Social and Language Milestones

• Milestones can be both really fun to celebrate and document, and also a source of stress. While it’s helpful to have some guideposts around when to expect your baby to gain various skills, remember that these ranges are wide for a reason - babies reach these milestones at their own pace, in their own way. 

• Like many things in parenting, there’s a balance to strike here: 

• It’s not healthy to obsess over how quickly or not your baby is hitting these milestones, or comparing to friends’ babies. Barring any serious developmental issues, all babies learn to walk and talk eventually.

• On the flipside, there are important things you can and should do to encourage your baby’s development. And if you observe your baby isn’t making progress towards a milestone and is falling outside the range, it’s a good idea to raise it with your pediatrician. Early intervention (e.g. speech therapy) can make a big difference.

• Factors that might affect timing of milestones:

• Prematurity: if your baby was premature, you should use their “adjusted age” (based on their original due date) when considering these milestones

• Gender: on average, girls learn to talk earlier than boys

• Genetics: if you or your partner were late talkers, there’s a chance your baby will follow the same pattern

• Compared to motor milestones, there is little consensus on the time ranges when these social/verbal milestones occur - for this page, I’ve taken my best estimate based on cross-referencing speech therapy websites (such as Tiny Talkers Chicago and Toddler Talk), official orgs (such as NIH and CDC) and other parent resources (such as What to Expect and BabyCenter)

• Lovevery includes a month-by-month list of more specific, incremental milestones 

Social Milestones

Smile:

• Babies give reflexive smiles from the very beginning, but they’ll start to smile intentionally (a “social smile”) between 6 - 12 weeks

Laugh:

• They may begin to laugh between 2 - 4 months, and once you’ve tasted this delicious sound, you will likely try everything in your power to make them laugh again

• This is also the period when they’ll start establishing more regular eye contact

Wave, Clap, Point and Shake their Head “No!”:

• These skills begin between 9 - 12 months and can happen in various order

• The best way to encourage is by modeling, which you’d probably do naturally anyway!

• There are lots of fun songs for teaching “clap”, like “Pat a Cake” “If You’re Happy and You Know It”, “Open, Shut Them” and “Shake Your Sillies Out”. 

Fun Party Tricks:

• Once your baby is holding a cup by themselves, it can be really fun to teach them how to do “cheers”

• “Blowing kisses” or “giving high fives” are also adorable

Language Milestones

Receptive Language (i.e. their understanding of language) develops sooner than their “expressive language”, meaning they can understand many more words long before they are able to say them:

Recognize their name:

• This occurs between 5 - 9 months - they’ll consistently turns towards the speaker when their name is called (though if the environment is super distracting, it may be harder) 

• You can support this by using their name a ton during these early months, instead of using the pronoun and saying “you” or “your”

• For instance, say “Noah has a ball in his hands!” rather than “You have a ball in your hands”, or “It’s time to change Noah’s, rather than “It’s time to change your diaper”

Recognize common words:

• Between 7 - 12 months, baby may begin to look at or point to the object you are naming 

• Again, repetition is key so avoid pronouns - instead of saying “Look at the ball! It’s big and red”, say “Look at the ball! The ball is big and red” so the get the word “ball” more times

• Between 12 - 18 months, they may know at least one body part and demonstrate it by pointing to the right part when asked, such as “where are your eyes?” 

• Colors and animals are other categories where they’ll likely be able to correctly identify long before they can name aloud

Respond to questions and directions:

• Between 10 - 12 months, they may start to follow simple commands like “Sit down” or “Come here” 

• Between 12 - 18 months, baby may nod or shake their head in response to a question like “Do you want to go outside?”

• Between 12 - 24 months, they learn to follow more language-rich, but still single-step directions, such as “Please hand Dada the book” or “Put the toy back in the box”

• After the 2 year mark, they should be able to handle multi-step directions like “Take off your hat and bring it to me” 

Expressive Language

Sounds:

• Babies begin to coo between 6 - 8 weeks with sounds like ooo and ahhh

• They start to babble between 4 - 6 months with sounds like ba-ba and da-da

• Between 6 months and their first official word, they’ll do lots of mimicking sounds and maybe even saying “mama” or “dada” but without connecting it to the meaning

Words:

• Around 9 - 14 months they will say their first word where they actually know what it means. They’ll also start to grasp the concept that words connect to things, even if they can’t yet say the right word.

• By 18 months, 90% of children are saying at least 10 words and the average is 50 words

• Common first words:

• Useful words: mama, dada, milk, water/agua, more, up, yea, no (plus names for any other common caregivers, like a nanny or grandparent)

• B words: book, ball, bath, bubble, baby, banana

• Animal sounds: baa, moo, woof, meow

• Their pronunciation of these early words may only be clear to you as the parent
  
  

Phrases:

• At 18 - 24 months, they’ll start combining words into short 2-3 word phrases, like “more apple” or  “where big dog?”

How to support:

• Talk to your baby

• When they’re super young, this can initially feel silly since clearly they aren’t understanding in a literal sense. But they are actually absorbing the broader concept of speech, and this is how they will learn to produce their own.

• Babies learn better if you speak slowly and in the exaggerated, higher-pitched voice (sometimes called “parentese” or “baby talk”) (study)

• I’m a big proponent of doing chores with your baby nearby (on a playmat or in a carrier/bouncer) rather than waiting until they’re napping. You can make this more educational for baby by narrating what you’re doing (e.g. “now mama’s putting all the dirty dishes away from the dinner party rager that mama and dada threw last night!”)

