The one word stage

One word stage of language development

Infants will tend to acquire the ability to pronounce the full range of vowels in their language first. The pronunciation of vowels happens with an open configuration (the tongue isn’t involved in limiting or stopping the breath) of the vocal tract, which makes the pronunciation simpler than consonants.

Infants gain the ability to pronounce the full range of consonants in their language after vowels. The pronunciation of consonants happens when the vocal tract is either partly or fully obstructed, making them technically more difficult to pronounce than vowels.

Consonants tend to be acquired in the following order:

• Nasals (n, m).
• Glides (w, j).
• Stops (p, b, t, d, k, g).
• Liquids (l, r).
• Fricatives (f, v, s, z).
• Affricates (ch, j).

Once the infant has become familiar with the consonant and feels more confident, they may utter a new word with the constant letter in the middle or end of the word.

Infants can perceive more sound contrasts than they can verbally utter during the one-word stage. Their speech won’t reveal their full understanding of phonology, but it can be observed when they substitute an easier sound for one they cannot produce yet.

The substitutions that they make are rule-governed: they always use the same sound as a substitute for a sound they can’t produce. ¹

The following table shows some common examples:

Word intended	Word produced	Letter substitution
Like	Wike	W for L
Leg	Path	W for L
Car	Gar	G for C
Can	Gan	G for C
Tea	Dee	D for T
Ten	The	D for T

Infants often overextend the meaning of a word. This occurs when they give a word a broader meaning than its intended meaning.

If a child refers to any small animal it sees as a ‘rat’, even if it’s a squirrel, dog, or cat. The infant has extended the meaning of the word ‘rat’ because of the child’s limited vocabulary.

Overextensions are based on shape, size and texture, but never colour.

The opposite of overextending is called underextending. This is when an infant gives a word a narrower meaning than its intended meaning.

A child might ask for ‘juice’ anytime it wants its sippy cup.

Interpretation during the one-word stage

The challenge during the one-word stage comes in the interpretation of the child’s holophrases. The issue is that the infant’s intention may not be interpreted correctly by the adult, and finding evidence for what the infant wants to say isn’t easy. ²

When trying to understand the meaning of a word, an adult must interpret the infant’s body language and consider the context. Infants use hand gestures and display facial expressions which can often add helpful information to solve what the child wants to communicate in conjunction with the single word uttered.³

Introduction

Language acquisition is a process that can happen at any point in human life. However, when we talk about the first language acquisition by a child, we refer to the process or way by which children learn their native language. (Learn about the nativist theory of language acquisition)

Learning a new language can be extremely difficult, but yet you look at little children that are not yet five and they have already mastered most of the grammar of their native language. Children learn their native language without being taught the rules of grammar by their parents or guardians. Also, parents themselves do not consciously know the many rules of grammar. So how do children acquire language?

There are 4 major stages of language acquisition. they are;

• The Blabbing stage,
• The Holophrastic Stage,
• The two-word stages, and
• The Telegraphic stage.

These stages are capable of being broken down into smaller stages, they include;

• Pre-production,
• Early Production,
• Speech Emergent,
• Beginning fluency, and
• Advanced fluency.

Today, we will be looking at the four main stages of language acquisition.

Blabbing

A baby begins to recognize its mother’s voice within a few weeks of being born. Within this period, there are two sub-stages. The first stage occurs between the time of birth to 8 months. In this stage, the baby learns about its surroundings and doesn’t begin to use its vocals until the fifth or sixth month, down to the eighth month. During this time the baby hears sounds around it and tries to imitate them to little success. This attempt at creating and experimenting with sound is what we refer to as blabbing.

After blabbing for a few months, the baby begins to relate the sounds or words it is making to objects or things. This is where the second sub-stage begins. From eight months to 13 months, the baby continues to gain control over not just its vocal communication but also its physical condition. Afterward, the baby begins to use both verbal and non-verbal means to interact with its environment. This is when the baby moves to the next level of language acquisition.

Holophrastic/ One-word stage

The one-word or holophrastic stage is the second stage of language acquisition. In this stage, the child begins to make one-word sentences. In the Holophrastic stage, nouns make up fifty percent of the child’s vocabulary while verbs and modifiers make up about thirty percent. The remaining twenty percent is made up of questions and negatives.

