Helping Your Toddlers Communicate Their Needs and Expand Their Budding Vocabulary

It is no surprise that every toddler will vary in their abilities to express themselves since no one kiddo is the same. For this reason, there are milestones you can go by to make sure your toddler is heading in the right direction.

Here are the speech milestones that Stanford Medicine’s Children’s Health Department shares:

• 12–17 months: Toddlers are able to express themselves with two or three words and sometimes their responses will be nonverbal.
• 18–23 months: Speech will begin to be more complex as they combine words to create phrases and build their vocabulary to potentially 50 or more words.
• 2–3 years old: Toddlers are able to converse with three-or-more-word sentences, they are able to use prepositions such as in or out, and they are able to make nouns plural.
• 3–6 years: A toddler’s speech is becoming more accurate, and so vocabulary and sentences become more specific and longer.

Fortunately, it does not take a special class or knowledge of a specific program to assist a tot in their communication journey. Generally, all parents need to do is engage with their child and to let the speech development naturally occur.

So, when wondering what to do to best help your child, speech pathologist Rachel Cortese, M.S., CCC-SLP, suggests just that in her blog for Child Mind Institute: “Early language acquisition is instinctive and for most children tends to happen quite naturally. But how we as adults respond to their attempts to communicate can have an impact — accelerating or decelerating their language development.” In order to keep pace with your child, here are Cortese's suggestions.

Use imaginative play
By engaging in imaginative play, your toddler will begin to recognize the names of objects that are being played with. "As they go about their day-to-day life, there is a wealth of knowledge and teaching opportunities for them to encounter," shared mom and speech pathologist Marissa Labuz in her blog, Teaching Littles.

Don’t make it too easy
Create ways for your toddler to make requests and fill in the blanks when needed: “If she likes ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider,’ maybe one day sing, ‘The itsy bitsy spider ran up the —,‘ and then pause, encouraging her to fill in the blanks,” suggested Cortese.

Help them take their speech to the next level
Add words to the sentences that your toddler is building so she can learn and apply the new vocabulary. “When your daughter says ‘red truck,’ you can expand on that by saying, ‘Yes, a big red truck,’” advised Cortese.

Activities for your child to develop their speech don't need to be fancy or occur on a special occasion. They can happen at any time and in any situation.

If your toddler does seem to be delayed in their speech, the best advice is to first speak with your child’s pediatrician.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics website, HealthyChildren.org, the more simple delays in speech are most likely not indicative of a larger issue. Most delays are temporary. When your child is beginning to say one-word expressions but has yet to say two-word phrases, then give it time. However, if your child is experiencing multiple delays in not just speech but in other ways such as mobility, then it is time to reach out to a doctor.