Post For Parents

Babies start to understand the meaning of words as early as age 6 months, maybe even earlier.  When they begin talking at around 12 months, their average vocabulary consists of about six words.  This increases to a few hundred words rapidly-mostly nouns-by age 2.  Young toddlers learn words for tangible objects more easily than intangible objects.  For example, a toddler might reach for the cat’s tail and say “kitty”.  “Tail” is a more sophisticated concept.  My daughter thought all the zoo animals were “Yaks” and also included cows and horses in that category. It was cute but not very effective.  So how can you best help your child learn her complicated language skills?

 

First, when the child reaches to say kitty to the cat’s tail.  Use your hand and words to explain that the whole animal is kitty or the cat’s name and that the long twitching part is her tail.  When a child sees a clown’s face she might say “clown” while touching or pointing to the fascinating red shiny nose.  She thinks of the whole object as “clown”.  So to be clear, you need to first explicitly show the whole clown and say “clown”.  When she seems to grasp this idea, you can point to the clown’s nose and your nose and her nose and say “nose”. 

 

These distinctions matter and without them the child could be left with incorrect assumptions about what thing are and mean.  So every animals becomes a yak!  Luckily, kiddos learn very quickly and they can easily relearn misinformation.