In this stage, children use one-word sentences to obtain the things they need or want. However, most of the time, they are not obvious. For example, a child will cry “mama” when it just wants attention. Once the baby can speak in successive in one-word sentences, then the baby is ready for the next stage.

Two-word Stage

Just as it implies, the two-word stage is made up of primarily two-word sentences. The sentences in this stage contain one word for the predicate and another word for the subject. For instance, “Doggie eat” for the sentence, “The dog is eating.” In this stage, we see the appearance of single modifiers e.g “That book”, two-word questions. For example, ” Daddy sleep?”.

Telegraphic Stage

This stage is the final stage of language acquisition. This stage is called “telegraphic” because it is similar to what is seen in a telegram; having just enough information for the sentence to make sense. In this stage, the child’s sentences contain many three to four words. During this stage, there are certain times the child begins to see the links between the words and objects, and therefore, over-generalization comes in.

Here are some examples of sentences in the telegraphic stage “what his name?”, “Mummy eat apple” and “She is dancing.” In this stage, the child’s vocabulary increases from fifty to over thirteen thousand words. Towards the end of the stage, the child will begin to make attempts to get a grip on tense by incorporating plurals and joining words.

In many ways, a child’s grasp on language seems as though the child just learns each part in a random order, but this is far from true. There is a particular order of speech sounds. Children begin by speaking vowels with the rounded “oo” and “as”. The consonants come after the vowels.  Examples of the consonants include p, b, m, t, d, n, k, and g. These consonants come first because they are easier to pronounce than some of the others e.g ‘s’ and ‘z’. This is because the ‘s’ and ‘z’ require specific tongue placement which children are unable to do at that age.

Like all human beings, children will improvise something they are unable to do. For example, when they come across a sound they find difficult to pronounce, they will replace it with a sound they can produce.

Also read Language Development Theories!

Additional sources

There are four main stages of normal language acquisition:  The babbling stage, the Holophrastic or one-word stage, the two-word stage and the Telegraphic stage. These stages can be broken down even more into these smaller stages: pre-production, early production, speech emergent, beginning fluency intermediate fluency and advanced fluency. On this page I will be providing a summary of the four major stage of language acquisition.

Babbling

Within a few weeks of being born the baby begins to recognize it’s mothers’ voice. There are two sub-stages within this period. The first occurs between birth – 8 months. Most of this stage involves the baby relating to its surroundings and only during 5/6 – 8 month period does the baby begin using it’s vocals. As has been previously discussed babies learn by imitation and the babbling stage is just that. During these months the baby hears sounds around them and tries to reproduce them, albeit with limited success. The babies attempts at creating and experimenting with sounds is what we call babbling. When the baby has been babbling for a few months it begins to relate the words or sounds it is making to objects or things. This is the second sub-stage.  From 8 months to 12 months the baby gains more and more control  over not only it’s vocal communication but physical communication as well, for example body language and gesturing.  Eventually when the baby uses both verbal and non-verbal means to communicate, only then does it move on to the next stage of language acquisition.

Holophrastic / One-word stage

The second stage of language acquisition is the holophrastic or one word stage. This stage is characterized by one word sentences. In this stage nouns make up around 50% of the infants vocabulary while verbs and modifiers make up around 30% and questions and negatives make up the rest. This one-word stage contains single word utterances such as “play” for “I want to play now”. Infants use these sentence primarily to obtain things they want or need, but sometimes they aren’t that obvious. For example a baby may cry or say “mama” when it purely wants attention.  The infant is ready to advance to the next stage when it can speak in successive one word sentences.

Two-Word Stage

The two word stage (as you may have guessed) is made of up primarily two word sentences. These sentences contain 1 word for the predicate and 1 word for the subject. For example “Doggie walk” for the sentence “The dog is being walked.”  During this stage we see the appearance of single modifiers e.g. “That dog”, two word questions e.g. “Mummy eat?” and the addition of the suffix –ing onto words to describe something that is currently happening e.g.  “Baby Sleeping.”

