11 skills your baby needs now to talk later

Your baby can’t talk, so why would they need speech therapy? If you’ve asked yourself this before, you’re not alone. Nearly all parents and many family doctors don’t know that speech-language pathologists can start assessing and treating communication delays when a child is only just 12 months old.

Your baby isn’t going to learn how to talk before they’re ready, but their brain begins developing the skills it needs to learn how to speak during every early interaction. Without these foundations from infancy, your child can struggle to learn the complex skill of communication later on. 

A slightly delayed one-year-old who’s three months behind on their milestones isn’t a red flag yet — it often takes a few sessions to get them back on track. However, if they never learn the missing skills, they’ll have gaps when they’re 2 or 3 that will take much longer to solve.

You can look for and foster preverbal skills with your baby on your own at home! But if you are concerned, specialized speech pathologists (like myself) can offer support to your little one as young as one-year-old.

11 Skills Your Baby Needs To Talk

Whether your child is a baby or a preschooler, they need to reach these milestones before talking. Ensuring your one-year-old has all these foundations will help them learn to speak at a normal pace.

From first to last, here are the skills your 12-month-old should have: 

1 - Reacts to events in the environment

Your baby should turn towards speakers, look for the source of sounds, and startle at loud/sudden noises.

2 - Responds to people when they talk or play with them

Your baby should enjoy holding eye contact, return your smiles, look to you to share their enjoyment, and consistently shift their attention to you when you call their name.

3 - Takes turns to continue interacting

Your baby should recognize that they can repeat an action (their turn) to get you to repeat your action (your turn). This can be games like peek-a-boo or simply giggling while dropping their pacifier or toy, because they realize you’ll have to pick it up repeatedly.

4 - Attention span increases (to listen and continue interactions)

Your baby will need to learn to focus on a person and ignore other stimuli to have longer turn-taking interactions where they can repeatedly hear and learn to understand our words.

5 - Responds to and initiates joint attention

Your baby needs to learn how to shift their attention to the focus of your attention so they can learn the meaning of your words. They also will need to learn that they can shift your attention to share their interests.

6 - Plays appropriately with a variety of toys

Play demonstrates the level of cognitive development a child has reached. Children typically imitate play actions and engage in symbolic play (pretending an item is something it is not) before they can use words.

7 - Understands early words and basic commands

Children need to understand words before they will use them. Your child should be able to recognize the names of their favourite people, activities, and simple instructions like “stop,” “sit down,” “give it,” or “come here.”

8 - Uses their voice intentionally

Children need to babble and explore making sounds during vocal play and learn that they can use grunting or shouting to get our attention and/or cause us to act. All babies will still show reflexive crying and whining, but they should also make sounds at you while calm.

9 - Imitates actions, gestures, sounds, and simple words

Imitation is an important skill for learning anything, but especially words. Imitation develops in a hierarchy from play actions to big body movements, gestures, facial expressions, sounds, and finally, words.

10 - Uses communicative gestures (e.g., wave, point, nod, baby signs)

Gestures are an easier motor movement to learn than speech but demonstrate that all the foundational knowledge for communication is in place.

11 - Initiates interactions

Before your child talks, they need to feel motivated to communicate with you. Ideally, babies should initiate an interaction for various reasons (like requesting, protesting, seeking attention, commenting, sharing enjoyment, questioning, answering, getting help, etc.)

Want a more complete checklist that includes ages? Download the guide here.

How To Help Your Baby Reach Their Milestones

Before the 12-month mark, there are simple ways to support your baby’s development. Supporting preverbal skills vary by the individual, but these activities are broadly applicable. 

• Get face-to-face on the floor with your child so that they can easily see your mouth, eyes, and facial expressions.

• Copy your baby’s sounds and actions — babies love when you imitate them, and it teaches them to imitate you too.

• Routinely repeat songs and rhymes, especially those with actions.

• Point to everything you’re talking about so your little one can connect sounds and words to the real-world object.

• Use fun exclamations and silly sounds repeatedly in play to grab your baby’s attention. These are also usually easier to imitate!

Remember, if your child is over one year old and missing these skills, then it’s time to speak to a professional about more specific therapy suggestions!

Help! My Child Is Missing A Skill… (I think?)

Recognizing all these preverbal skills is hard and takes both expertise and time observing your baby. 

If you’re unsure about any of these 11 skills, book a consultation. We would love to share more info and give you individualized advice for what to look for when you’re interacting with your little one.

If you’re already worried and know something is definitely missing, schedule an assessment to figure it out together ASAP.

But please don’t stress too much, early intervention means parents and babies/toddlers see an SLP once or twice a month to learn exactly what skills to work on next and the types of activities and parent strategies that will help.

Starting early therefore also means Most appointments are covered by insurance! You can book the first appointment here.