Tips for your 2-year-old from our child speech pathologist

Celebrating your two-year-old

Congratulations – your child is in the emerging language stage of development. This is a stage at which small children become more effective and efficient communicators with their peers and with their caregivers. Although this age carries the stereotype of the ‘Terrible Twos’, it is a particularly exciting time for parents and carers of these children as their child’s language is EXPLODING!

Your toddler is now:

• Using words more than gestures to meet their own needs.
• Saying two-word phrases to refer to objects, actions and gain joint attention.
• Using both verbal and non-verbal communication more frequently.
• Producing many consonant sounds in words, like; ‘p’, ‘b’, ‘w’, ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘d’ and ‘t’.
• Producing most vowel-like sounds in words.
• Using both single syllable and multisyllabic words.
• Developing an expressive vocabulary between 100 and 500 words.
• Developing a receptive vocabulary of 200 to 600 words.
• Engaging in single and multi-scheme symbolic play with others.

“Play is the most natural environment for a child to learn and acquire his use and understanding of language.” – Language Disorders from Infancy through Adolescence: Assessment and Intervention (3rd ed.) by Rhea Paul, 2007.

Our Geebung child speech pathologist recommends these tips for encouraging your two-year-old child’s language development:

• Meet your child at his or her level – get down on the ground and engage with your child using the toys and objects that your child is interested in.
• Use ‘forced choice’ to encourage verbal productions (e.g., ‘do you want milk or do you want juice?’) and wait for your child to verbally express their choice.

Please contact us to find out more about how you can help your toddler develop their language.