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Content: 12 months
The child at 12 months speaks their first word. As mentioned before there is a criteria. A child must say a true word in order to be considered a first word. For example, if the toddler says “juice” they should recognize what juice looks like and what to do with it. -
Form/Phonology: 12 months
A Phonological/Form milestone at 12 months, a child will present with unintelligible speech. With that being said, you will not be able to fully understand what the child is saying. When the child speaks, they will try to say words like “cup” or “spoon” but will be unable to pronounce it correctly. They will say “Tup” or “poon” which will change their sentence entirely causing people to not understand. -
Use (Pragmatics)
At about 12 months, the toddler should be able to use body and gestures to help communicate with others actions. For example, they might respond to someone by getting happy and indicating they want something by pointing at something like their juice cup. -
Use (Pragmatics)
As a few months pass, at 16 months the toddler will now start taking turns verbally during conversations. Their conversation skills are not the best at this age, but they are able to talk back if the conversation is initiated first most of the time. The concept is basic so it could be their caregiver asking them if they are hungry or how was their day and their response would be verbal turn taking. -
Content: 16 months
At 16 months the toddler starts speaking more words. The toddler says around 3 to 20 words. There is a word growth spurt in those 4 months. An example is that the child is picking up new words that the caregiver says. The words can vary therefore there isn't a specific list. -
Form/Syntax: 16 months
A syntax milestone for a child between the ages of 16-18 months includes having a MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) or 1.31. During this time, the child will be in Brown’s Stage 1. The child will be using single word sentences. Nouns and verbs are also used. Examples include “Daddy,” “Mommy,” “Play,” and “Eat.” -
Form/Phonology: 16 months
A Phonological/Form milestone at the age of 16 months includes pronouncing about 25% of all words in a way they will be understood. An example of this is if a mother says the word “ball” and the child is able to repeat the word back correctly. This indicates that the child has mastered the ability to pronounce 25% of words that they are exposed to. -
Form/Syntax: 12 months
A Form/Syntax milestone for a toddler at about 12 months would be that 50% of their utterances consists of single nouns. An example for this would be when a toddler wants to be picked up by their caretaker they would say “up”. -
Form/Morphology: 20 months
A Form/Morphology milestone at about 20 months would be the use of grammatical morphemes added to words to indicate aspects of grammar. This would be when a toddler begins to use the morpheme -ed to indicate that something happened in the past. For example if the child was telling you about his day they could say “We go-ed to the park.” -
Use (Pragmatics)
After another 4 months, their communication skills should continue to improve & they will start to use gesture word combinations. This just means that they will combine 2 words. Example like “kitty mommy” “juice daddy”. -
Content: 20 months
After another 4 months the toddler’s vocabulary continues to grow. At 20 months they are now producing 50 words adding verbs and adjectives. For example, the infant may mention that they were “eating”. -
Form/Phonology: 20 months
A Phonological/Form milestone at the age of 20 months is being able to process spoken words gradually. Words will start to make more sense for these children. While the words that these children hear are new, they are able to identify and make them recognizable after only a few instances of being exposed to them. -
Form/Phonology: 24 Months
A Form/Phonology milestone for a toddler at about 24 months would be that they ask questions with rising intonation. An example would be that if the child is asking his mother to go outside the child would say “mama, outside?” with a change in pitch for the second word in his utterance. -
Form/Morphology: 24 Months
A Form/Morphology milestone at about 24 months of age is weak-syllable deletion. An example for this would be when a child says “nana” instead of “banana”. -
Use (Pragmatics)
24 months, this is where they start to speak a lot more and have those words under their belts. They begin to use imaginative, heuristic, & informative language functions. These each have a different meaning on how they are used. When a toddler uses Imaginative language, they could be like “I’m a dragon!” but this could also be informative because they are telling you something. -
Content: 24 months
Since the toddler is now speaking more at 24 months they start to comprehend words. For example, the child is supposed to understand around 500 words but will produce about 200. -
Form/Phonology: 28 Months
A form/phonology milestone for a toddler that is 28 months would be the demonstration of phonological processes. An example of this would be when a toddler deletes the final consonant of a word such as pronouncing the word “ball” like “ba”. This is called final consonant deletion. -
Use (Pragmatics)
Toddlers at the 28 month milestone at this point are grasping onto the concept of conversation and should continue to add on to what they already know. They should be able to start introducing conversational topics. Although toddlers hold conversation times, their skills are still developing. A mom may ask their toddler how their day at the playground was and after a few times of taking turns exchanging conversation, they switch it to something in their interest. -
Content: 28 months
Toddler’s at 28 months start to use sentence structure. For example, they might say “me want cookie”. -
Form/Morphoology: 28 months
A Morphology/Form milestone at the age of 28 months includes using present progressive morpheme -ing with mastery. Examples of grammatical morpheme are “cry-ing,” “sing-ing,” “sleep-ing,” and “talk-ing.” -
use (Pragmatics)
Between 32-36 months the toddler will switch gears and start to ask questions during conversation so they can get better understanding for things. They may ask “why” or “what’s that mean” if they are grasping something -
Content: 32-36 months
Around 32-36 months the toddler continues to comprehend and produce more words. Also they will start asking questions. For example, they might ask a lot of “why?” questions due to curiosity. -
Form/Phonology: 32-36 months
A Phonological milestone at the age of 32-36 months includes suppressing most common phonological processes. With that being said, the child is able to say “Daddy” instead of “Dada” removing the urge to change syllable structures. Another common example is saying “corn” instead of “dorn” to show mastery of place of articulation. -
Form/Morphology: 34 Months
A Form/Morphology milestone at about 34 months for a toddler would be use of some contractions. An example of this would be when the child refuses to do something that is asked of them, they would say “I don’t want to!”