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At your child’s 18-month visit to the Pediatrician, you may have been asked “How many words does s/he say?” You may hesitate to respond as you may be unsure as to what actually ‘counts’ as a word.
By 18 months of age, your child is expected to say a minimum of 20-30 words and by 2 years of age, he should be saying at least 50-100 and starting to combine words, ex. ‘Mommy up’.
WHAT COUNTS AS A WORD?
- Pronunciation -Toddlers are not expected to pronounce their words perfectly so if he says “buh” for ‘ball’ and “Ka” for ‘car’, that is perfectly fine!
- Consistency – The pronunciation should be relatively consistent, ex. If he always says “nana” for ‘banana’, that counts as the word for ‘banana’.
- Meaning – The same word may mean more than one thing, ex. “baba” may mean ‘bubbles’ or ‘baby’. However, “baba” should not be used for everything.
- Sound effects – “Woof” when referring to a dog and “vvvv” when referring to a car or an airplane also count, as long as they are consistent.
- Sign language – It does not matter whether a word is spoken or signed. Either way, the child is using a symbol to represent a word. Both verbal words and signs are arbitrary symbols representing objects, people, actions (ex. eat), descriptions (ex. big), and locations (ex. up/down).
If you are still unsure as to what counts, please feel free to contact Sharon at torontospeechtherapy@hotmail.com. You may also check out the norms and milestones at www.torontospeechtherapy.ca.
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