Telegraphic Stage

The final stage of language acquisition is the telegraphic stage. This stage is named as it is because it is similar to what is seen in a telegram; containing just enough information for the sentence to make sense. This stage contains many three and four word sentences. Sometime during this stage the child begins to see the links between words and objects and therefore overgeneralization comes in. Some examples of sentences in the telegraphic stage are “Mummy eat carrot”, “What her name?” and “He is playing ball.” During this stage a child’s vocabulary expands from 50 words to up to 13,000 words. At the end of this stage the child starts to incorporate plurals, joining words and attempts to get a grip on tenses.

As a child’s grasp on language grows it may seem to us as though they just learn each part in a random order, but this is not the case. There is a definite order of speech sounds. Children first start speaking vowels, starting with the rounded mouthed sounds like “oo” and “aa”. After the vowels come the consonants, p, b, m, t, d, n, k and g. The consonants are first because they are easier to pronounce then some of the others, for example ‘s’ and ‘z’ require specific tongue place which children cannot do at that age.

As all human beings do, children will improvise something they cannot yet do. For example when children come across a sound they cannot produce they replace it with a sound they can e.g. ‘Thoap” for “Soap” and “Wun” for “Run.” These are just a few example of resourceful children are, even if in our eyes it is just cute.

Stages of language acquisition in children

In nearly all cases, children’s language development follows a predictable
sequence. However, there is a great deal of variation in the age at which
children reach a given milestone. Furthermore, each child’s development
is usually characterized by gradual acquisition of particular abilities:
thus «correct» use of English verbal inflection will emerge
over a period of a year or more, starting from a stage where vebal inflections
are always left out, and ending in a stage where they are nearly always
used correctly.

There are also many different ways to characterize the developmental
sequence. On the production side, one way to name the stages is as follows,
focusing primarily on the unfolding of lexical and syntactic knowledge:

Stage	Typical age	Description
Babbling	6-8 months	Repetitive CV patterns
One-word stage (better one-morpheme or one-unit) or holophrastic stage	9-18 months	Single open-class words or word stems
Two-word stage	18-24 months	«mini-sentences» with simple semantic relations
Telegraphic stage or early multiword stage (better multi-morpheme)	24-30 months	«Telegraphic» sentence structures of lexical rather than functional or grammatical morphemes
Later multiword stage	30+ months	Grammatical or functional structures emerge

Vocalizations in the first year of life

At birth,
the infant vocal tract is in some ways more like that of an ape than that
of an adult human. Compare the diagram of the infant vocal tract shown
on the left to diagrams of adult human
and ape.

In particular, the tip of the velum reaches or overlaps with the tip
of the epiglottis. As the infant grows, the tract gradually reshapes itself
in the adult pattern.

During the first two months of life, infant vocalizations are mainly
expressions of discomfort (crying and fussing), along with sounds produced
as a by-product of reflexive or vegetative actions such as coughing, sucking,
swallowing and burping. There are some nonreflexive, nondistress sounds
produced with a lowered velum and a closed or nearly closed mouth, giving
the impression of a syllabic nasal or a nasalized vowel.

During the period from about 2-4 months, infants begin making «comfort
sounds», typically in response to pleasurable interaction with a
caregiver. The earliest comfort sounds may be grunts or sighs, with later
versions being more vowel-like «coos». The vocal tract is held
in a fixed position. Initially comfort sounds are brief and produced in
isolation, but later appear in series separated by glottal stops. Laughter
appears around 4 months.

During the period from 4-7 months, infants typically engage in «vocal
play», manipulating pitch (to produce «squeals» and «growls»),
loudness (producing «yells»), and also manipulating tract closures
to produce friction noises, nasal murmurs, «raspberries» and
«snorts».

At about seven months, «canonical babbling» appears: infants
start to make extended sounds that are chopped up rhythmically by oral
articulations into syllable-like sequences, opening and closing their
jaws, lips and tongue. The range of sounds produced are heard as stop-like
and glide-like. Fricatives, affricates and liquids are more rarely heard,
and clusters are even rarer. Vowels tend to be low and open, at least
in the beginning.

