A couple of weeks ago I uploaded a post called How Many Words Should My Child Be Saying? In this post I outlined the number of words children should have by particular ages, and why it’s important to monitor the quantity of your child’s vocabulary. What I didn’t really talk about, however, was the importance of variety within a child’s vocabulary. Most children’s earliest words are nouns, or the names of objects, people and places (e.g. Mum, dad, car, train, etc.). Once they begin to acquire more and more words, however, they begin to acquire new word types, like verbs (e.g. jump, run, go), descriptive words (e.g. yucky, yummy, wet, dirty), location words (e.g. up, down, there) and more. These words are important for effective communication, as there’s only so much information…

Probably the most common question I am asked by parents is how many words should their child be saying at a given age. A lack of words is one of the earliest warning signs for parents, that their child’s communication is not developing typically. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of different figures floating around. While I covered broader communication development in my Early Language Development Series, I wanted to cover vocabulary acquisition specifically, for this reason. Age Average Number of Words Minimum Number of Words 12 months 1 15 months 10 1 18 months 50 5-15 24 months 200-300 50 The above table breaks down early vocabulary down into ages, along with the average number of words most children will have and the minimum number of words they must have to be considered…