One of the most wonderful aspects about two-year-olds' development is watching their language grow and flourish. With sufficient support, children are usually chattering away by their third birthday. Speech is considered to be essential to other aspects of development and so it is now a high priority in the EYFS as well as the other nations' early years curricula. In this first article in a series on communication, we look at what you might expect from children's speech and how best you can support it.
The language journey of children is at first glance remarkably slow. At 18 months, most children can only say 15 or so words, and by the time they reach their second birthday they may only have 50 or so. I say 'only', but in reality, breaking into a language is a very complex task and one that occupies children's brains even before birth.
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