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Yep. I know we already have a walk / talk thread, but I just want to talk about language milestones and how language develops in babies / toddlers.

DD just turned 13 months. We've counted around 14 words, ever, but at the moment, she is really only saying maybe 5 or 6 (that we can understand.) da (dog), ba (for ball and also other b words, like book), bahbah (byebye), ap (apple), baby or baba (for baby), hah (hi).

We went for a check-up at 11 months and the doctor used the 18 month milestones on her and I think she had already reached all or most of them (maybe except for language? I don't know.)

The milestone charts say something like 3 words by 12 months... but really? That doesn't seem right. I don't know any 12 month olds with only 3 words...

She doesn't talk a whole lot, but today I counted around 45 signs (asl) that she knows and has used before. She will use more than one at a time or put them together once in awhile.

She uses signs most of the time and even "reads" her books alone by flipping through them and signing words she knows (and getting so excited <3).

I know a lot of you had kids saying two word sentences by now, and I'm interested in hearing how you've experienced language development.

when Butter was maybe as young as 10 months (DH says younger) she would make a hand motion like waving both hands in front of her or pushing the spoon, etc away and say, what sounded like "monkey shoes". We would laugh and after a while, we realized this was her communicating that she didn't want any more of whatever it was. Fast forward to maybe 18 mo when her physical ability to move her mouth caught up to herr brain and we realized that she had been saying "no thank you" that whole time! And of course we thought this was some kind of fluke...

The Diva would have quite a conversation of two or even three words together "red ball play" or "pretty dolly" by 15 mo or so. By around 2yrs I almost crashed the car when she said "look, in the blue sky, an airplane" from the backseat.

I've since learned this is not "average". Most 12mo I've come across don't have much more than purposeful babble, maybe mama, dada and one other word like ball or cat (if they have a pet)...and Butter, even though she had plenty of words, would NOT, under most circumstances, SHARE them with other people.

DS started talking at 8-9 months and by 13 months had about 150 recognizable words. Our next door neighbor at the same age had barely 2or3 words. Don't forget to add in the signing. That gives your daughter an expressive "word" count of over 50 which is a lot more than average!

Just to show it's not simple, DS had fewer than 5 words in regular use at his 22 month check up! He was talking in 5 word sentences by 26 months, though; those 4 months in between were interesting.

My daughter was progressing at a pretty normal rate initially, speaking her first word at 9 months, speaking several words and using a few signs at 1 year old. By 18 months she was using over 100 and asking "Where's the bubbles?", and by 2 she knew at least a thousand words and told me "Buttons the bear broke his arm just like Woody." Which was true, and which the pediatrician told us was not normal.

Within a few months of her second birthday I began worrying that she wasn't learning several new words a day that she was capable of, simply because I didn't expose her to several words a day that she didn't already know. I had to make a conscious effort to diversify my language and include middle-school and high-school vocabulary words in my conversations with my 2 year old. I intend to send her to preschool when she's 3, and I'm beginning to expect that she'll occasionally use words the preschool teachers may not know.

I guess this sudden acceleration is somewhat typical of children raised to be bilingual. I can't comment on her Chinese proficiency, but perhaps her "normal" early language development was a delay of abnormal development: as if her ability was 30% advanced, but the exposure to 2 languages caused a 30% delay or something to that effect. Or maybe every kid just takes their own path.

It's hard for me to say exactly where DD was at 12 mos, since everything seemed to be happening so fast, but I'd say two word sentences sounds about right. We never did any kind of word count, again because everything seemed to be evolving so quickly, any such count would rendered inaccurate almost as soon as it was completed.

I know she had more than three words by the time she was 6 mos, because that was when we originally planned to start working on baby signs, and we decided that since she already knew how to say a very basic word for everything she needed, we'd skip it.

DS12 developed similarly -- 15 words by 22 months 2 weeks; then one day he used 3 or 4 new words in the space of a few hours. Two weeks later at 23 months, he had an active vocabulary of 75 words.

Most were nouns; I don't recall him saying anything that sounded like a sentence then. But by the time he hit 32 months he was asking not just 'why' questions, but 'what would happen if' questions, e.g. 'What would happen if the earth doesn't (sic) revolve on its axis?'

My 16 m old has made a few random sentences over the past few months, but she's by no means fluently talking. "I dee-it, I mmm." (I did it. I moo.) She always points to the animal pictures in books and calls them all "moo" or "ruff", depending if they're more like a dog or a cow. One time she pointed to a giraffe and very clearly said, "elephant".
Lately she's noticing the similarity between "up" and "poop". She'l say the one she means, then say the other a few times, then use the one she means. I can't tell if she's trying to recall the right word, or if she just likes that they sound similar.
Like I said in the other thread, she has used more words than you'd think. But she still mainly squeaks for "gimme" and squawks for "no".
Plus she'll go for days pointing to everything, asking what it is, and copying you. Then she loses steam.
She's very excellent at being cute.

I thought that DD didn't even talk much before a year, though maybe it was just one word etc. But by the time she was 2, she had 2000 words. She could name 50 different animals in the zoo by 18 months. And was speaking in 3 word sentences clearly.

I think there have been others here that had similar, not gradual build from birth, but a sudden deluge after the year mark.

Ren

BTW, you notice the dfference because other parents start to get concerned, or more likely aunts of other children say something. Which was in our case that we took notice. The aunt wanted the other mothers (it was a 2 mother couple) to take their almost 2 year old to speech therapy because he wasn't even close to DD at 20 months. Or a father will get worried because his 15 month son is still crawling while Dd at 13 months was running around and throwing a stick for their setter.