Repeated sequences are often produced, such as [bababa] or [nanana],
as well as «variegated» sequences in which the characteristics
of the consonant-like articulations are varied. The variegated sequences
are initially rare and become more common later on.

Both vocal play and babbling are produced more often in interactions
with caregivers, but infants will also produce them when they are alone.

No other animal does anything like babbling. It has often been hypothesized
that vocal play and babbling have the function of «practicing»
speech-like gestures, helping the infant to gain control of the motor
systems involved, and to learn the acoustical consequences of different
gestures.

One word (holophrastic) stage

At about ten months, infants start to utter recognizable words. Some
word-like vocalizations that do not correlate well with words in the local
language may consistently be used by particular infants to express particular
emotional states: one infant is reported to have used to
express pleasure, and another is said to have used to
express «distress or discomfort». For the most part, recognizable
words are used in a context that seems to involve naming: «duck»
while the child hits a toy duck off the edge of the bath; «sweep»
while the child sweeps with a broom; «car» while the child looks
out of the living room window at cars moving on the street below; «papa»
when the child hears the doorbell.

Young children often use words in ways that are too narrow or too broad:
«bottle» used only for plastic bottles; «teddy» used
only for a particular bear; «dog» used for lambs, cats, and
cows as well as dogs; «kick» used for pushing and for wing-flapping
as well as for kicking. These underextensions and overextensions
develop and change over time in an individual child’s usage.

Perception vs. production

Clever experiments have shown that most infants can give evidence (for
instance, by gaze direction) of understanding some words at the age of
4-9 months, often even before babbling begins. In fact, the development
of phonological abilities begins even earlier. Newborns can distinguish
speech from non-speech, and can also distinguish among speech sounds (e.g.

[t] vs. [d] or [t] vs. [k]); within a couple of months of birth, infants

can distinguish speech in their native language from speech in other languages.

Early linguistic interaction with mothers, fathers and other caregivers

is almost certainly important in establishing and consolidating these

early abilities, long before the child is giving any indication of language

abilities.

Rate of vocabulary development

In the beginning, infants add active vocabulary somewhat gradually. Here

are measures of active vocabulary development in two studies. The Nelson

study was based on diaries kept by mothers of all of their children’s

utterances, while the Fenson study is based on asking mothers to check

words on a list to indicate which they think their child produces.

Milestone	Nelson 1973 (18 children)	Fenson 1993 (1,789 children)
10 words	15 months (range 13-19)	13 months (range 8-16)
50 words	20 months (range 14-24)	17 months (range 10-24)
Vocabulary at 24 months	186 words (range 28-436)	310 words (range 41-668)

There is often a spurt of vocabulary acquisition during the second year.

Early words are acquired at a rate of 1-3 per week (as measured by production

diaries); in many cases the rate may suddenly increase to 8-10 new words

per week, after 40 or so words have been learned. However, some children

show a more steady rate of acquisition during these early stages. The

rate of vocabulary acquisition definitely does accelerate in the third

year and beyond: a plausible estimate would be an average of 10 words

a day during pre-school and elementary school years.

Sex differences in vocabulary acquisition

Against a background of enormous individual variation, girl babies tend to learn more words faster than boy babies do; but the difference disappears over time.

Svetlana Lutchmaya, Simon Baron-Cohen and Peter Raggat («Foetal testosterone and vocabulary size in 18- and 24-month infants», Infant Behavior and Development 24:418-424, 2002) found that in a sample of 18-month-olds, boys’ average vocabulary size was 41.8 words (range from 0 to 222, standard deviation 50.1), while girls’ average was 86.8 (range from 2 to 318, standard deviation 83.2). By 24 months, the difference had narrowed to a boys’ mean of 196.8 (range 0 to 414, standard deviation 126.8) vs. a girls’ mean of 275.1 (range 15 to 415, SD=121.6). In other words, the girls’ advantage in average values had shrunk from 86.8/41.8 = 2.1 to 275.1/196.8 = 1.5.

