Be Prepared To Notice Great Strides In Your Child’s Communication Skills

Your child at this stage is a new talker, all set to begin to make great strides in communication development, adding words to their growing child vocabulary at an astonishing rate.

What you need to know

This “language explosion” helps your child’s word bank grow from a precious few at age one to 1,000 or 2,000 by his third birthday. Keep in mind that you won’t understand all of your child's words, at least at first. They still have trouble producing many sounds, so they may substitute the sound of “w” for “l”, “b” for “d”, and so on. Lots of consonants are tricky, and blends are even harder. But as your child might say, “Dat otay.” What’s important and worth celebrating is their effort at being understood.

Signs of concern

By 33 months, your child should have a small vocabulary of at least a few words. If they don’t, ask your doctor if they should be evaluated by a certified speech/language pathologist and/or have their hearing tested. Check for signs that their receptive language skills are on track. If so, expressive language words they form themselves are likely right around the corner.