Should My 2 Year Old Be Talking?

What are speech and language milestones?

Let’s look at speech and language milestones to determine if your child should be talking.

But what are these milestones and how do they tell me if my child should be talking?

Speech and language milestones are a list of skills gathered by multiple sources of information that serve as a tool to monitor your child’s skill development and help you understand if your child should be talking. In February of 2022, the CDC released new developmental milestones that included speech and language skills. Find those milestone charts here.

However, these new speech and language milestones are not supported by scientific evidence. If you want to read more about that drama, I highly encourage you to go here. In summary, the research investigating the new CDC guidelines states;

“Results indicated that evidence was conflicting, misaligned, or missing for the selected CDC expressive vocabulary milestones. This review also indicated that the samples used to determine the selected CDC expressive vocabulary milestones are not representative of U.S. children.”

My 2 year old isn’t talking enough based on this milestone chart!

Speech and language milestones do not diagnose your child.

So…what are they for then? Milestones are monitoring tool to start a conversation and act as a trigger to start more in-depth assessment of your child’s speech and language skills.

Milestones are not;

Describing the severity of your child’s speech and language delay
A way to qualify for therapy or other medical services
A way for your speech therapist to write their therapy goals

Which milestones should we look at?

The American Speech and Hearing Association has several resources found here that describe speech and language development. These resources on their website are backed by scientific evidence.

A mom talks to her 2 year old child as they sit on a deck.

A 2 year old’s speech and language milestones:

19-24 months

Should understand and use 50 different words
Should often speak in 2 word phrases ” want eat”
Should use words to ask for help
Should follow 2-step directions “Get your cup and go sit down”
Should use possessives like “Mommy’s car”
Should use words like mine, me and you

A 2-3 year old’s speech and language milestones:

24-36 months

Should get your attention by using real words (“look mom”)
Should be able to answer “what is your name?”
Should use more word combinations (3 words or more per sentence/phrase)
Should use (s) for plurals and (ing) words for present progressive language
Should ask “why” and “how” questions
Should correctly make most vowel sounds in words and
correctly produce p, b, m, h, w, d, and n in words.

So, should your 2 year old be talking?

Yes. Based on the milestones cited above, we should hear talking by age 2. But if your child is not meeting all of the milestones listed in the charts, remember, that is NOT a diagnosis.

What are your next steps? The Blog at Homegrown Talker has several free resources and ideas on how to get your child talking!