Developmental Norms

  • By 12 months old your child should:
    • Pay increasing attention to speech
    • Respond to simple verbal requests
    • Respond to “no”
    • Uses simple gestures, such as shaking head for “no”
    • Babble with inflection
    • Say “dada” and “mama”
    • Use exclamations, such as “oh-oh!”
    • Try to imitate words
  • By 18 months old your child should:
    • Use 20 or more words
    • Understand the names or use of familiar objects (eg. ball, bed, bottle)
    • Use toys for pretend play
    • Respond to a simple question (eg. ‘What’s that?’ Or ‘Where’s your shoe?’)
    • Can point to two or three major body parts
    • Point to pictures in books
  • By 2 years old your child should:
    • Use 2 word combinations (eg. ‘more milk’)
    • Ask questions (eg. ‘what dat?’)
    • Have 100 words or more
    • Imitate words or actions
    • Pretend with toys such as feeding babies, cuddling teddy
    • Be talking to their toys or themselves during pretend play
    • Follow 2 step instructions such as, ‘take your socks off and put them in the basket.’
    • Point to pictures in books
    • Point to simple body parts on themselves
  • By 3 years old your child should:
    • Be understood by familiar listeners
    • Be producing all of the following speech sounds /p, b, m, w, t, d, n, k, g, h, y, f, s/
    • Be able to follow a 2-part instruction, ‘go into your room and get your shoes.’
    • Be putting 3 – 6 words together in a sentence
    • Be able to talk about something that happened yesterday or last week
    • Be using words such as is, are, the, an, on, in etc
    • Be using a large number of words (around 800)
  • By 4 years old your child should:
    • Be understood by familiar and unfamiliar listeners
    • Use all speech sounds except for /r, th, v/
    • Be talking in complete sentences
    • Be answering simple questions
    • Be telling stories you can easily follow
    • Have a large vocabulary
    • Be engaging in appropriate conversations with peers
    • Understand simple who, what and where questions
  • By 5 years old your child should:
    • Be understood by unfamiliar listeners
    • Have all speech sounds except for /th/
    • Be participating in detailed conversations
    • Be happy to answer questions in the classroom
    • Be learning to read
    • Be engaging in appropriate social interactions with peers
    • Be able find words that start with the same sounds or words that start with a specific sound
About Us
KP Speech Pathology is a mobile practice, focused on creating a team-based approach to therapy .
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Speech Pathology Australia
Our Services
  • Receptive & expressive language
  • Articulation
  • Literacy
  • Auditory processing
  • Stuttering
  • Autism
  • Social Skills
  • Play Skills
Areas Serviced

KPSP services the south eastern suburbs including Berwick, Narre Warren, Cranbourne and surrounding areas and the inner eastern suburbs of Melbourne including Kew, Hawthorn, Toorak as well as St Kilda.

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