Speech and Language Milestones
When do children start talking?
By two years old:
- Have a vocabulary of approximately 50 to 75 words.
- Produce vowel sounds and “m, n, p, t and w” sounds correctly
- Join two words together such, as “bear eat” and “bubble pop”
- Point to objects when they say the object’s name
- Follow simple instructions, such as “wave goodbye”
By three years old:
- Have a vocabulary of approximately 200+ words
- Follow simple instructions, such as “brush bear’s hair”
- Use 3-to-4-word sentences, such as “daddy go outside”
- Produce “m, n, p, b, t, w, h, d, k and g” sounds
By four years old:
- Have a vocabulary of more than 1000+ words
- Use 4-to-5-word sentences, such as “grandma likes tea, doesn’t she?”
- Ask and answer who, what and where questions
- Be more than 90 per cent understood by others
By five years old:
- Be 100 per cent understood by others
- Speak in long and detailed sentences
- Use the correct form of verbs to talk about past and future events
- Start to understand some concepts of time, such as night, day and yesterday
- Produce all speech sounds correctly except some consonant blends, such as “r” and “th’”