When a child starts to say the first words

Every new milestone of a little one is a real celebration for parents, the first smile, the first step, the first word. For new parents eagerly awaiting their kiddo's first words, it's good to know that kids typically start talking around 22-24 months. By the age of two, their pronunciation of consonant sounds gets clearer. It's important to remember that every child is unique and follows their own development timeline. These are just rough norms, and not everyone fits into them.

When a Healthy Kid Starts Talking

According to the generally accepted norms of children's speech development, a child starts communicating through voice right after birth. Crying is kind of a message to adults, indicating the baby's needs, discomfort, or pain.

As they grow and develop, by 4-6 months, a kiddo begins to babble, trying out new sounds, combining them, repeating the most commonly heard syllables, and changing the tone of their voice.

Boys develop at a slightly different pace, a bit slower than girls. They might start talking a little later than girls of the same age. This shouldn't be a cause for concern.

By 12 months, a child can already associate objects with certain sounds, actively tries to engage in a dialogue with an adult in their own language, which is still not understood by those around them. This is how they train their speech and pronunciation functions. And by 22-24 months, a child utters complete words and forms sentences out of them.

The subsequent speech development goes like this:

• 1-1.5 years – Kids start trying to say simple words, often repeating them after an adult.
• 1.5-2 years – The little one's vocabulary grows to about 50 words that are clearly related to a specific object, person, or animal. They start trying to put words together.
• 2-3 years – Their vocabulary keeps expanding, and they begin to form complex sentences and understand instructions that involve several steps.

These milestones are flexible. Kids might start talking earlier or later than these ages. If it's later, the main thing is not to panic, get mad at them, or force them to talk. Instead, be patient and focus all your energy on activities that motivate speech.

How to Get Your Kid Talking

When a little one grows up in a nurturing environment from the get-go, where all the adults around communicate with them and each other in a positive way, delays in speech development tend to be less common.

From birth, a child should be immersed in both verbal and tactile communication. You gotta talk to them all the time: during playtime, bath time, feeding, massages, and while getting ready to go outside. Every action by mom and other family members should be accompanied by words. This is how phonemic hearing and perception – the foundations of proper pronunciation and speech – are formed and developed.

A six-month delay in speech development is considered normal and doesn't require intervention unless there are pathological disorders.

When interacting with your child, it's important to:

• use simple, understandable sentences;
• narrate everything happening around them;
• construct phrases correctly, talk about yourself in the first person, and address the child informally;
• infuse your speech with emotion depending on the situation;
• try to baby talk as little as possible, especially if your child is a year old or more. Baby talking can lead to the child mispronouncing sounds later on.

This way, a child builds up a passive vocabulary, which eventually becomes active.

When to Start Speech Development Exercises for Kids

By the time they hit the one-year mark, as soon as your kiddo is ready to listen, understand, and follow instructions, you can kick off with some speech therapy games. These activities not only strengthen the emotional bond between the child and an adult but also prime the speech apparatus for proper sound pronunciation.

Articulation Games for the Little Ones:

• Making faces in the mirror. This helps them explore their own face and movements, engaging all the facial muscles;
• Tongue movements that mimic licking the lips. These refine tongue control skills needed for articulating more complex sounds;
• Puffing up cheeks;
• Sticking out the tongue;
• Practicing speech exhalation by blowing bubbles, blowing lightweight objects off a table, and so on.

The golden rule when working with kids – keep it fun and always show your approval.

Speech Development Activities

Most boys and girls really enjoy listening to their mom read to them.

These activities can be done not only when a child is supposed to start talking but also much earlier. They include:

• reading books, poems, and nursery rhymes to the child. This helps broaden their horizons, enriches their passive vocabulary, and demonstrates proper pronunciation. The rhythmic nature of poetic texts and sound rhymes positively affects speech development;
• fine motor skills development activities. This includes sorting grains, finger lakes, lacing, buttons, sensory paths;
• gross motor skills development;
• finger games;
• playful exercises aimed at developing non-verbal hearing. This can include identifying the contents of different boxes by their distinctive sounds, guessing musical instruments by their sounds, differentiating noises made by various objects.

The complexity of the activities is chosen based on the child's age, taking into account the zone of proximal development.

When Will Your Kid Start Talking if There's a Slight Delay?

Being half a year off the standard timeline is considered okay. It could just be a sign of your child's unique developmental path and might not need any intervention from professionals. Plus, boys might start talking even later.

This could be due to:

• a genetic factor - like if one of the parents started talking late;
• issues during the prenatal period - like a tough pregnancy, complicated medical history for the mom, or premature birth. In these cases, some parts of the nervous system might develop slower. But, it's crucial to rule out any serious congenital issues;
• hearing problems - make sure to get this checked by a doctor;
• not enough interaction and lack of motivation.

If at 12 months your kid is active, sociable, healthy, can hear, understand, and respond to spoken language, and follows parents' requests, then there's no need to worry.