An exciting milestone in your child’s life and development is when they begin to talk! Those first few words are just the beginning of them learning an entire vocabulary. As a parent, part of your job is to encourage speech development.
Too often, parents compare their toddler’s development to others, especially with social media. Articles may say that your child should be reading so many words by a certain age. Know that all children are different and develop at different paces. However, there are ways to improve your toddler’s speech development if it’s worrying you.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) does provide a research-backed estimate of how many words your child should be saying at a certain age. Toddlers aged 18 months should be able to speak several words. By two years old, children should be able to say sentences containing two to four words. At three years old, most children can carry on a conversation with a few basic sentences.
The CDC doesn’t ever specifically state how many words your child should say per day, so you can take a sigh of relief! You still want to help your child with their speech, though, so here are seven ways to encourage speech development in your toddlers.
1. Pair Words with Movement
Toddlers do well imitating speech when they have a movement to go along with it. That’s why they tend to figure out animal sounds well before they pronounce full words. When you teach them animal sounds, you often make a motion, such as flapping your arms like a chicken.
While you’re playing with your child, use fun action words. For example, when your child jumps, say,
Speak Your Mind