SoundlyThis is a summary of published milestones, not medical advice, and Soundly is not a speech therapy tool. If you are worried about your own child, speak to your GP, health visitor or a speech and language therapist. Nothing below replaces that, and an article cannot assess your child.
The short version: the published benchmark at two is about fifty words and some two-word phrases — and if your child is well short of that, the advice from every direction is to get an evaluation rather than wait.
What the milestones actually say
The NIDCD groups speech and language milestones by year. For 1–2 years the markers are "acquires new words on a regular basis" and "puts two words together"; by 2–3 years, "has a word for almost everything".1 The CDC's figure for 30 months is roughly fifty words for about three quarters of children.2
Ranges around those numbers are wide and normal. A child a little behind the marker is a common situation, not an emergency. A child with almost no words at two is the situation worth acting on.
Two things worth checking first
Does your child understand you?
Understanding usually runs ahead of speaking. A child who follows instructions, points at what they want and brings you things, but says little, may have an expressive delay rather than a broader one — and that distinction matters to the person assessing them. It is worth noticing in the week before an appointment.
Has their hearing been checked?
Hearing is among the most common things behind a speech delay, for the obvious reason: a child imitates what they can hear clearly. A hearing check is a normal part of an evaluation and is worth asking for early.3
Why "wait and see" is the one strategy nobody recommends
Some late talkers do catch up by themselves. Others need support. The problem is that you cannot tell which from the outside, and the way to find out is an assessment. Waiting costs the children in the second group the thing that helps them most, which is time.
Be aware of who writes most of what you will read on this subject: speech therapy providers, who have a commercial interest in you booking an evaluation. That does not make the advice wrong — a paediatrician or health visitor would say the same — but a first stop with your own doctor costs nothing and is a reasonable place to start.
What helps at home, whatever the answer
Naming things out loud is the ordinary, boring, effective thing. Using several different pictures of the same thing helps more than one picture repeatedly — toddlers shown varied examples learn more words and generalise better.
None of this is a treatment, and none of it substitutes for an assessment. It is just what the ordinary evidence on word learning supports: name things out loud far more than feels necessary; use several different pictures of the same thing rather than one on repeat;4 read together; and respond to what your child is attending to rather than testing them on it.
And skip the drilling. A randomised trial of a flashcard programme across seven months found no benefit at all.5 There is more on that here, and on how to use picture cards without drilling.
Hear all 361 of them
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References
- Speech and Language Developmental Milestones — NIDCD, National Institutes of Health.
- Milestones by 2 Years — CDC, Learn the Signs. Act Early.
- Hearing as a common factor in speech delay, and evaluation guidance, summarised by speech-language providers including Expressable. These are commercial sources; a GP or health visitor is the neutral first stop.
- Perry, L. K., Samuelson, L. K., Malloy, L. M., & Schiffer, R. N. (2010). Learn locally, think globally.
- Neuman, S. B., et al. (2014). Can babies learn to read? Journal of Educational Psychology. Summary.