Talking & Listening (birth - 33 months)

Children usually say their first words not long after their first birthdays. By then, they’ve learned a lot about language. They understand much of what you say and the feeling behind your words. Remember that the more you talk with children, the more they will learn.

Toddlers’ language seems to take off sometime between eighteen and thirty months. At this time they put two or three words together and easily learn new words. They may point to things and ask you to name them, repeat words and phrases, or use words to ask questions. Soon, they will be stringing together sentences as they think aloud, explain their ideas, and pretend.

All adults in toddlers’ lives make critical contributions to their language development. Toddlers who get a lot of rich language experience at home and in their early education and care settings are more likely to:

• Develop strong vocabularies and become good storytellers.
• Learn to use their words to resolve conflicts.
• Become confident preschool playmates, with a range of play ideas, the ability to keep conversations going, and negotiation skills.
• Elicit rich information from adults through their ongoing questions.

Toddlers can learn more than one language. Multilingual toddlers may know some words in only one language, but their total vocabularies and language use will be similar to monolingual speakers. For toddlers whose families and educators speak little English with them, the concepts, communication skills, and confidence they develop in their home language provides a foundation for learning English––and for ongoing home language learning.