Toddler and Development of Speech
You can find loads of articles about toddler development speech. You can find also different calendars where you can read how much normal toddler speak during his stages. I was never looking in such calendars because they are too general and everything is very induvidual. So it’s better pay more attention to your child and work on his speech than pay atention what other children can or can’t do in such age. Of course it has nothing in common with cases when there are really problems. In such way it’s good to consult the specialists.
I’m not going to retell everything I’ve already read about development of speech. I’m just telling my experience and I hope it will be helpful.
You know that speech begins from listening. Baby discovers what words sound like and how to put a sentence together. So it’s important from the first days after birth (or maybe even better to do it during the pregnancy) to speak with your child as much as possible. It’s good even to turn on some records of good songs or even audio books (for children of course). It would be good for future articulation. Don’t think that newborn baby doesn’t understand you. I spoke with my baby girl every day almost every minute she wasn’t sleeping and very soon I and my husband heard how she began to speak with us of course on her own language. You can’t imagine how happy we were.
After 7 month she spoke her first words. One of them was “mama”. We saw that she is interested in pictures so we started to read some books. Reading books are great for speech development because usually everyday topics which you discuss don’t use variety of words. Books broaden your list of words and of course pictures they have are good for toddler’s brain because it’s a new activity. If you don’t have problems with articulation your toddler won’t babble away in a lingo that he could only understand.
We weren’t lazy with speaking and now our toddler is speaking all day long. Silent only when sleeping:)
After 12 month comes a period of extraordinary growth. After 18 month we started to hear first simple sentences! Now with every day they are more and more! Even short stories and dialogs!
Don’t believe that if child’s being raised in a bilingual environment, the number of words he can speak will be split between the two languages he’s learning. NO! We are speaking 3 languages with our daughter and she knows and name all objects in 3 languages with such an ease that I have regrets that I didn’t learn one or two languages before to be able to teach my daughter. But it’s not so important. The main thing that her brain is trained to see the world in 3 languages so she can learn any language she want in the future very easy because we gave her good base.
One more important point! Make your child be interested in communication with you, develop her need to say something and share with you new impressions. Some parents say with proudness that their toddlers used to pay themselves. At the same time they are wonder why their kids don’t want to speak. They used to play alone and don’t feel any need to express emotions with words.
So it’s very simple really. Speak a lot when you are with your child and give him enough attention to desire to say something to you!