SPEECH AND LANGUAGE MILESTONE

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.

BBY 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”.