Babies build toward their first words gradually, and there’s a lot you can do to speed the process along. Most children say their first recognizable words around 12 months, reach 10 to 15 words by 18 months, and hit roughly 50 words with simple two-word phrases by age 2. If your baby isn’t there yet, or you simply want to give them every advantage, the strategies below are grounded in what language researchers and speech pathologists actually recommend.
What to Expect and When
Before you can help your baby talk, it helps to know what’s typical. By 12 months, most babies try to copy speech sounds, say a few words like “dada,” “mama,” or “uh-oh,” and understand simple commands like “come here.” They also recognize words for everyday objects, like “shoe.”
By 18 months, your child should know names of familiar people, objects, and body parts, and say around 10 to 15 words. By 24 months, expect simple phrases like “more milk” or short questions like “go bye-bye?” Your toddler should be speaking about 50 or more words and be understandable to you at least half the time. These aren’t rigid deadlines. Kids develop on slightly different timelines. But they’re the benchmarks that help you tell whether things are on track.
Narrate Your Day Out Loud
One of the simplest, most effective things you can do is talk constantly around your baby, even long before they can respond. Speech pathologists break this into two techniques: self-talk and parallel talk.
Self-talk means describing what you’re doing, seeing, or feeling out loud, like a radio commentator. At the grocery store, that might sound like: “I need to get bread, milk, and eggs. I’ll get the bread first because it’s close by, then the milk in the back of the store.” Parallel talk is the same idea, but focused on your child. During playtime you might say: “You’re building a fence for the horses. They’re next to the cows. Oh, great job giving the chickens their food!”
The goal isn’t to get your baby to respond. It’s to flood them with meaningful language connected to things they can see, touch, and experience in real time. You can start this when your child is a newborn and continue well into the preschool years. It feels strange at first, talking to someone who can’t answer. That’s normal. It gets easier within a few days, and the payoff in vocabulary exposure is enormous.
Follow Their Eyes and Interests
Joint attention is when you and your baby are both focused on the same thing at the same time, on purpose. It sounds simple, but it’s one of the strongest predictors of language growth. When your baby points at a dog, looks at you, and you say “dog! big brown dog!”, you’re doing it perfectly.
The key is to follow your child’s lead rather than redirecting their attention. If they’re fascinated by a spoon, talk about the spoon. If they’re watching a bird outside the window, name it and describe what it’s doing. Researchers at the University of North Carolina have found that joint attention skills are so foundational that delays in developing them lead directly to delays in language, and building them leads to stronger language, social skills, and even academic performance later on.
In practice, this means getting down to your baby’s eye level, watching what captures their interest, and putting words to it. Let them set the agenda. You supply the language.
Read Together, but Make It a Conversation
Reading to your baby matters, but how you read matters more than how many books you get through. A technique called dialogic reading turns storytime into a back-and-forth exchange instead of a monologue. The basic pattern is: prompt your child, wait for any response (a sound, a point, a word), acknowledge and expand on what they gave you, then prompt again.
For pre-verbal babies, this might mean pointing to a picture and saying “what’s that?” then pausing. Even if they just babble, you respond: “That’s right, it’s a cat! A fluffy orange cat.” For toddlers, you can ask open-ended questions: “What do you think happens next?” or “Where did the bunny go?” The goal is participation, not perfection. You’re teaching your child that communication is a two-way exchange, and every attempt they make gets a rewarding response from you.
Respond to Every Sound They Make
Babies babble, coo, squeal, and grunt long before they use real words. Every one of those sounds is a rehearsal for speech, and your reaction shapes whether they keep practicing. When your baby makes a sound, treat it like they said something meaningful. Make eye contact, smile, and respond with real words. If they say “ba ba ba,” you might say “bottle? You want your bottle?” or simply repeat the sound back and add to it.
This back-and-forth, sometimes called “serve and return,” teaches babies the rhythm of conversation: I talk, you listen, you talk, I listen. It also reinforces that their vocalizations have power. They make a noise, and something happens. That connection between sound and result is what motivates babies to keep refining their attempts until babble becomes words.
Use Baby Sign Language Without Worry
Some parents worry that teaching babies to sign for things like “more,” “milk,” or “all done” will delay spoken language. Research from the UC Davis Language Learning Lab found no evidence that baby sign causes any delay in speaking. Signs give pre-verbal babies a way to communicate before their mouths can form words, which reduces frustration for everyone. Most children naturally drop the signs once they can say the word faster than they can sign it.
Limit Pacifier Time After 18 Months
Pacifiers are a common concern for parents thinking about speech. With the pacifier in their mouth, a child has less opportunity to babble, imitate sounds, and practice forming words. Some dental professionals have also noted that prolonged pacifier use can affect the alignment of teeth in ways that could theoretically interfere with certain sounds. That said, research published through the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association found no statistically significant link between prolonged pacifier use and actual articulation problems in a controlled study.
The practical takeaway: pacifiers are fine for soothing in the first year and a half. After 18 months, try to limit use to sleep times so your toddler’s mouth is free for talking during waking hours.
Bilingual Homes Don’t Cause Delays
If your household uses two languages, you may have heard that this confuses children or slows their speech. It doesn’t. Research reviewed by Nationwide Children’s Hospital confirms that children raised with two languages learn them at the same pace as children learning only one. This holds true even for children with Down syndrome or autism. While language delays can certainly happen in bilingual children, bilingualism itself is not the cause. Speak to your child in whatever language feels most natural to you. The richness and quantity of language they hear matters far more than whether it comes in one language or two.
Red Flags Worth Watching For
Some variation in timing is completely normal, but certain patterns suggest it’s time to seek an evaluation. Watch for these specific signals:
- No babbling by 9 months
- No first words by 15 months
- No consistent words by 18 months
- No word combinations by 24 months
- Speech that you can’t understand at least half the time by 24 months, or that strangers can’t understand by 36 months
- No interest in communicating, including not responding when spoken to or not reacting to loud noises
- Any sudden loss of words or skills they previously had
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association uses a specific benchmark for identifying late talkers: fewer than 50 words and no two-word combinations by 24 months. If that describes your child, a speech-language evaluation can determine whether they need support or are simply on the slower end of normal. Early intervention services are available in every state, and the earlier they start, the more effective they tend to be. A child doesn’t need a formal diagnosis to be evaluated. You can request a screening through your pediatrician or your local school district’s Child Find program at no cost.