As time passes, the difference disappears entirely, and then emerges again in the opposite direction, with males showing larger average vocabularies during college years (though again against the background of within-group variation that’s much larger than the across-group differences). Here’s table 6 from Janet Shibley Hyde and Marcia C. Linn, «Gender Differences in Verbal Ability: A Meta-Analysis», Psychological Bulletin, 104:1 53-69 (1988).

Perception vs. production again

Benedict (1979) asked mothers to keep a diary indicating not only what

words children produced, but what words they gave evidence of understanding.

Her results indicate that at the time when children were producing 10

words, they were estimated to understand 60 words; and there was an average

gap of five months between the time when a child understood 50 words and

the time when (s)he produced 50 words.

All of these methods (maternal diaries and checklists) probably tend

to underestimate the number of words about young children actually know

something, although they also may overestimate the number of words to

which they attribute adult-like meanings.

Combining words: the emergence of syntax

During the second year, word combinations begin to appear. Novel combinations

(where we can be sure that the result is not being treated as a single

word) appear sporadically as early as 14 months. At 18 months, 11% of

parents say that their child is often combining words, and 46% say that

(s)he is sometimes combining words. By 25 months, almost all children

are sometimes combining words, but about 20% are still not doing so «often.»

Early multi-unit utterances

In some cases, early multiple-unit utterances can be seen as concatenations

of individual naming actions that might just as well have occured alone:

«mommy» and «hat» might be combined as «mommy

hat»; «shirt» and «wet» might be combined as

«shirt wet». However, these combinations tend to occur in an

order that is appropriate for the language being learned:

1. Doggy bark
2. Ken water (for «Ken is drinking water»)
3. Hit doggy

Some combinations with certain closed-class morphemes begin to occur

as well: «my turn», «in there», etc. However, these

are the closed-class words such as pronouns and prepositions that have

semantic content in their own right that is not too different from that

of open-class words. The more purely grammatical morphemes — verbal inflections

and verbal auxiliaries, nominal determiners, complementizers etc. — are

typically absent.

Since the earliest multi-unit utterances are almost always two morphemes

long — two being the first number after one! — this period is sometimes

called the «two-word stage». Quite soon, however, children begin

sometimes producing utterances with more than two elements, and it is

not clear that the period in which most utterances have either one or

two lexical elements should really be treated as a separate stage.

In the early multi-word stage, children who are asked to repeat sentences

may simply leave out the determiners, modals and verbal auxiliaries, verbal

inflections, etc., and often pronouns as well. The same pattern can be

seen in their own spontaneous utterances:

1. «I can see a cow» repeated as «See cow» (Eve at

   25 months)

2. «The doggy will bite» repeated as «Doggy bite»

   (Adam at 28 months)

3. Kathryn no like celery (Kathryn at 22 months)
4. Baby doll ride truck (Allison at 22 months)
5. Pig say oink (Claire at 25 months)
6. Want lady get chocolate (Daniel at 23 months)
7. «Where does Daddy go?» repeated as «Daddy go?»

   (Daniel at 23 months)

8. «Car going?» to mean «Where is the car going?»

   (Jem at 21 months)

The pattern of leaving out most grammatical/functional morphemes is called

«telegraphic», and so people also sometimes refer to the early

multi-word stage as the «telegraphic stage».

Acquisition of grammatical elements and the corresponding structures

At about the age of two, children first begin to use grammatical elements.

In English, this includes finite auxiliaries («is», «was»),

verbal tense and agreement affixes («-ed» and ‘-s’), nominative

pronouns («I», «she»), complementizers («that»,

«where»), and determiners («the», «a»).

The process is usually a somewhat gradual one, in which the more telegraphic

patterns alternate with adult or adult-like forms, sometimes in adjacent

utterances:

1. She’s gone. Her gone school. (Domenico at 24 months)
2. He’s kicking a beach ball. Her climbing up the ladder there. (Jem

   at 24 months).

3. I teasing Mummy. I’m teasing Mummy. (Holly at 24 months)
4. I having this. I’m having ‘nana. (Olivia at 27 months).
5. I’m having this little one. Me’ll have that. (Betty at 30 months).
6. Mummy haven’t finished yet, has she? (Olivia at 36 months).

