Ages and Stages: Watch Your Child’s Speech and Language Grow
By 30 months most children will:
- Understand the concepts of size (big/little) and quantity (a little, a lot, more)
- Use some adult grammar – “two cookies”, “bird flying”, “I jumped”
- Use more than 350 words
- Use action words – “run, spill, fall”
- Begin taking short turns with other children, using both toys and words
- Show concerns when another child is hurt or sad
- Combine several actions in play - .e.g. feed doll, then put her to sleep; put blocks in a train, then drive train and drop blocks off
- Put sounds at the start of most words
- Produce words with two or more syllables or beats – “ba-na-na”, “com-pu-ter”, “a-pple”
- Recognize familiar logos and signs – McDonalds golden arches, stop sign
- Remember and understand familiar stories
What you can do to help:
- Encourage your child to play with other children – at the library, play groups, park
- Use lots of different words when you talk to your child – opposite words like up/down, in/out; action words like “running, splashing” and descriptive words like “happy, sad, big, little, clean, dry”
- Repeat what your child says and then add a word or two to expand his/her language – e.g. if your child says “big truck”, say “yes, big truck – the big truck drives fast”
- Play hiding games with your child to practice prepositions like “under, behind, on top”. Hide his favourite toys in locations and then talk about where you found them – “Your teddy was behind the couch”.
- Practice turn-taking during songs and while reading books to help your child for conversations. For example, take turns pointing to pictures and talking about them, take turns acting out parts of a song, or encourage your child to fill in the last word of a rhyme such as “no more monkeys jumping on the __”
- Use real words instead of “baby talk” – e.g. say “please give me” for “ta ta” and “blanket” for “blankie”
If you think your child is not meeting the developmental milestones as expected don’t ‘wait and see’. Contact Us (link to KidsAbility/Services/Waterloo Preschool Speech and Language/About Us/Contact Us) to make a referral for a speech and language assessment.
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