Table 2.

Speech milestones

Age	Speech
0–3 Months	Vegetative sounds (grunts, crying) coo, laugh, babble
	Smiles at people
4–6 Months	Coos and babbles when playing alone or with you
	Makes speech-like monosyllables, like pa, ba, and mi
	Giggles and laughs
	Makes sounds when happy or upset
7–12 Months	Babbles long strings of sounds (bisyllables), like mama, baba
	Uses sounds and gestures to get and keep attention
	Points to objects and shows them to others
	Uses gestures like waving bye, reaching for “up,” and shaking his or her head to say no
	Imitates different speech sounds
	Says 1 or 2 words, like hi, dog, dada, mama, or uh-oh. This will happen around his or her first birthday but sounds may not be clear
1–2 Years	Uses a lot of new words
	Starts to name pictures in books
	Asks questions, like “What's that?”, “Who's that?”, and “Where's kitty?”
	Puts two words together, like “more apple,” “no bed,” and “mommy book”
2–3 Years	Put 2–3 words together to talk about and ask for things, average talking vocabulary is 200–300 words
3–4 Years	Speech is understood 76% of the time. Longer sentences, fluent speech, and more complex sentences
4–5 Years	Speech should be 100% understood, might continue to have errors with s, r, l, v, z, ch, sh, and “th” and consonant blends (sl, str, bl, etc.) produces long and detailed sentences
	Tells a short story
	Talks in different ways, depending on the listener and place