Over a year to a year and a half, sentences get longer, grammatical elements

are less often omitted and less often inserted incorrectly, and multiple-clause

sentences become commoner.

Perception vs. production again

Several studies have shown that children who regularly omit grammatical

elements in their speech, nevertheless expect these elements in what they

hear from adults, in the sense that their sentence comprehension suffers

if the grammatical elements are missing or absent.

Progress backwards

Often morphological inflections include a regular case («walk/walked»,

«open/opened») and some irregular or exceptional cases («go/went»,

«throw/threw», «hold/held»). In the beginning, such

words will be used in their root form. As inflections first start being

added, both regular and irregular patterns are found. At a certain point,

it is common for children to over-generalize the regular case, producing

forms like «bringed», «goed»; «foots», «mouses»,

etc. At this stage, the child’s speech may actually become less correct

by adult standards than it was earlier, because of over-regularization.

This over-regularization, like most other aspects of children’s developing

grammar, is typically resistant to correction:

CHILD: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
ADULT: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits.
CHILD: Yes.
ADULT: What did you say she did?
CHILD: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
ADULT: Did you say she held them tightly?
CHILD: No, she holded them loosely.

More Information

A good starting point for more information about child language acquisition
is the CHILDES web site at CMU,
where you can find out about downloading the raw materials of child language
research, and also search a specialized child language
bibliography.

A recent article in the NYT Magazine (Paul Tough, «What it takes to make a student», 11/26/2006) discusses at length some well-known studies about social-class differences in language acquisition (Betty Hart and Todd Risley, «Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children» (1995); Betty Hart, «A Natural History of Early Language Experience», Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 20(1), 2000; «The early Catastrophe: the 30 Million Word Gap», American Educator, 27(1) pp. 4-9, 2003). The abstract from the 2003 paper:

By age 3, children from privileged families have heard 30 million more words than children from underprivileged families. Longitudinal data on 42 families examined what accounted for enormous differences in rates of vocabulary growth. Children turned out to be like their parents in stature, activity level, vocabulary resources, and language and interaction styles. Follow-up data indicated that the 3-year-old measures of accomplishment predicted third grade school achievement.

42 is not a very large sample, and there are many other questions to ask, but this work suggests that we should be concerned about possible lasting effects of cultural differences in children’s linguistic environment.

Another, more recent, study suggesting the same conclusion is
Martha J. Farah, et al., («Childhood poverty: Specific associations with neurocognitive development», Brain Research 1110(1) 166-174, September 2006). Prof. Farah and her co-workers «administered a battery of tasks designed to tax specific neurocognitive systems to healthy low and middle SES [socio-economic status] children screened for medical history and matched for age, gender and ethnicity».

Fig. 1. Effect sizes, measured in standard deviations of separation between low and middle SES group performance, on the composite measures of the seven different neurocognitive systems assessed in this study. Black bars represent effect sizes for statistically significant effects; gray bars represent effect sizes for nonsignificant effects.

All the participants in this study were African-American girls between the ages of 10 and 13. As the graph above indicates, the difference in performance on the «Language» part of the test battery between middle SES and low SES girls represented an effect size of about 0.95.

There were two language-related tasks:

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)
This is a standardized vocabulary test for children between the ages of 2.5 and 18. On each trial, the child hears a word and must select the corresponding picture from among four choices.
Test of Reception of Grammar (TROG)
In this sentence–picture matching task designed by Bishop (1982), the child hears a sentence and must choose the picture, from a set of four, which depicts the sentence. Its lexical–semantic demands are negligible as the vocabulary is simple and a pre-test ensures that subjects know the meanings of the small set of words that occur in the test.

This finding is consistent with a lasting effect of differences like those in the Hart & Risly study, ,though other explanations are also possible.

Of all the milestones in your child’s life, hearing them say their first word is one of the biggest. Here you have this baby that’s now been in your care for around a year and, after getting to know and understand them during that time, you finally have the opportunity to start to communicate with them using words. It’s also kind of mind-blowing when you think about how these once-tiny, squishy babies end up turning into walking, talking mini-adults (even though that’s pretty standard at this point in human development). Of course, they don’t go from cooing in their crib to expressing themselves in complete sentences overnight — there are stages of language development.

