When your child hits their third birthday we say farewell to the toddler years and welcome in the preschool years. Children at 3 are becoming more like miniature adults, and their communication is beginning to sound closer to that of adults. Words have taken over from gesturing and vocalising as their main form of communication, and their sentences are becoming longer and more complex.   Vocabulary Vocabularies continue to expand this year, beginning at 3 with on average 1000 words and turning 4 with around 1600. This seems huge, and it is. Between 3 and 4 your child will be saying words that you didn’t even know they knew. Infrequently used or heard, and complex words are being acquired and allow your child to talk about an enormous range of subjects.…

Language typical children, in the year after turning two, begin to go through what is known as a language explosion. They are developing new language at a rapid rate and parents will be finding it difficult to keep up with just how much their child now understands and says. Vocabulary In this 12 month period, your child’s vocabulary will continue to grow and grow. There is a reason we call it a language explosion, as the average child will turn two with a vocabulary of 200-300 words, and will reach their third birthday with around 1000 words. Last week I explained the types of words a one year old will be acquiring. After their second birthday, a child’s vocabulary will expand beyond their immediate environment and experience, and they will begin to…

Last week on the blog I talked about the communication development that happens in the first six months of life. This week, we’re looking at communication development from six months up to one year of age. This age is critical for language, as children are laying the foundational skills necessary for first words and beyond. 6 to 9 MONTHS OF AGE Variegated babbling In the birth to 6 months language development post, we talked about the emergence of reduplicated babbling. Following on from this developmental milestone, as your child rounds the 6 month mark, they may begin to expand on the earlier repetitive type of babbling with a more complex form of babbling known as variegated babbling, where children will start to include multiple consonant and vowel sounds within a babble.…

Welcome to the first part in our Language Development series. In this series we will be covering the communication milestones that typically developing children achieve from birth up until school age. In this installment we will cover the communication milestones that a typically developing child will achieve between birth and six months of age. Long before your child says their first word, they are already working hard on their communication skills. The language milestones a child should achieve in their first six months of life are subtle, and so can be easily overlooked. At this age they are building the foundation they will need for communication, and many of the milestones are social, rather than verbal. While most children will achieve these milestones effortlessly, without us almost realising it, it is…