How and When Does Your Child Hear and Talk?
What Age Should a Child Understand Language?
How Should a Child Express Himself or Herself?
When Should a Child Say Certain Sounds?
Speech & Language Milestones Yes / No
Birth – 5 months:
- Localizes sounds by turning head
- Uses sounds or gestures to indicate wants
- Frequently coos, gurgles and makes pleasure and displeasure sounds
- Uses a different cry to express different needs
- Smiles at familiar faces and will quiet when recognizing familiar voice
- Looks and smiles at people when talked to
- Moves eyes in direction of sounds
- Babbling sounds begin to sound speech-like with many different sounds including p, b, and m
6-12 months:
- Moves eyes in direction of sounds
- Listens when spoken to
- Recognizes certain everyday words; “cup”, “cookie” and responds to requests; “come here” and “want more?”
- Listens to and imitates some adult speech sounds/intonation patterns
- Babbles using long and short groups of sounds
- Understands phrases like “no-no,” “all gone,” and “bye-bye”
- Communicates using appropriate “gesture language”
- (shake head for “no”)
- Begins to change babbling to jargon
- Uses speech intentionally for the first time
- Say “mama” or “dada” for parents
- Has 1 or 2 words
1 to 2 years:
- Looks for hidden objects
- Points or gestures to communicate or identify needs
- Talks in single words
- Uses many different consonant sound at the beginning of words
- Often omits some initial consonants and almost all final consonants
- Uses echolalia and jargon
- Has 3-20 words (mostly nouns) in expressive vocabulary
- Receptively identify 1-3 body parts
- Follows simple directions
- Uses words more frequently than jargon
- Has an expressive vocabulary of 50 to 100 words
- Has a receptive vocabulary or 300 or more words
- Starts to combine nouns and verbs (“more cookie”)
- Begins to use pronouns
- Understood by familiar listeners and is approximately 25-50%
- Intelligible to strangers
- Names a few familiar objects
- Identifies 5-6 body parts on self or a doll
- Begins to understand adjectives in phrases
2-3 years
- Understands the differences in meaning (“go-stop”, “in-on”, “big-little”,· “up down”
- Speech is 50-75% intelligible
- Consistently uses initial consonants
- Frequently uses medial consonants
- Frequently omits or substitutes final consonants
- Begins to demonstrate turn-taking and sharing behaviors
- Follows simple commands and answers simple questions
- Uses 2-4 word phrases to talk about and ask for things
- Has a receptive vocabulary of 500-900 words
- Has an expressive vocabulary of 50-250 or more words
- Speech is understood by familiar listeners most of the time
3-4 years
- Spontaneous sentences approximately 4 or more words
- Is at least 80% intelligible to familiar listener
- Use of irregular plurals, future tense verbs, conjunctions, and contractions emerge
- Usually talks easily without repeating syllables or words
- Understands object functions
- Names primary colors
- Talks about activities at school or at friends’ homes
- Has a 1,000-2,000 or more word receptive vocabulary
- Has a 800-1,500 or more word expressive vocabulary
- Appropriately uses is, are, and am in sentences
- Talks about activities at school or at a friends’ house
- Tells 2 events in chronological order
- Sentences average 5 to 5 ½ words in length
- People other than family usually understand child’s speech
4-5 years
- Consistently uses verbally and grammatically correct sentences
- Completes analogies
- Identifies at least 6 capital letters
- Recognizes absurdities in pictures
- Identifies all basic colors
- Able to attend to a short story and answers simple question related to it
- Hears and understands most of what is said at home and in school
- Understands passive voice statements
- Likes to pretend and act out stories
- Understands and answers complex 2-part questions
- Significantly reduces number of persistent sound omissions and substitutions
- Says most sounds correctly except a few like l, s, r, v, z, j, ch, sh, th
- Uses grammatically correct sentences of 4-8 words
- Sentences provide details (ie: “I like to play with my cars”.)
5-6 years
- Understands up to approximately 13,500 words
- Follows 3 step directions
- Asks “how” questions
- Knows number concepts to 7
- Understands right and left
- Uses past and future tenses appropriately
- Uses conjunctions
- Names opposites
- Uses up to 2,200 words
- Sentence length to averages 6 words
- Accurately relays a story that sticks to a topic
- Exchanges information and asks questions
6-7 years
- Understands up to approximately 20,000 words
- Names letters, numbers and currencies
- Is detailed in descriptions
- Uses irregular verb forms
- Names days, months and numbers in serial order
- Comprehends future and past tenses
- Understands humor
- Wonders about abstract events like how things work
- Counts to 100
- Uses most morphological markers appropriately
- Sentences average up to 7 words
If your child does not appear to be reaching age appropriate milestones, a Speech-Language Pathologist can provide a Comprehensive Evaluation.