RELATED: Start Communicating With Your Baby Using These Easy Baby Sign Language Tips

But as a new parent, you may not be familiar with those stages. That’s totally understandable! Since you’re here, though, it’s clear you’re ready to discover what comes after your baby’s first coos. So, here’s what to know about the four stages of language development in early childhood.

What is language development in children?

In general, young children tend to follow a similar progression through four steps of language development. Before we go any further, let us be clear: There is no set timeline for this happening. Sure, there are approximate ages when a child typically reaches a particular stage. But every child is different, and these guidelines should not make you panic. If it gets to the point where you are concerned about your kiddo’s language development later on, by all means, discuss this with their pediatrician. Having said that, if your baby isn’t babbling in repetitive patterns by the time they’re eight-months-old, it’s likely not something to worry about.

It’s also important to keep in mind that there are several different language development theories. These theories vary in how they take into consideration both nature and nurture and favor certain approaches over others. So again, if your child doesn’t follow a timeline, that doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with their language development.

What are the four stages of language development?

While there can be a lot of variation, language development in children does tend to follow this pattern of four broad categories, or stages. (And as a reminder, the ages included here are approximate!)

Stage 1: Babbling

Typically happens when a baby is between six and eight-months-old, and involves repetitive patterns of consonants followed by vowels (i.e. ma/ma, da/da, ga/ga, etc).

Stage 2: One-word stage

Also known as the holophrastic stage, this typically occurs when a child is between nine-months-old and 18-months-old, and involves communicating via single words, or a single word stem (i.e. doggy, no, stop, etc).

Stage 3: Two-word stage

This one is exactly what it sounds like: when your little one speaks in basic two-word sentences. It typically occurs in toddlers between the ages of 18 and 24 months (i.e. doggy bark, mommy hat, etc).

Stage 4: Early multiword stage

Also known as the telegraphic stage, this is when children are asked to repeat sentences, and when they do, leave out a few words (i.e. “I can see a cow” repeated as “See cow”). Toddlers typically reach this stage between 24 and 30 months.

What are the most critical years in a child’s development?

Helping your child grow is an ongoing process, but the crucial years of development start from the moment they’re born, to five years old. The relationships they form and the experiences they have during their first five years of life have a huge impact on their brain’s growth. This period is filled with sensitive milestones that are key to their cognitive development.

Do girls develop language before boys?

Starting with a reminder that gender is a social construct, this is a question that has been researched quite a bit. In the early 2000s, several studies were published which appeared to confirm the idea that baby girls start speaking earlier than baby boys. More recent research challenged these findings, examining if it’s another example of nature versus nurture, and/or potentially some type of gene. But in general, just remember that all kiddos develop at their own pace — and you’re doing just fine, Mama.

Are there activities to encourage speech and language development?

Each kid is different and moves at their own pace when it comes to talking. So there is nothing wrong with needing an extra push. Here are a few exercises you can practice with your sweetheart at home.

• First things first, your television shouldn’t be your child’s teacher. Conversing with people helps your baby find their words, not the TV.
• Say simple words to your baby like “da”, “ma”, “ba”, “aa” or “ooh.” These sounds are in your baby’s speech range and is a great start to getting your kiddo to talk. Eventually, they’ll copy you and start forming their own string of sounds.
• Narrate to your child what you are doing. If you are cooking or cleaning up, talk about your actions. This helps your baby learn which words mean what actions.
• Read to your child whenever you can. Not only will this instill a love for learning and grow their imagination, but matching words to colorful pages helps strengthen their understanding.
• Use hand gestures when speaking with your nugget. If you’re an expressive person and already talk with your hands, this should be a breeze. When teaching your baby a song, clap your hands or wave goodbye to them when you leave. You want your baby to link certain gestures with certain words. This will help them understand words and their meaning.
• Sing to your baby. When there’s a rhythm and words rhyme, it’s much easier for your baby to learn words. It may even encourage them to sing along. There’s a reason there are so many nursery rhymes. Pick one and have fun!

This article was originally published on Dec. 9, 2020