I spend a lot of time on the phone talking to parents about their child and then charting out the best path forward: evaluation, giving it a couple more months to see how things progress, try this and let’s touch base in a couple of months, etc.

One of the questions that I spend the most time answering is how many words should a child have by a certain age. From these conversations, I have gleamed that it is fairly common knowledge among parents that by a child’s first birthday, they should have a least one word. However, after that, it gets a lot murkier for parents. This is further compounded by the fact that different pediatricians give different numbers! So your pediatrician says one number, but then you talk to your sister/friend/random mom at the playground and they were told a different number! Well, now what?! That is usually where a phone call to a speech pathologist comes in. This discrepancy typically arises from whether or not the pediatrician provided the milestone or the average number of words for your child’s age. Sadly, these two numbers are vastly different as you will soon see. But first, what is the difference between meeting a milestone and being in the average range?

A milestone is, to speak quite frankly, the bare minimum level that we are expecting a child to achieve. Research has shown that about 90% of the children that are of that age, have acquired that particular skill. Being in the average range, however, is where about 50% of the children of that age are performing. While we obviously want children to meet their milestones, it also leads to concerns of children falling behind if they are also not landing in the average range with their abilities.

Below you will find the milestones and averages of language development:

12 months:

Milestone: 1 word

Average: 5+ words

18 months:

Milestone: 10 words

Average: 50+ words

24 months:

Milestone: 50 words

Average: 300+ words and combining 2 words into novel utterances
(“thank you” counts as one word but “thanks Mama” is two)

36 months: Milestone:
250 words

Average: 1000+ words and combining 3 words into
novel utterances

As you can see from the above numbers, as more time passes, the average number of words expected versus the milestone number becomes a shockingly large gap. This is due to the fact that children with a typically developing language system learn about 9-10 NEW words PER DAY from about 18 months of age until about the age of 6 years. If a child is falling behind this learning curve, this gap can impact a child’s ability to express themselves, develop social relationships, access pre-academic skills, and may cause frustration. Just because the words aren’t there, doesn’t mean that the thoughts aren’t.

Many children who are not meeting the average number of words, and especially true for children who are not meeting their milestones, frustration at not being able to communicate their thoughts, ideas, wants, and needs is very real. This is why you will find that while pediatricians tend to provide the milestone number, most speech language pathologists use the average number. We understand the importance of a child being able to express themselves and the snowball effect that being behind with language development can avalanche into.

About the Author

Janene Besch

Director/Speech-Language Pathologist

Janene Besch, née Martin, holds a Master’s degree in Speech Language and Hearing Sciences from San Diego State University and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of California at San Diego. Janene is a member of the American Academy of Private Practice in Speech Pathology
Read more >

More Stories