How should my child’s language develop during the first 2 years of life?

A lot of parents have questions about language development and how soon their babies will start talking to them and what they can expect around the first birthday and around the second year of life. Generally speaking, leading up to their first birthday most babies start to say just a few recognizable syllables like maybe “ma” or “da” or “bababa,” and they repeat those things. Language development actually starts long before the baby can start talking because they begin to associate the world around them with certain words or phrases and they also understand emotions and body language. And so when your baby says something to you and you get excited about it and you get excited about it they'll want to say it again and again because it makes them happy and it makes you happy too. Picture books are great ways to encourage understanding of single objects. There are lots of good picture books that you can look at with your baby between 6 and 12 months of age. They have a single object on them, they're bright and recognizable things that they'll encounter a lot in their world. You just point to it and you say “ball,” “orange,” “truck,” whatever the object may be and they start to associate those words with it. As they get a little bit older they may have a favorite blanket or toy and when you say something like, “theres your toy in the corner of the room,” if they look in that direction then you know that they're beginning to understand but they may not be saying it yet. The words will start to come during the second year. By their second birthday most kids master about 50 words or so, so development of language develops a little more slowly than some parents may think. By the end of that second year most kids are also saying 2 word sentences and are starting to use action verbs and also some pronouns and understanding the use of me, you, I. Like they might say I go if they want to go somewhere with you, so those are things you're looking for by the end of the second year. Generally speaking girls develop language skills sooner than boys. SO if you feel like your kids are lagging, they're not saying as many words as you feel like they should say, talk with your pediatrician and they'll ask you more specific questions about your observations and concerns. They may also just watch you interact with your child and then determine if further investigation is warranted. For example some people are concerned if their children aren't saying mama or dada by their first birthday. A lot of babies are, but some aren't yet, and they're not always appropriately using that to label you as mama or dad as dadda. Sometimes they just like to hear themselves talk and haven’t necessarily associated that with a person. But that will come with time. So again if you're concerned talk to your pediatrician about it. And there's two things to consider, there's the cognitive development and the understanding behind language which usually come first, and then there's actually speaking the language and that usually comes with time. If you have more questions in the future for me, feel free to ask them on our Facebook page at facebook.com/intermountainmoms and recommend us to your friends and family too.