The Talking Twelve Month Old
Communication Milestones For Early Speech and Language Skills
A Specialist Paediatric Speech-Language Pathologist outlines the early communication and language skills to expect at 12 months of age and provides tips
Around 12 months of age babies should have a couple of words in their vocabulary and will be able to understand a lot more than what they can say. They gain an interest in cause-and-effect games (e.g. if someone responds to what the child says or does, they’ll repeat it to see if they get the same response). When children are learning to walk, it's normal for talking development to slow down temporarily.
Communication and Early Language Skills of Twelve Month Old
- Says a couple of single words (nouns)
- Says “Mum” or “Dad”
- Starts to imitate new words
- Makes noises (animal or transport sounds)
- Leaves sounds off words
- Talks to themselves
- Laughs a lot
- Recognises their own name
- Attempts to communicate
- Has “conversations” with others
- Uses inflection in their babble
- Repeats words and actions when others respond positively
- Gives objects to adults upon request
- Tries to sing with music
- Understands more than what they can say
- Can follow simple instructions
- Knows what “no” means
- Enjoys messy play
- Imitates use of crayons
- Waves spontaneously
- May not talk as much when learning to walk
How to Encourage Early Communication and Language Skills in a Twelve Month Old
Parents are inundated with all kinds of suggestions regarding how to raise a child. Often this may make people feel that unless children have the latest gadgets, their development is going to be delayed. It’s important to remember that for non-fussy toddlers there are plenty of inexpensive play-based ideas to encourage language development.
- Talk to infants
- Smile at and respond to infants
- Sing to infants
- Provide lots of face to face contact so that they can see facial expressions and mouth movements
- Imitate facial expressions of infants back to them
- Imitate sounds, actions & words that infants make. Follow this with an obvious pause to see if infant responds by smiling, laughing or making the sound again
- Initiate sound play (e.g. farm animal noises, transport noises)
- Make silly sounds that involve fun facial expressions, such as raspberries and goldfish noises
- Play peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake
- Provide inexpensive early development toys (blocks, stacking cups, cause-and-effect toys, cars, balls, crayons, toys that can safely be sucked)
- Look at simple rip-proof books together (cardboard, fabric or plastic pages), verbally labelling objects on pages
There are many more ideas available for supporting language development in 12 month infants, but the most important point to remember is that one can never talk too much to a toddler. They may not answer back but they are definitely absorbing what is said. Every word they hear is added to their vocabulary and assists language development. If however, a child appears to be delayed with reaching these milestones, seeking the advice of a speech-language therapist/speech pathologist is vital.
