Content By: Team TE | Therapeutic Endeavors Intern

Here are 5 common speech development milestones every parent should know:

1. Cooing and Babbling (0-12 months)
   Milestone: At around 2-3 months, babies begin to coo, making vowel sounds like “oo” and “ah.” This is the first step in learning to make sounds and is a sign that your baby is starting to develop their vocal skills. By 6 months, you may hear them start babbling, combining consonant and vowel sounds like “ba-ba” or “da-da.”
   What to look for:

   • Early cooing and gurgling sounds
   • Babbling with consonant-vowel combinations

2. First Words (12-18 months)
   Milestone: Around 12 months, most children say their first recognizable word, typically a simple word like “mama,” “dada,” or the name of a favorite toy or family member. By 18 months, many children will have a vocabulary of about 5-10 words.
   What to look for:

   • Using single words to refer to people, objects, or actions
   • Understanding simple commands like “Come here” or “Give me the ball”

3. Combining Words (18-24 months)
   Milestone: As your child’s vocabulary grows, they’ll start to combine two words into simple phrases around 18-24 months. This marks the beginning of sentence structure, with phrases like “want cookie” or “go park.”
   What to look for:

   • Two-word combinations like “big truck,” “go bye-bye,” or “more juice”
   • The beginning of word pairing and simple sentence construction

4. Expanding Vocabulary and Sentence Structure (3-4 years)
   Milestone: By 3-4 years, your child’s vocabulary should expand rapidly, with many children learning 300+ words. They will begin to use more complex sentences, including proper grammar (e.g., “I want to play outside” or “The dog is sleeping”).
   What to look for:

   • Speaking in longer sentences (4-5 words)
   • Increased vocabulary and ability to express thoughts
   • Improved pronunciation and more intelligible speech

5. Mastering Social Communication (4-5 years)
   Milestone: At 4-5 years old, children begin to use language for more than just making requests or labeling objects. They engage in back-and-forth conversations, follow social rules of language like turn-taking, and ask questions.
   What to look for:

   • Engaging in longer conversations with both familiar and unfamiliar people
   • Telling simple stories or recounting events
   • Asking and answering questions appropriately