Development 2 Interaction: The Language of Two Year Olds.

When a child says their first word, they begin to learn that they will get praised and rewarded for doing so. This starts them on a journey of learning and developing their language and soon they learn how they can use this to interact with others.

Let’s skip ahead to when the child has reached the age of two. At this point, they’re probably running around and letting out full blown sentences to tell the people around them what would make them happy, not that these sentences always make sense to anyone other than family. Not only do two year olds understand practically every word you say, they also take in a lot of it. Their internal word bank is reaching fifty and growing rapidly. Three or four word sentences become five or six words and pronouns are starting to be introduced. By this stage, the young one is very aware of the concept of “mine” and this shows in the way they ask for things; “I want to see my mummy”, or “Juice is mine, daddy”. This development, while maybe creating havoc for parents who have to teach their child that not everything belongs to them, is a vital stage that the child needs to go through to further their understanding of the language and how to use it efficiently.

(Source: https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/toddler/Pages/Language-Development-2-Year-Olds.aspx)

Two years is a milestone in a child’s social development. At two, they really begin to branch out from their parents to search for children of their own or similar ages to interact with. They don’t often want to be around adults and who can blame them? At that age, adults are big, scary creatures that are a lot louder than them and are very intimidating. All toddlers are different of course, some will babble on and on to strangers about their newest toy or what they’re doing but in most cases, children want to stick with other children and their mummies and daddies. Meeting a host of older people can be very overwhelming for young children but they’ll soon learn that these people aren’t scary monsters and soon enough, they’ll be chattering away to them like they do with their family at home.

(Source: http://www.babycenter.com/0_toddler-milestone-socialization_11742.bc)

There are debates about whether or not a child’s ability to vocalise and learn language is a consequence of nature or nurture. The Learning approach in Psychology, suggests that language is learnt in children through the imitation of what they hear their parents or siblings saying (which explains why children end up occasionally swearing at people). Famous psychologist, Skinner, agrees with this point of view and states that through positive reinforcements and rewards, children learn that verbalising their wants and needs is a good thing and therefore they do it more often. On the other hand, ‘Nativist’ psychologists such as Chomsky, claim that all humans are born with the innate ability to learn and develop their language without influence from imitation or parental rewards.

(Source: http://www.decodedscience.com/first-language-acquisition-development-theories-nature-vs-nurture/7247)

By Emily-Rose Cordingley