• Reading to your baby is of course another great way to expose them to language and connect words to visuals 

• Know that it’s very normal for young babies to just want to flip through pages and have limited attention span - this might change starting around 12 months

• But don’t feel like you must be incessantly talking/reading to your baby all day long - it’s healthy for both baby and parents to have quiet moments too! Remember that parenting is a marathon, not a sprint.

• Respond to your baby

• When they produce their own cooing/babbling sounds, respond positively with smiles and words, and try to encourage back-and-forth “conversation”

• A fun game to play at these early ages is to just completely make up what your baby is saying, for instance responding to babble with “awww, you think mama looks beautiful in this new shirt, why thank you!”

• As they get older and start using words, they’ll likely have their own cute versions of words, like “wawa” for water. It may be tempting to start calling it “wawa” too, but it’s better for baby’s development that you model the correct way to say it when you respond (e.g. “sure, here’s some water!”)

• Sing to your baby!

• I think this is underrated. It’s been drilled into most modern parents that you must talk and read to your baby all the time, and frankly that can get exhausting.

• Singing is nice because you don’t have to think of what to say, plus it really captures baby’s attention

• Your baby loves your voice, no matter how bad you think it is (I say this as someone with a pretty awful singing voice)

• “Open, Shut Them” is a personal favorite nursery rhyme with hand motions - I demonstrate it below with my adorable 4 month old nephew

• Some other popular nursery rhymes if you need to brush up - the ones that include hand motions are especially engaging (indicated by a *)

  • Itsy Bitsy Spider*

  • Head Shoulders Knees and Toes*

  • The Wheels on the Bus*

  • Pat a Cake*

  • This Little Piggy*

  • The Hokey Pokey*

  • Five Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed

  • Row Row Row Your Boat

  • Baa Baa Black Sheep

  • Old MacDonald Had a Farm

  • BINGO

• A couple popular songs have really dark endings - here are my happier alternatives

  • In “You Are My Sunshine”, instead of “please don’t take my sunshine away”, sing “I love you more and more every day”

  • In “Rock-a-Bye Baby” instead of “and down will come baby, cradle and all”, sing “but mama/dada will catch you, cradle and all”

• Here’s a Spotify playlist of 30 of my favorite kids songs, especially for car rides. Nearly every other song is by Raffi, who is the GOAT and is way more pleasant to listen to than new age stuff like Cocomelon, which you should avoid if you’d like to keep your sanity

• Remember that once your baby becomes a toddler, they will likely love repetition and want to listen to the same songs (and books) over and over again - that’s normal and how they learn!

Baby Sign Language

• Babies have the desire to communicate long before they have the skills to verbally express themselves, so baby sign can be an amazing tool to bridge that gap

• Proponents of baby sign language tout many developmental benefits, while critics claim it can actually delay verbal language - there isn’t good data to support either side!

• Personally, I definitely think it is helpful (and fun!) in the short term, regardless of whether it has any longer-term impact

• It can reduce frustration (for baby and parents!) when they can tell you that it’s *milk* they want, or *more* blueberries, or they’re *all done* (before they start to fling food)

• It’s very empowering for babies to experience true two-way communication 

• It’s possible to start as early as 6 months, which is when they’re starting solids, and thus many of the food signs become relevant

• However, I suggest waiting until closer to 8 months. Babies are unlikely to be able to sign back until 8 -12 months, so if you start too soon, you might find yourself demoralized by the lack of response and lose steam. 

How to support

• Get all caretakers on board, if possible - it’s a lot easier for baby to learn if they are consistently exposed to the signs

• Start with just the basics: more, all done, milk, eat, and bed (I demonstrate them below)

• You can print a little poster or flashcards (here’s an Etsy template) which can be helpful for reminding other caretakers

• You can go much deeper if you’d like, and even take a class on baby sign, but honestly just those few basic signs go a really long way

• When you demonstrate the sign, you should also say the word verbally

• While they’re learning, always sign in the actual context - say “here is some *more*” while you are giving more Cheerios, versus just asking in the abstract “would you like some *more*?”

• It may seem weird to be signing for weeks/months before you ever get a sign back, but if you think about it, that’s exactly what we do with verbal language - but for even longer. We talk to our babies for almost a year before they really start talking back- that’s how they learn. 

• Once your baby starts to sign back, they may develop their idiosyncratic versions of the sign. That’s perfectly fine, it really doesn’t matter what the sign looks like as long as it’s consistent and helps you communicate. 

• Our daughter’s version of “more” was a finger pointing into a flat palm, so we all just adopted that as “more”

Diagnosing Autism:

• Your pediatrician will be checking in with you about developmental milestones at your 9 months and 12 months appointments, but they will do a specific autism screening at 18 months and 24 months

• However, there is research that autism can be accurately diagnosed at 14 months, and that intensive early intervention can make a big difference: in one randomized control trial, toddlers who received treatment at 18 months showed significantly more gains than those receiving the same treatment at 27 months.

• Below, I list some of the early social communication/interaction signs of autism - the full list from the CDC also includes repetitive behaviors like rocking, flapping and spinning

• There are two important caveats here: none of these signs mean that a child definitely has autism; and a child with autism may not have all of these signs

• Avoids or does not keep eye contact

• Does not respond to name by 9 months of age

• Does not show facial expressions such as happy, sad, angry, and surprised by 9 months of age

• Does not play simple interactive games like pat-a-cake by 12 months of age

• Uses few or no gestures by 12 months of age (for example, does not wave goodbye)

• Does not share interests with others by 15 months of age (for example, shows you an object that they like)