Bright Futures Milestone Category

Communicative

Milestone Name	Expected Age
Able to be calmed when picked up	0
Turns and calms to parent’s voice	0
Communicates needs through his behaviors	0
Has an undifferentiated cry	0
Is able to follow parents with his eyes	1
Recognizes the parents’ voices	1
Begins to demonstrate differentiated types of crying (hunger, discomfort, fatigue)	2
Coos	2
Has clearer behaviors to indicate needs for food, sleep, play, comforting	2
Cries in a differentiated manner to express hunger, fatigue, pain	4
Babbles more expressively and spontaneous	4
Uses a string of vowels together (babbling “ah,” “eh,” “oh”) and enjoys vocal turn taking	6
Is beginning to recognize own name	6
Will begin to use consonant sounds (“m,” “b”) and then combine together (“ah,” ”ba,”) as jargon	6
Uses wide variety of repetitive consonants and vowel sounds	9
Starts to point out objects	9
Demonstrates prodeclarative pointing (points to a desired object and watches to see whether the parent sees it)	12
Imitates vocalizations and sounds	12
Speaks 1 to 2 words	12
Jabbers with inflections of normal speech	12
Indicates what he wants by pulling, pointing, or grunting	15
Brings objects over to show you	15
Hands you a book when he wants to hear a story	15
Says 2 to 3 words (not Dada/Mama) with meaning	15
Vocalizes and gestures; speaks 6 words	18
Points to indicate to someone else what he wants	18
Has vocabulary of at least 50 words	24
Uses 2-word phrases	24
Asks parent to read a book	24
Uses short phrases of 3 to 4 words	30
Is understandable to others 50% of the time	30
Carries on a conversation with 2 to 3 sentences spoken together	36
Is understandable to others 75% of the time	36
Names a friend	36
Gives first and last name	48
Sings a song or says a poem from memory	48
Knows what to do if cold, tired, or hungry	48
Is clearly understandable with most speech efforts	48