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Communication Milestones Help Assess Children’s Development "Shouldn’t Megan be using more words by now?" It is not uncommon for parents and teachers to worry about a child’s communication skills. As a child grows and develops, many questions may arise. Do other children his age have difficulty saying these sounds? When can I expect my child to follow simple directions? Should I be correcting his grammar? Are her language skills normal? Just what is normal?" There are no definitive answers to these questions, as young children have different developmental timetables and progress at different rates. Some children appear to advance overnight from speaking single words to formulating complete sentences, while other children take a slower course by gradually adding words and eventually building up to the phrase and sentence level. The communication milestones that researchers and professionals call normal have been established after countless hours of observing and documenting the communication development of young children. Through this process, professionals have created a series of age ranges in which the majority can acquire certain communicative behaviors. These age ranges allow each child to develop according to his/her individual timetable. What becomes confusing for parents and teachers is when two children of the same age have markedly different communication behaviors. But this does not mean that one child has a communicative disorder. Take, for example, Alex, who, by his second birthday, could understand about 900 words. His verbal skills included answering simple "who," "where" and "what" questions, such as "Who drives a police car?" He could also ask yes/no questions, like "It bleeding?" But Billy, Alex’s friend and contemporary, on the other hand, did not master these speech and language behaviors until shortly before his third birthday. While Billy’s mother expressed some concern over the boys’ differences in acquiring these communication skills, both boys are considered to be developing within the normal range. What Is Communication? Communication is made up of three components: speech, listening and language. Speech is the physical process of shaping sounds into words. Listening involves the physical process of hearing information. Language refers to the content of what is spoken or heard. Language consists of two areas: receptive and expressive. Receptive language is the ability to comprehend someone’s speech or gestures. Expressive language is the ability to create a spoken message that is understood by others. Learning to Communicate Communication does not begin with the first word. It begins in infancy, when a baby discovers the importance of speech by hearing sounds and by watching people communicate, long before she is able to understand or repeat any specific words. Infants are able to recognize a familiar voice or object, such as a bottle, by the age of three months. They will respond to their own name by six months and will understand and react to facial expressions by nine months. Mastering these skills is all part of learning to communicate. The complexities of language are often forgotten by parents. Simple exchanges, such as "Hello" or "How are you?" don’t seem particularly complicated. However, for a young child learning to communicate, they are quite challenging. A child must process the information, hearing intonation patterns, accents, and children, communication does not come naturally and intervention may be needed to acquire those skills. Parents who notice that their child has not acquire a communicative behavior within a given age range should contact their child’s pediatrician, teacher, or the school district’s speech-language pathologist to express their concerns. Whether or not a child needs therapy depends on the child and the nature and degree of the problem. For isolated problems, activities may be suggested to facilitate development naturally in the home, while progress is being monitored. In other situations, a more thorough evaluation may be recommend. Parents are the best advocates of their child. By becoming aware of the communication milestones, they can detect problems early, preventing later difficulties and frustrations for their child. Included is just a sample of communication milestones. For a complete listing, please send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Winnetka Alliance for Early Childhood 1235 Oak St., Winnetka, IL 60093 or request one by fax at (847) 441-8664.
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