Child’s first words
At what age will a child speak about 50 words?
Will it be ‘daddy’, ‘mummy’, or rather ‘yummy’? Parents are always very interested in what their child’s first words will be. Most infants reach this milestone around their first birthday. But what is often overlooked is that these children already understand many more words, usually more than 50. In early development, the number of words a young child speaks lags behind the total number of words he or she understands. Only at 18 months, will the average child start producing more than 50 different words. What is interesting, too, is that by then there are many differences between children: some speak over 200 words, while others will use only the word ‘this’. In a large cohort study at the Child Research Centre, we will examine to what extent such differences can explain children’s future development and in what way they relate to other individual features.