Baby Language Development and Early Language Strategies

The first baby language milestone is social communication. This is the ability to connect with another person through a variety of ways that goes beyond just words. It is sharing eye contact, smiles/laughs, gestures, sounds and joint attention.

Here are the speech milestones that are the beginning of baby language skills.

Between the ages of 3-5 months your baby should …

• Show interest in bright colors, sounds and movement
• Turn toward sounds such as voices and music
• Enjoys watching peoples’ faces
• Begins to smile back when smiled at

Between the ages of 5-8 months your baby should…

• Begin to recognize familiar people and explores their faces.
• Relate to his special people with signs of happiness.
• Make cooing, babbling and squealing sounds when playing with you.
• Have different cries for different situations.(i.e. hungry, tired, or scared)
• Begins to imitate sounds he already makes.
• Forms 2-syllable sounds like "ma-ma" or "da-da".

• Make eye contact with you while smiling.
• Reach to or touches image of self in mirror.
• Exchange back and forth expressions with you.
• Imitates consonant/vowel sounds with you.
• Imitates non-speech sounds like coughing or tongue clicking.
• Imitate gestures with you such as giving, touching and clapping.
• Begins to hesitate when told "no".
• Performs for social attention like clapping or cheering.

• Use gestures to get his needs met.(i.e. waving, reaching, pointing)
• Enjoy social games like peak-a-boo or patty-cake.
• Make consonant/vowel combinations like “da”, “ma”, or “ba”.
• Exchange back and forth social gestures like smiling or pointing.
• Use pointing or showing to draw your attention to something of interest.
• Use and understand at least 3 common words like “mama”, “dada”,“baba”.
• Turns to the person speaking when his name is called.
• Identifies familiar people by looking at or pointing to them when named.

Between the ages of 15-18 months your baby should…

• Use a lot of gestures and words to get his needs met.
• Use at least four different consonant in babbling.(i.e. M,B,D,P,T,G)
• Has at least a 10 word vocabulary.
• Points to body parts when named.
• Identifies familiar objects by looking at or pointing to when named.
• Imitate simple pretend play like feeding a doll or stirring with a spoon.

Between the ages of 18-24 your baby should...

• Imitate 2 part actions like stirring with a spoon and then feeding a baby with the spoon.
• Has between 30-50 words that he uses and understands the meanings.
• Begins to put 2 words together to get needs met.(i.e. Go out, Want cookie)
• Begins to enjoy other children around the same age and will watch and engage in short play schemes.
• Realizes when something is missing from his environment and will look for it.
• Begins to follow a 2-part familiar request.(i.e. "Get your shoe and bring it here".)

• Enjoys to pretend to be different characters or talks for toys.(i.e. Duck says quack)
• Enjoys playing with children of the same age and will make believe or show and tell with them.
• Begins to combine actions and speech together such as "Car races on track" or "Baby eats a cookie".
• Can answer "W" questions like "Who plays with you?" and "What did you play?"
• Can talk about concepts of time such as yesterday or tomorrow.

RED FLAGS:

In Social Communication and Speech Milestones

• No smiles,waving arms,gurgles/squeals or other sings of excitement after 6 months.
• No sharing of facial expressions or sounds by 6 months.
• No babbling by 12 months. This means early consonant/vowel combinations like Ma/Da/Ba/Ga.
• Does not participate in back and forth gestures(joint attention) like pointing, reaching or waving.
• Has no true words by 16 months.
• Tends to echo words of phrases.
• Has lost words, babbling or other social skills at any age.

These are important communication RED FLAGS and should be brought to the attention of your health care provider.

Language Activities

Communication Therapy

Hearing Problems

Baby Language Milestones

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