Communication Milestones: Birth to 4 years

Milestones at Birth to 3 months

• Will startle to sounds
• Begins to smile
• Lots of cooing

Milestones at 4 to 6 months

• Turn to sounds
• Begins to pay attention to music
• Continues cooing but will also begin to babble (babble is more speech-like with consonant and vowel combinations e.g. bababa, puhpuhpuh)

  Milestones at 7 to 12 months

• Looks when you point (this indicates emerging joint attention which is important for cognitive development, language development and social communication)
• Turn to their name
• Understands simple words such as cup, shoe, daddy
• Understands simple phrases such as come here, do you want more
• Enjoy playing social games like peekaboo, all around the garden etc.
• Listens to stories and songs for longer
• Babbles in longer strings
• Use more gesture such as waving, pointing, reaching (there are strong links between gestural use and language skills at 24 months)
• First words around 12 months such as Mama, dada, a pet’s name, a favourite toy

  Tips for communication development up to 12 months:

• From birth, talk about and narrate what you are doing all day long!
• Begin reading from birth too, learning to love books is a process!
• Use ‘Parentese’ (adult-like, grammatical speech, using a slower rate, sing song tone & high pitched voice)
• Develop turn taking skills by babbling back and forth

   Milestones at 12 to 18 months

• Responds to own name
• Uses lots of babble
• Responds to “no” (may not like it!)
• Adds two new gestures per month (e.g. clapping)
• Uses lots of jargon (speaking in strings of syllables with some real words)
• Copies the facial expressions and actions of others
• Imitates symbolic sounds such as “moo”, “beep!”, “achoo!”
• Words may not be clear (for example, final sounds are often dropped!)

  Tips for communication development 12 to 18 months:

• Be animated
• Sit face to face when reading and talking
• Comment on what they’re doing
• Narrate what you are doing regularly
• Sing nursery rhymes regularly and pause to allow them to fill in the gap!
• Play lots of social games like peekaboo
• Play cause and effect games

   Milestones at 18 to 24 months

• Simple pretend play emerges such as brushing dolly’s hair
• Following simple instructions e.g. “Bring your shoes over”
• Asks basic WH questions e.g. “where’s Daddy?”
• Interested in other children playing but doesn’t not join in (parallel play)  
• Answers yes/no questions
• Lots of new words, at least 50 by 24 months
• Listens to simple stories for longer
• Points to pictures in books as you name them
• Points to basic body parts
• By 24 months understands around 200 words
• Uses at least 2-word phrases by 24 months

  Tips for communication development 18 to 24 months:

  Follow their lead in play
• Ask less questions, more comments
• Functional words before ABC’s!
• Exaggerate “yes” response with a nod
• Add a word: if your child says “car” you say, “big car!”
• Offer choices throughout their day
• Use verbal routines e.g. ready, steady……go!
• Give processing time when you ask a question
• Read the same books over and over (children learn through repetition!)
• Model a word to communicate pain e.g. “ouch”, “sore”

   Milestones at 2 to 3 years

• Understands opposites (go/stop, big/little)
• Follows 2-part instructions
• May repeat some sounds and words e.g. “I I I want…”
• Understands new words quickly
• May still have difficulty with s, z, sh, ch, v, l, r, th speech sounds
• Uses up to 900 words by age 3
• Combines up to 5 words sentences by 3 years
• Understands position concepts (in, on, under etc.)
• Talks about things that are not in the room
• Asks why questions (a lot!)
• Can be understood by others 50 to 75% of the time

  Tips for communication development 2 to 3 years:

• Slow your rate of speech to support their fluency
• Give them time to answer questions
• Verbalise your own thoughts “I think…”
• Instead of correcting them, model and emphasise accurate grammar e.g. “He flew away!”
• Use obstacle courses to teach position words (go under the cushions, across the couch… etc)
• Instead of correcting speech errors, model accurate pronunciation
• Continue to follow their lead in play
• Ask concrete questions when reading What can you see? Who is this? What’s he doing?
• Bring their attention to rhyming words (e.g. “Cat-hat! That rhymes!”)

  Milestones at 3 to 4 years

• Understands time concepts before/after
• Understand same/different
• Still confuses some verb tenses e.g. “eated”
• Awareness of past and future
• Will still confuse some pronouns
• Joins sentences with and/because
• May still have difficulty with r and th sounds at 4 years (and beyond)
• Can attend for up to 15 minutes
• Can be understood by other 75 to 100% of the time
• Can describe a scene in a book
• Difficulty answering open questions e.g. What did you do today?

  Tips for communication development 3 to 4 years:

• Use words like first/then when describing your day
• Instead of asking open questions, ask specific questions about their day e.g. Who did you play with? What did you eat?
• Play around with rhyming words
• Use books to promote vocabulary growth
• Talk about similarities and differences
• Model verb tenses “I ate a …” what about you?