What to Expect the Toddler Years (19 page)

Lend your toddler an attentive ear, and you may be surprised at how much of what he says you can understand.
(Or, you may remain just as perplexed by his utterings, and that’s okay, too.) Remember, it takes years of practice to make perfect speech, and many toddlers are too busy practicing other skills, especially their newly found mobility, to practice speaking. Verbal conquests often go on the back burner while physical conquests gather steam.

Most children utter their first word sometime between ten and fourteen months. But it isn’t unheard of for a child to say a word or two as early as eight months. Nor is it unusual for a child not to have comprehensible speech until eighteen months. Many factors contribute to where within the wide range of normal an individual toddler will fall:

Heredity
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Children usually follow the speech patterns of one of their parents. Asking your parents about your language development may provide some clues to how your toddler’s will develop. Some children have early receptive language (that is, they understand much of what is said to them), but are late talkers because their mouth and tongue muscles are genetically destined to develop more slowly.

Birth order
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A first child may begin speaking early, both because his parents have more time to encourage him and because he has no siblings to compete with verbally. Sometimes children with older siblings are slower to speak either because they can’t get a word in edge-wise or because the older sibs anticipate the younger’s needs, thereby making speech unnecessary. But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, the extra verbal stimulation provided by older siblings can prompt the younger child to use language sooner rather than later.

Gender
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On the average, girls speak earlier than boys. This may be due in part to inborn differences and in part to the parental tendency to verbalize more with daughters than with sons (parents often emphasize the acquisition of physical skills over verbal ones with their male offspring). Of course, some girls will end up speaking later than the boys in their play group, and some boys will be the first on the block to put their thoughts into words. Averages, after all, take into account wide variations.

The language environment
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Children are more likely to speak earlier when they are exposed to a rich verbal environment and given plenty of opportunity and encouragement to hone their verbal skills. (Such encouragement is very different from pressure to perform, which is not a good idea; see page 454.) If a family speaks more than one language at home, or if a caregiver speaks a different language to your toddler, the child’s verbal development is often temporarily slowed (not certain which language to speak, he may hesitate to speak either), though in the long run he may become fluent in both tongues.

Child-care arrangement
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Where and with whom the child spends most of his day can make a big difference. Children in day care often learn to speak earlier out of necessity; their needs may not be regularly anticipated the way they are when they’re in a one-to-one child-care situation. Spending all day socializing with other children, many of whom may be older and more verbal, may also encourage toddlers in day care to begin to talk sooner.

Receptive language development.
Before a toddler learns to speak he has to be able to understand the words of others. Most children start to understand some of what is said to them well before the end of the first year. It’s usually clear from his response that a one-year-old comprehends such statements as, “Do you want a drink?” “Let’s go out,” and “No, don’t touch.” So even the child
who hasn’t uttered a word may be busy building language skills.

Individual timetables
. Into the pot of factors that affect language development must be stirred a child’s individuality. Each child develops verbally, as in all other areas of development, at his own speed. The moment at which the toddler utters his first truly recognizable word can vary from well before the end of the first year to well into the second. Some toddlers spout sentences before they can walk, others don’t put two words together until they are about to celebrate their second birthday. Although early talkers tend to be bright, late bloomers aren’t necessarily slow. By the time they enter school, some late talkers catch up with and even surpass their verbally precocious peers.

Don’t feel anxious or guilty because your child’s a late talker. As long as you are exposing him to the spoken word (see the facing page), you’re doing your job. The rest must take its natural course.

If your child doesn’t attempt to vocalize at all, and especially if he does-n’t seem to understand what you’re saying, he may have a hearing deficit or other problem. Report your concerns to his doctor or nurse-practitioner.

“We try hard to understand our son, but his jargon is beyond us. This really seems to upset him, and we don’t know what to do about it.”

Anyone who’s ever visited a foreign country without being able to speak the language can understand the frustration of not being understood. The toddler who can’t yet speak your language has an even tougher time communicating than the tourist. He has no phrase book, after all, to help him struggle through, and he has a low threshold
for the frustration that’s bound to result when the jargon that seems so clear to him is misinterpreted by others.

As his jargon evolves into distinguishable single words, clumps of words, and finally, sentences, your youngster’s frustration—and yours—will ease. In the meantime, as you help him move more speedily toward mastery of his parent tongue, be especially understanding of his need to be understood.

For starters, listen carefully. There may be more to his gibberish than initially meets your ear. Look carefully, too, as you listen. Facial expressions (a smile, a pout, a raised eyebrow) and body language (drooping shoulders, stomping feet, folded arms, pointing fingers) can often be very telling. Avoid interrupting your toddler out of impatience—let him spit out what he has to say no matter how long it takes. Pay attention even if you don’t understand. It may help to ask him to “show me what you want with your hands” or “take me where you want to go.” If you become frustrated yourself, try not to let it show—this will only compound his own frustrations. And use the tips that follow to encourage language development.

Language is vital. It allows a child to not only communicate with others but to think to himself. It’s the primary tool for learning, as well as for creativity.

