Hearing and understanding

• Enjoys games like peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake
• Turns and looks in direction of sounds
• Listens when spoken to
• Recognizes words for common items like “cup”, “shoe”, “book”, or “juice”
• Begins to respond to requests (e.g. “Come here” or “Want more?”)

Talking

• Babbling has both long and short groups of sounds such as “tata upup bibibibi”
• Uses speech or noncrying sounds to get and keep attention
• Uses gestures to communicate (waving, holding arms to be picked up)
• Imitates different speech sounds
• Has one or two words (hi, dog, dada, mama) around first birthday, although sounds may not be clear