What are the speech milestones for toddlers from 1 to 2 years old?
From one to two years of age a lot of things happen. From years one to two with speech, the first half of the year is about understanding, and the second half of the year it's about speaking. Thus speech is broken up into expressive language, which are the words we speak, and receptive language, which is what we understand. In all children, especially girls, understanding, or receptive language, comes much faster than what we say. This is true even past two years of age. The reason why children have temper tantrums and get upset is because they always understand much more than they can express to you. So from 12 months to 15 months your child may gain 3 to 5 words. From 15 months to 18 months they may gain another 5 to 10 words. They may only have 10 to 20 words by 18 months as far as speech is concerned, but I would expect that by 15 to 18 months they understand everything; that's what parents tell me. I tell them to go get their shoes and they bring them to me. I say, look at the light, and they look. I say come sit on my lap and let's read a story and they'll do it, even if they can't articulate fully what they want to do. Then, from 18 months to two years, I want to see a word explosion in their speech. And you may see some between 18 and 21 months, and even more between 21 and 24 months. And this is when one day your child wakes up, and every day there's a new word. They're repeating things that you're saying and their vocabulary and speech is really increasing; increasing from those 10 to 20 words of 18 months to more than 50 words at two years.
