How does a child learn language?! My 2 YO hardly says a word, but understand so much!
In: 5
Its because of their brains elasticity and rapid neural formation. [Link to research](https://tessais.org/children-learn-languages-faster-adults/)
The elasticity of the brain is incredible! Human children are frighteningly clever at times, and they can actually learn up to 6 or so languages (including ASL).
Kids have a very malleable brain, and the rate they take information in is much higher than an adults; their brain is smaller, but neurons fire much faster and they retain better.
Our brains become more set in their ways and less elastic as we get older, so it’s essential for kids to learn as many exciting things as they can.
Have you tried teaching your child to sign? Vocalization is hard and a lot of the mechanics are hidden, so children can take a while to figure out how to produce sounds even if they understand them.
EDIT: Not as cool as Gr1mm’s source, but this might be helpful:
[https://www.thebump.com/a/how-to-teach-baby-sign-language](https://www.thebump.com/a/how-to-teach-baby-sign-language)
We taught my son sign language when he was still an infant so he could tell us things like milk, food, please, thank you. He can talk now but still sometimes signs milk and thank you. Probably laziness. That being said if your child is speaking *very minimally* at two years old you may want to start thinking about talking to their pediatrician. I’m certainly not trying to alarm you and every child takes a different amount of time but by 24 months they should be speaking some things and not just making sounds.
If you watch the docuseries Babies on Netflix there is a language/word episode. That goes more in depth.
There are a lot of steps. They have to figure out how to make the sounds my daughter is 9 months and sometimes she will copy the shape my mouth makes but isn’t sure how to make the sound that goes with it. Usually doesn’t take more than a few weeks before she figures it out.
They also need to learn what words are. Each sound you make might be a word or it could just be a syllable of a larger word. Two words that are usually used together may sound like one word with two syllables like “good job.”
Also they have to basically figure it all out themselves. If you learn a second language at least you already are able to use a lot of the sounds and you can ask how to say this/that.
The most interesting part to me is the language explosion that happens, most babies will have 1-3 words other than mama and dada by 1. They don’t have to be perfect like Ba for ball. By 18 months many have 20 words.
But sometime between about 18 months to 30 months or so baby’s will start saying hundred of words. Also they can parrot new words so easily. Techincally it doesn’t count as knowing the word if it’s copying but that parroting helps them.
It’s as though they need enough input and also masterery of making the sounds before language can really breakthrough. So you can help by talking to baby, reading to them, singing etc. If you don’t know what to say narratoring what you’re doing helps. Also awkward pauses for common phrases help. So ready-set……………….go. It needs to be pretty long too. Also another thing that helps is the +1 rule. So if baby says car when they see a car. You say fast car or red car that way you can add vocabulary.
If you’re curious enough to read a 500 page book, [The Language Instinct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct) is a good overview.
Kids understand well before they’re able to speak. I’m finding that my 11-month-old can understand a wide variety of spoken commands and object names. With my older kid, I found that the big language explosion happens when their back teeth come in (around age 2). This is totally obvious in hindsight – you can’t make words when you lack all the phonemes that involve teeth – but something you probably wouldn’t think of in advance, and it was really striking how quickly language developed afterwards.
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