About a month or so ago, my son became a real person. Before, he’d make sounds and gestures pretty indiscriminately. He could imitate us, but it felt like he was living in his own alternate reality.

But then one day he started pointing at things. He started asking “What’s that?” He still makes lots of babble talk, but there’s a flow and rhythm to it. You can talk back to him, he’ll think a moment, and then say “blah da ma!”

He’s also learning to ask for things by reaching out his hands and whining.  At this stage, how you interact with your toddler is key for helping them learn associations between words and objects in the real world.

When your toddler asks for something, encourage them to say the name of it. When my son reaches for some of my pasta, we say “Would you like some pasta?” The response is usually “Mas-tah” or something even further from the word. But like I wrote before, mispronounciations are O.K.

They’ll quickly learn that to get something they want, they need to ask for that object. And toddlers seem to want everything, so he’ll learn tons of words just by being himself.

Encourage your toddler to use his words rather than just letting him point and whine. It’ll do wonders for his vocabulary.