What to Expect and When

Children develop skills at different rates, but by 6 months, usually children will:

• Turn towards a sound when they hear it

• Be startled by loud noises

• Watch your face when you talk to them

• Recognise your voice

• Smile and laugh when other people smile and laugh

• Make sounds to themselves, like cooing, gurgling and babbling

• Make noises, like coos or squeals, to get your attention

• Have different cries for different needs. For example, one cry for hunger, another when they are tired.

At this stage, children try out new things and explore the world around them more actively. They will often choose their own activities and may not always like being told what to do.

Children develop skills at different rates, but by 2 years, usually, children will:

• Concentrate on activities for longer, such as playing with a toy they like.

• Sit and listen to simple stories with pictures.

• Understand between 200 and 500 words.

• Understand more simple questions and instructions. For example, 'Where is your shoe?' and 'Show me your nose.'

• Copy sounds and words a lot.

• Use 50 or more single words. These will also become more recognisable to others.

• Start to put short sentences with 2-3 words together, such as ‘more juice’ or ‘bye nanny’.

• Enjoy pretend-play with their toys, such as feeding dollies.

• Use a more limited number of sounds in their words than adults – often these sounds are p, b, t, d, m and w. Children will also often miss the ends off words at this stage.

• They can usually be understood about half of the time.

Children develop skills at different rates, but by the age 5 years old, children will usually use most sounds effectively.

However, they may replace ‘r’ with ‘w’ or ‘th’ with ‘f’. Some longer words, such as ‘elephant’ with many syllables and words containing consonants together, like ‘scrape’ and ‘crane’ may still be difficult to produce correctly.

Often by 5 or 6 years, children have good communication skills. They are better at using language in different ways, for example, to discuss ideas or give opinions.

They use all speech sounds correctly in words and speech is intelligible enough to be understood by both familiar and unfamiliar listeners.

Children develop skills at different rates, but beyond 5 years, children will usually:

• Focus on one thing for longer without being reminded

• Rely less on pictures and objects to learn new words

• Use their language skills in learning to read, write and spell

• Learn that the same word can mean two things, such as 'orange' the fruit and 'orange' the colour

• Learn that different words can mean the same thing such as ’minus’ and ‘take away’

• Understand feelings and descriptive words like 'carefully', 'slowly' or 'clever'

• Use language for different purposes such as asking questions or persuading

• Share and discuss more complex ideas

• Use language in a range of social situations.