Two-year old’s speech development

Question:

I have a 2 1/2 year old who can say her numbers and some other words but not simple sentences; all she does is babble. We talk to her all the time, she watches her favorite TV programs, read to her and play with her. She is as smart as a whip, but what are we doing wrong and what can we do to help her?

Response:

We all know that no two children are alike, right? Children learn to sit, crawl, walk, sleep through the night and talk at different ages and in different ways, too.

It is also safe to say we all have known early talkers and “late bloomers” who did not utter one sound till they were three years old. These children developed speech sounds differently.

Speech/language pathologists can often listen to a young child or toddler speak and within one minute make a rough judgment whether the child is having difficulty with speech sound acquisition or not.

Some things a speech pathologist might be interested to know:

1) is the child an only child or are there older siblings? (This

affects how much speech a child hears modeled and how

much he/she uses speech in a given day)

2) Is the child interacting with others routinely or does

he/she spend much time playing alone?

3) Do the parents read books to the child or take him/her

different places routinely?

4) Does the child have a physical problem that makes it

hard for them to interact, like a hearing loss?

With these questions aside, it has been shown that children do have similar patterns of speech sound development. Children learn to do easier tasks (produce initial sounds) before more difficult ones (speaking in phrases or sentences).

The typical 2 ½ year old’s speech probably looks something like this:

· Child has about 450 word vocabulary (ball, car, mama, dada, bye, hi, cat, etc…)

· Child is able to say his/her first name

· Child uses past tense, plurals and combines nouns and verbs

· Child begins to identify objects from a group by their function and parts (i.e. “which one has feathers?” “which one can we eat?”)

· Child begins to use verbs with “ing” endings (“eating”)

· Early concepts such as “big, little” are identified

· Child will use “no, not” and answer “where” questions

Try modeling the use of pronouns (“I, he, and she”) with short phrases like, “I like cookies.”

Continue to read familiar and/or repetitive stories while also encouraging her tell you

What is going to happen in the story? If she babbles, repeat the phrase in “correct speech” for her but don’t force her to say it again the “right way.” She will get it when the time is right. Your biggest job is modeling appropriate speech and she will begin to mimic you.

If you are terribly concerned about her speech development, consider having her screened by a speech pathologist or pediatrician.