Ask a Speech Therapist: What’s My Child’s Speech & Language Milestones (1st year)?
As a Speech Therapist, I often get asked about the milestones of speech and language development in children.
It's important for parents to be aware of these milestones, as they can provide a roadmap for how a child's communication skills should be developing!
Here are the key milestones of speech and language development for children:
Birth to 3 months: At this age, your child would be cooing. learning to recognize your voice, and vocalize or cry differently for their different needs (diaper change, hunger, etc), most babies would also learn to calm down or smile when spoken to by their parents.
4 to 7 months: At this age, your child should be babbling and making more complex varieties of sounds, such as "ma" and "da." They would be using their voice tones to express their mood, and similarly respond to changes in your own tone of voice, getting a better understanding of your moods and facial expressions.
8 to 12 months: At this age, your child should be saying their first words and beginning to combine words, such as "mama" and "dada." Your child would also try to imitate your speech sounds such as “up!” or “mum-mum”. Of course, their sounds won’t be accurate, and their attempts at “Up”, “Out”, “Help”, might all sound like the word “Up!”, and that’s okay! Your child would also understand simple instructions/questions such as “Where is Mama?“, “Give Mama the toy”, and “come here”.
Key Tips for Parents
Now that you have the milestones to watch out for, at each interval in their first year, what can you do to help your child along? Here are some key tips you can practice with your child
Birth to 3 months:
Talk to your child often. It may seem like an obvious piece of advice, but I have seen many parents content to play silently with their child. Whatever the reason, this silent environment does not promote a child’s speech abilities.
It is important to understand that baby’s mind is absorbing everything they observe. If parental figures around them are consistently silent, you might be teaching your child that: “there is no inherent need for me to use my speech, all my needs get met even though I remain silent!”
So what can you do? Narrate or verbalize your actions: “Mama is opening the bottle!”, “Papa is changing your diaper!” this helps you, the parents, build this habit of narration when helping your child build their speech and vocabulary
4 to 7 months:
Associate words with actions. Repeat the word ‘Open’ and show the action of opening a bottle, before actually opening the bottle.
This gives baby the audio and visual cues for both speech, language, as well as their vocabulary.
8 to 12 months:
Given that baby might be experimenting with their own speech and voice, give baby the opportunity to repeat after you. Once baby says “open” after you, then proceed to open the bottle.
Remember that baby is not going to have clear or accurate speech at this point. We are aiming to build the habit of speech, to speak.
And there you have it! A very basic primer to your child’s speech and language milestones for their first (1st) year! If you have any concerns or questions about your child’s development, or would like to get an initial assessment, please feel free to reach out to us.
