Surprised baby

Language Development

By brandis
  • Period: to

    Prenatal

    While in the womb, baby Sarah has been hearing since her ears developed. She has been learning the beginnings of language through hearing her mom and other close family/friends talk.

  • Birth

    Birth
    The first sound Sarah's parents hear when she is born is Sarah's first way of communicating. Crying is the first step in verbal language. By crying, Sarah is able to communicate with her parents when she is hungry, needs a diaper change, is feeling overwhelmed, or is tired.

  • 2 months

    2 months
    At 2 months old, Sarah is now cooing to her parents. Cooing is vowel-like noises Sarah uses to show her parents when she is happy or interested.

  • 4 months

    Starting at around 4 months, Sarah will begin to play back-and-forth games, such as peek-a-boo, with her parents.

  • 6 months

    6 months
    At about 6 months old, Sarah will begin to babble. Sarah's parents will hear her make long consonant-vowel sounds, such as "babababa". Sarah is not only using her voice to communicate with her parents, but her body as well. If she wants something or wants her parents to look somewhere, she may gesture by pointing. When her parents try and feed her green beans for the 3rd time, she will turn her head away to tell them she doesn't want them.

  • 7 months

    Sarah's babbling now contains more sounds from spoken language. She also is beginning to understand some common things her parents say.

  • 12 months

    12 months
    Sarah says her first word, "Dada!"

  • 13 months

    At 13 months, Sarah is able to comprehend about 50 or so words her parents are saying to her. She will not be able to produce that amount of words until around 18 months.

  • 16 months

    At around this age, Sarah referred to only her stuffed dog as "dog". This is known as underextension. As she began to pick up more words, she started calling everything with four legs a "cow". This is called overextension and is very common error when first labeling objects.

  • 18 months

    Sarah uses a referential style of speech. This means her parents are hearing her say words like "ball" and "cup". Sarah does not use an expressive style of speech, which would consist of a vocabulary of words like "thank you" and "I want".
  • Period: to

    18-24 months

    Sarah's spoken language will expand immensely. Her parents will hear her vocabulary go from 50 words up to 250 words.

  • 24 months

    24 months
    Sarah is now combining 2 words referred to as telegraphic speech. Her parents will hear her say things like "I go" and "Mama come".