Toddler Speech Development

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Dr. David Hill and today we're talking about toddler speech development. The toddler time is an enormous time for speech growth. At 12 months most children are aware of their names, they understand the word "No," they can produce Mama, Dada, and maybe one other word like bye-bye. By 15 months, they're understanding a tremendous amount of what's said to them. They're usually able to follow a simple command like sit down, come here or pick that up. However, they're not saying all that much, usually 3 to 6 words in addition to Mama and Dada. If your child says more, great, but don't tell the other parents, they going to get really jealous. This is a great time to read with your child, 'cos at 15 months they can follow a simple story book in your lap for a few minutes, remember they don't have a terribly long attention span, and bright colorful pictures will help. Be sure around this time that when you talk to your toddler, he gets plenty of words. The more words they hear, the more words they are going to learn. As a standard, we like sentences that have at least five words. Instead of stop or put that down, put that down honey, I'm afraid you're going to hurt yourself. They're going to learn to talk a lot faster if you do that. Take time to name things, this is your sock, it's going on your foot. They seem like simple things but boy, they do make a difference on how fast a child learns to talk. By 18 months, the child is probably saying at least 8 to10 words and maybe putting a couple of words together to form an idea, and by 24 months, they're certainly putting 2 or 3 words together that have different meaning so that they can really put together the essence of a sentence. Remember, the more you talk to 'em, the more you read with them, the faster they are going to learn. Talking about toddler speech development, I'm Dr. David Hill."