Toddler Communication: It's More Than Just Nouns

Toddler Communication Beyond Nouns.png

Truck.

Car.

Baby.

Mouth.

Nana.

Notice a pattern?

These are all nouns. A noun is a word used to identify or represent a person, place, thing, or idea.

Typically, young children acquire an arsenal of nouns before saying a collective amount of verbs -e.g. action words or adjectives - describing words. This happens because:

1. Nouns are easier for young children to see, manipulate, and understand.

2. Most parents, especially English speaking ones, tend to label and emphasize the production of nouns. “TRUCK!! Henry, do you see the TRUCK?”

When we, parents, or fellow speech-language pathologists, work with children who have language delays or disorders, we have to remember that - variety is the spice of life- and language!

Equipping our children with an arsenal of different types of words allows them to convey their needs and wants and to express their inner thoughts and emotions. 

A child’s vocabulary should consist of:

  • Action words or verbs (ex. Eat, sleep, done)

  • Describing words or adjectives (ex. Big, hot, yucky)

  • Early location words or prepositions (ex. In, there, up)

  • Names of persons, places, things, or objects (ex. Mama, mouth, truck, park)

  • Conversational or social words (ex. Hi, bye, what’s that?)

By targeting different types of words, your toddler will be able to explore the relationship between them and notice how they can be combined and formed into a phrase (and eventually a sentence). 

What types of words does your toddler say? Do you notice a pattern? Do you notice a group of words missing from his or her vocabulary?

In my resource library, you’ll see many free handouts that can assist you in tracking not only your child’s first words but the types of words your child says.

If you’re interested in learning more about this phenomenon, please check out, My Toddler’s First Words*, where I go into greater details about it!

To read more about this topic, please read: Verbs: 3 Ways to Get Your Toddler to Understand and Use Verbs

Other products that you may like:

Goodnight Moon: Book Companion - A fun collection of handouts and activities to assist you in supporting your young child’s language development! If you have the classic board book, Goodnight Moon, you should definitely think about purchasing this companion!

Baby Loves Winter: Book Companion - Read this blog post to see what’s included in this book companion.

Amazon Affiliate Links included.


Kimberly Scanlon