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Communication Milestone Checkpoint:
3-6 months
Your baby is ready to experience the world! Interact with them using their sense of sight, sound, and touch. Read, sing, and talk to your baby frequently. Spend time face to face with your baby looking into their eyes. Don't forget the early favorites! Peek-a-boo, So Big!, and Lap Bounces are great for this age!
Communication Milestone Checkpoint:
6-9 months
Your baby is ready to engage! Pay attention to your what your baby is telling you with their eye gaze and other nonverbal cues. Encourage your baby to interact with you by engaging in fun play on the floor and helping them explore their environment.
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Communication Milestone Checkpoint:
9-12 months
Your baby is ready to communicate! They know what they want and they are making it known :) Incorporate gestures into your daily routines to teach your baby the foundations of communication. Practicing imitation skills during play activities and in songs will give way to those treasured first words!
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Communication Milestone Checkpoint:
12-15 months
Your baby is becoming an effective communicator, using many gestures and a few words to interact with you and get their needs met. Sometimes it may sound as if your child is speaking another language! This "jargon" is an advanced form of babbling. This is totally normal and will slowly fade as your child gets older and learns to say more words.
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Communication Milestone Checkpoint:
15-18 months
Your baby is learning fast at this age! You may notice they are trying to imitate A LOT, watching and copying many things you do. They may be trying to join in on chores around the house and even attempting to say some of the words you say. You are on the cusp of a vocabulary explosion, so take the time to teach your child new words and read to them frequently!
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Communication Milestone Checkpoint:
18-24 months
You have a toddler on your hands :)
Your child's language skills are growing by leaps and bounds! They are learning new words every day and starting to combine those words for phrases. While kiddos may be talking a lot, it is still totally normal for parents to have trouble understanding some words. Children at this stage are about 50% intelligible on average. Your child can understand a lot at this age and should be able to follow 1 and 2 step directions.
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Communication Milestone Checkpoint:
24-30 months
Language skills are growing!
Your child's language abilities are getting more and more sophisticated every day. They are combining words and using phrases and simple sentences to communicate for a variety of purposes. They are able to ask and answer simple questions and follow directions with increasingly complex directions. Your child should be able to understand about 50-75% of what your child says.
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Communication Milestone Checkpoint:
30-36 months
Talking up a storm!
Your child can have mini conversations and tell you all about what they are thinking and feeling. They are developing robust spoken vocabularies and will use more and more adult-like sentence structures. You should be able to understand most of what your child is saying by the time they turn 3!
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Communication Milestone Sources
American Speech-Language and Hearing Association. (2019). Developmental Norms for Speech and Language. Retrieved from: https://www.asha.org/slp/schools/prof-consult/norms/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2018, September 24. Learn the Signs. Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/
Chapman, R. (2000). Children's language learning: An international perspective. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 41 33-54.
Hirsh-Pasek and Michnick Golinkoff. How Babies Talk. (1999). New York City, NY. The Penguin Group.
Lanza and Flahive. Linguisystems Guide to Communication Milestones. (2008). East Moline, IL. LinguiSystems, Inc.
White, B. (1995). The New First Three Years of Life. New York City, NY. Fireside.