The first five years of life there are expected milestones in communication that should be achieved by the average child.

What should i expect from my child at 12 months old? They should begin forming not perfectly articulated, yet discernible words such as “wawa” for water in English; an example of a word in Spanish might be “mee-mee” a simplified version of the more formal word for sleep, duerme. They should be babbling long strings of sounds like ba-ba-ba, or ma-ma-mama. They may even be able to say a few words like "dada," "mama," "dog," or "bye."

What should i expect from my child at 18 months old? By 18-months, they should be able to use around 20 words. These may be nouns (cookie, juice, 'nana), verbs (go, eat), adjectives (cold, up), prepositions (up, down), and other words (hi and bye).

What should i expect of my 24 month old child? By the time children are 2-years old, they should begin putting two words together to form short sentences. 24-month old children should be able to use "p," "w," "b," "h," and "m" in words. You can also expect them to ask questions like "where's mommy?" and "who's that?" Speech and language development really begins to rapidly propel from the age of 2 years old on.

By the ages of 3 to 5 years of age, there is a correspondence between those numbers and number of words a child should say… So at age 3 they should be saying around 300 words, by age 4 greater than 400 words and by age 5 between 500-1000 words.

If your child is not effectively achieving milestones associated with receptive language, (comprehending language) expressive language, (speaking/communicating) and pragmatics (social interaction with others) - you can do one of two things:

1-Voice your concerns at your child's annual checkup, or

2 -I often recommend to parents, calling your pediatrician and requesting an office visit to voice your concerns. A screening can then be done by your pediatrician.

This is a difficult question to answer because it is based on different variables, such as whether the child was born with a specific medical diagnosis such as Down Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy that might impact areas such as feeding, communication and cognition. It is not uncommon to begin having concerns if your child exhibits delays in receptive, expressive and/or pragmatic language as early as after their first year. It is therefore critical as parents to express concerns to your child’s physician if you see or feel that the child is falling further behind in development.