Using developmental milestones gives us as professionals and you as parents guidelines to help us know if your child is developing at approximately the same rate as other children. Remember that there is a very wide range in "normal" development; but if your child has not mastered several of the skills in one age range, there may be cause to seek the advice of your pediatrician and possibly have an evaluation by a licensed speech-language pathologist or another child development specialist.
Language Development Milestones
(Age of Child ---- Typical Language Development)
6 Months
Vocalization with intonation
Responds to his name
Responds to human voices without visual cues by turning his head and eyes
Responds appropriately to friendly and angry tones
12 Months
Uses one or more words with meaning (this may be a fragment of a word)
Understands simple instructions, especially if vocal or physical cues are given
Practices inflection
Is aware of the social value of speech
18 Months
Has vocabulary of approximately 5-20 words
Vocabulary made up chiefly of nouns
Some echolalia (repeating a word or phrase over and over)
Much jargon with emotional content
Is able to follow simple commands
2 Years
Can name a number of objects common to his surroundings
Is able to use at least two prepositions, usually chosen from the following: in, on, under
Combines words into a short sentence-largely noun-verb combinations (mean) length of sentences is given as 1.2 words
Approximately 2/3 of what child says should be intelligible
Vocabulary of approximately 150-300 words
Rhythm and fluency often poor
Volume and pitch of voice not yet well-controlled
Can use two pronouns correctly: I, me, you, although me and I are often confused
My and mine are beginning to emerge
Responds to such commands as "show me your eyes (nose, mouth, hair)"
3 Years
Use pronouns I, you, me correctly
Is using some plurals and past tenses
Knows at least three prepositions, usually in, on, under
Knows chief parts of body and should be able to indicate these if not name
Handles three word sentences easily
Has in the neighborhood of 900-1000 words
About 90% of what child says should be intelligible
Verbs begin to predominate
Understands most simple questions dealing with his environment and activities
Relates his experiences so that they can be followed with reason
Able to reason out such questions as "what must you do when you are sleepy, hungry, cool, or thirsty?"
Should be able to give his sex, name, age
Should not be expected to answer all questions even though he understands what is expected
4 Years
Knows names of familiar animals
Can use at least four prepositions or can demonstrate his understanding of their meaning when given commands
Names common objects in picture books or magazines
Knows one or more colors
Can repeat 4 digits when they are given slowly
Can usually repeat words of four syllables
Demonstrates understanding of over and under
Has most vowels and diphthongs and the consonants p, b, m, w, n well established
Often indulges in make-believe
Extensive verbalization as he carries out activities
Understands such concepts as longer, larger, when a contrast is presented
Readily follows simple commands even thought the stimulus objects are not in sight
Much repetition of words, phrases, syllables, and even sounds
5 Years
Can use many descriptive words spontaneously-both adjectives and adverbs
Knows common opposites: big-little, hard-soft, heave-light, etc
Has number concepts of 4 or more
Can count to ten
Speech should be completely intelligible, in spite of articulation problems
Should have all vowels and the consonants, m,p,b,h,w,k,g,t,d,n,ng,y (as in yellow) (More on this later!)
Should be able to repeat sentences as long as nine words
Should be able to define common objects in terms of use (hat, shoe, chair)
Should be able to follow three commands given without interruptions
Should know his age
Should have simple time concepts: morning, afternoon, night, day, later, after, while
Tomorrow, yesterday, today
Should be using fairly long sentences and should use some compound and some complex sentences
Speech on the whole should be grammatically correct
6 Years
In addition to the above consonants these should be mastered: f, v, sh, zh, th,1
Speech should be completely intelligible and socially useful
Should be able to tell one a rather connected story about a picture, seeing relationships
between objects and happenings
7 Years
Should have mastered the consonants s-z, r, voiceless th, ch, wh, and the soft g as in George
Should handle opposite analogies easily: girl-boy, man-woman, flies-swims, blunt-sharp short-long, sweet-sour, etc
Understands such terms as: alike, different, beginning, end, etc
Should be able to tell time to quarter hour
Should be able to do simple reading and to write or print many words
8 Years
Can relate rather involved accounts of events, many of which occurred at some time in the past
Complex and compound sentences should be used easily
Should be few lapses in grammatical constrictions-tense, pronouns, plurals
All speech sounds, including consonant blends should be established
Should be reading with considerable ease and now writing simple compositions
Social amenities should be present in his speech in appropriate situations
Control of rate, pitch, and volume are generally well and appropriately established
Can carry on conversation at rather adult level
Follows fairly complex directions with little repetition
Has well developed time and number concepts
(Courtesy of the Child Development Institute)
Speech Sound Development
One of the questions I am asked most often is reagarding speech sounds (articulation). Again, most speech-langauge pathologists (SLPs) follow developmental norms (normal pattern of development based on age) regarding the acquisition of each sound in the language. And again, these are guidelines of when most children will have mastered specific sounds, but does mean that every child will fit these norms. In fact, there is a lot of debate in our field as to the consistency of norms based on many research studies. (See speech-language-therapy.com/Lofspeechnorms.pdf for more info.)
It is important to note that due to the changing of federal law, students in the schools need to demonstrate not only developmentally delayed sound acquisition, but also an adverse effect on their academic skills. For example, the child who misarticulates the /r/ sound would also have to be spelling it incorrectly (i.e. "wat" for "rat"). Or, the teacher would have to observe that the child has difficulty being understood in the classroom, such as when answering questions aloud.
However, as SLPs we do use some standardized assessments based on norms to determine if a child is significantly behind in speech development based on comparison to their peers, and thus warranting therapy. Here is a basic chart based on one of the most commonly used assessments...the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation (2000). This is when 85% of children could produce the sound at the beginning, middle and ends of words.
Age Initial sound Medial Sound Final Sound
2 /b/ /d/ /h/ /m/ /b/ /m/ /n/ /m/ /p/
/n/ //p/
3 /f/ /g/ /k/ t/ /w/ /f/ /g/ /k/ /p/ /b/ /d/ /g/ /k/
/t/ /ng/ /n/ /t/
4 /kw/ /d/ /f/
5 /ch/ /j/ /l/ /s/ /ch/ /j/ /l/ /s/ /l/ /ng/ /ch/ /j/
/sh/ /y/ /bl/ /sh/ /z/ /s/ /sh/ /r/ /v/ /z/
6 /r/ /v/ /r/ /v/
most /r/ /l/ blends
7 /z/ /th/ /th/ /th/
/s/ blends
*Hope this helps give you an idea of when we would expect specific sounds to develop. More to come later on what SLP's call "phonological processes" (i.e. deleting the final consonants of words).
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