to their children have kids who acquire more complex thinking and language skills. Start when they’re babies (even if they try to eat the book) and continue the habit as they grow.
B) Think out loud. Small discrepancies in the environment can amount to a big change over time, and speaking 5,000 words to your child per day versus 8,000 may not seem like a discernible difference, but it makes a huge difference in how quickly your child acquires language skills. One of the best ways to boost your spoken words is to think out loud, so that you’re surrounding your child with spoken language even when you’re not directly speaking to them: “Let’s see, where is Mommy’s hat. Do you know where Mommy’s hat is? I’m pretty sure I left it here before, but now I can’t find it.” If you get in the habit of voicing your thoughts like this, you can easily double the word count your child is exposed to each day.
C) Avoid screen time. Don’t bother with so-called “educational” videos for toddlers. You’re wasting your money. It’s not that these things are necessarily bad or toxic, but even the best, most educational screen time will never equal the educational quality of human interaction. For example, one study of “Baby Einstein” type videos designed to teach children words found that kids picked up more words when moms and dads spent extra time teaching words from the DVD without the DVD, showing that “parents can teach words directly to kids better than a DVD can.” (Bower, 2010)