Fortunately, babies are born communicators. Since their earliest needs are limited to food, sleep, and comfort, crying says it all in the first few weeks: A wail brings breast or bottle, a pair of caressing arms, a dry diaper. Soon, as the infant begins to seek attention and companionship, too, cooing begins to supplement crying. Two effective means of communication have evolved. As the baby’s drive to communicate becomes stronger, coos give way to sounds, then groups of sounds uttered singly (most children have one or two at a year), word-like jargon, then real words, groups of real words, and finally complete sentences. In the space of about two years a crying infant becomes a talking toddler, picking up, on average, 200 words (the normal range, however, is from a couple of dozen words to 400 or more)—almost half of the 500 words used most frequently in typical adult conversation. By age three, the average toddler’s vocabulary has swelled fivefold to an average of some 1,000 words. That number more than doubles by the time a child is ready for kindergarten.

This natural evolution takes place on an individual timetable. From the cradle, some babies spend more time trying to engage those around them in social exchanges than they do trying to master physical feats, and as a result, they’re usually early talkers. For others, physical challenges consume more time and attention. These babies are often too busy rolling over, pulling up, climbing, and taking steps to focus on communicating. They’ll tackle verbal skills later on in the second and third years, when their fast-talking peers will be focusing on any physical skills they’ve neglected.

No matter what timetable they’re running on, however, children learn to
speak faster with a little help. Here are some guidelines for providing such help:

Expand experiences.
Long before toddlers begin speaking, they build up receptive vocabularies, storing words and concepts in their heads. This means that children understand many words and concepts before using them in speech. So expose your toddler to a wide variety of environments (the supermarket, playground, library, mall, museums, buses, boatyards, farms) and talk about what you both see using simple language. Follow up a new experience with a library book that reinforces it: Reading a book about the zoo (“remember the monkey we saw?”) after a visit, for instance, will enhance learning. Build your toddler’s grasp of simple concepts (big and little, wet and dry, up and down, in and out, empty and full, standing and sitting, happy and sad, light and dark, good and bad), and cause-and-effect (we put water on the burner and it gets hot, we put it in the refrigerator and it gets cold, we put it in the freezer and it freezes hard). And regularly stimulate the senses, talking about the colors, textures, sounds, and smells found in your child’s environment.

Talk, talk, talk
. For children to use language, they must first understand language. And to understand language, a child must hear it spoken—over and over again. To get your child to talk, you’ve got to talk. So keep talking, even if you feel silly holding a one-sided conversation, even if you sense that your toddler doesn’t have the slightest notion about what you’re saying. On a stroll to the park, remark on the blue sky, the red car, the girls playing ball, the man pushing the baby stroller. While you’re cooking dinner, give your toddler a blow-by-blow account as you cut the carrots, stir the soup, slice the tomatoes. When you’re waiting on line at the bank, give your toddler a running account of people remaining in front of you, counting down as you move up. When dressing your child in the morning, name his or her body parts as you uncover and cover them; identify each piece of clothing and its color and texture.

But don’t get carried away, chattering on endlessly just for the sake of exposing your child to language. Children also need periods of quiet contemplation, a chance to listen to themselves instead of others, to observe what’s around them without the help of a tour guide. When you’re being tuned out (the eyes are turned elsewhere or glazed), turn it off. There’s such a thing as auditory overload.

Read, read, read
. Reading to your child from picture books—stopping to point out familiar objects in each picture and explain what is going on in the story—provides invaluable exposure to language. Stick to simple stories at first, and to ear-catching rhymes. Toddlers love to hear the same books over and over again, perhaps because they inherently recognize the value of repetition as a way of learning. See page 101 for more on reading to your toddler.

Sing, sing, sing
. Children naturally love music and will pay close attention to simple songs. Sing to them a cappella or along with a tape recording or an instrument, if you play one, such as a piano or guitar. In particular, toddlers enjoy songs that include hand clapping or finger play (such as “Patty-cake” and “the Itsy Bitsy Spider”). Again, repetition helps a toddler’s vocabulary grow, so don’t hesitate to sing the same songs over and over. (You probably will be urged to, anyway, whether you like it or not.) And don’t worry about your singing ability (or lack of it); your toddler will gladly lend you an ear, even if you do sing out of tune.

Label, label, label
. There are thousands of words in the English language, and your toddler has to learn them one at a time. The best way to teach them is
through labeling. Label things you see on the street (truck, bicycle, traffic light, man, woman, dog), at home (table, chair, sofa, juice, cup, spoon), while reading (cow, girl, farm, duck, frog). Once you’ve named an object, encourage your toddler to repeat it. (“This is a book. Can you say ‘book’?”)

Sound like a grown-up
. Out of the mouths of babes (or rather, toddlers) come some of the cutest words: sketti (spaghetti), ta-too (thank you), ba-bo (apple). The temptation is great to mimic these adorable utterances when conversing with your toddler, but hearing you use baby talk may confuse your toddler and won’t help his or her language development. Using such diminutives as “doggy,” however, shouldn’t be a problem.