How does a one to two-year-old child hear, talk and play? Language and play skills go hand in hand. Children develop language, speech, and play and social skills at their own rates. Your child may or may not acquire all of these skills until his or her second birthday.
Receptive language skills
Your child will:
- Demonstrate use of objects (brush teeth and feed others)
- Shake head to indicate “no”
- Follow one-step directions during play
- Point to two action words in pictures
- Understand a few prepositions (in and on)
- Follow related directions for two objects (get ___ and ___)
- Identify objects by category (food, animal and clothes)
- Indicate pants are wet
- Lead caregiver to desired object
- Identify four body parts on self
- Choose one object from a group
- Put toys away on request
- Identify self in mirror
Expressive language skills
Your child will:
- Make three animal sounds
- Say “hi,” “bye” or “please”
- Say eight to 10 words spontaneously
- Say 15 words and understand their meanings
- Talk more than use gestures
- Ask “what’s that?”
- Answer “what’s this” for five to seven familiar objects
- Use single words frequently
- Repeat a few phrases
- Use 50 different words
- Put two words together, like “more milk,” “no bed” and “mommy cookie”
- Use p, b, m, h and w words
- Start to name pictures in books
Play/social skills
Your child will:
- Play independently
- Put one object inside another
- Hand a toy to an adult for help
- Use two turns during conversation
- Play with a group of toys
- Pretend with toys (baby drinking milk, animal eating food and others)
- Look for hidden objects
- Role-play simple actions previously seen
- Imitate pretend-play actions (give baby doll a bottle)
- Demonstrate play related to the body (pretend to sleep)
What can you do to help your child at home?
- Read every day, point pictures and name them.
- Ask your child to point and name pictures.
- Play with sounds during bath time, feeding time and play time.
- Play blowing bubbles and making sounds, adding words like “car” and saying the sounds and adding simple, short words and sentences that your child can imitate.
- Talk to your child as you do things throughout the day, e.g.: “It’s a brown dog,” “It’s a big dog” and “It says woof.”
