Pediatric Age-Appropriate Speech and Language Milestones

Birth to 5 months

• Coos
• Vocalizes pleasure and displeasure sounds (laughs, giggles, cries or fusses)
• Makes noise when talked to

6 to 11 months

• Understands no-no
• Babbles (says ba-ba-ba)
• Says ma-ma or da-da without meaning
• Tries to communicate by actions or gestures
• Tries to repeat your sounds
• Says first word

12 to 17 months

• Answers simple questions nonverbally
• Says two to three words to label a person or object (pronunciation may not be clear)
• Tries to imitate simple words
• Vocabulary of four to six words

18 to 23 months

• Correctly pronounces most vowels and n, m, p, h, especially in the beginning of syllables and short words; also begins to use other speech sounds
• Vocabulary of 50 words, pronunciation is often unclear
• Asks for common foods by name
• Makes animal sounds such as moo
• Starting to combine words such as more milk
• Begins to use pronouns such as mine
• Uses two-word phrases

2 to 3 years

• Knows some spatial concepts such as in, on
• Knows pronouns such as you, me, her
• Knows descriptive words such as big, happy
• Vocabulary of 250 to 900 words
• Uses three word sentences
• Speech is becoming more accurate but may still leave off ending sounds - strangers may not be able to understand much of what is said
• Answers simple questions
• Begins to use more pronouns such as you, I
• Uses question inflection to ask for something such as my ball?
• Begins to use plurals such as shoes or socks and regular past tense verbs such as jumped

3 to 4 years

• Groups objects such as foods, clothes, etc.
• Identifies colors
• Uses most speech sounds but may distort some of the more difficult sounds such as l, r, s, sh, ch, y, v, z, th - these sounds may not be fully mastered until age 7 or 8
• Uses consonants in the beginning, middle, and ends of words - some of the more difficult consonants may be distorted, but attempts to say them
• Strangers are able to understand much of what is said
• Able to describe the use of objects such as fork, car, etc.
• Has fun with language - enjoys poems and recognizes language absurdities such as, is that an elephant on your head?
• Expresses ideas and feelings rather than just talking about the world around him/ her
• Uses verbs that end in ing, such as walking and talking
• Answers simple questions such as What do you do when you are hungry?
• Repeats sentences

4 to 5 years

• Understands spatial concepts such as behind, next to
• Understands complex questions
• Speech is understandable but makes mistakes pronouncing long, difficult, or complex words such as hippopotamus
• Vocabulary of about 1500 words
• Uses some irregular past tense verbs such as ran, fell
• Describes how to do things such as painting a picture
• Defines words
• Lists items that belong in a category such as animals, vehicles, etc.
• Answers why questions

5 years

• Understands more than 2,000 words
• Understands time sequences (what happened first, second, third, etc.)
• Carries out a series of three directions
• Understands rhyming
• Engages in conversation
• Sentences can be eight or more words in length
• Uses compound and complex sentences
• Describes objects
• Uses imagination to create stories