The foundations for making friends and getting along
with others develop very early in life. In the second
year of life, a toddler's relationship with his parents
is the most important relationship to him; he is also
actively developing other relationships with his age-mates.
A toddler's social relationships both within and beyond
the family, influence his overall development. Your
child also gets affected by the relationship that exist
between his parents; emotions such as anger, love that
flow around certainly affect your child. Many toddlers
this age have yet to start truly talking although the
average 16 month-old has a speaking vocabulary of over
fifty different words.
Things your toddler can do
AT THIS STAGE
• imitate activities
• scribble
Things your toddler will
probably be able to do AT THIS STAGE
• use 3 words
• dump an object in imitation
Things your toddler may possibly
do AT THIS STAGE
• use six words
• run
Things your toddler may even
be able to do AT THIS STAGE
• kick a ball forward
• brush teeth with help
Language in girls.
Right from birth, girls respond more to the human voice
compared to boys and they have better verbal skills
throughout childhood. Girls talk earlier than boys and
begin to string words into sentences earlier. They are
more articulate, have better pronunciation and grammar,
and are better at verbal reasoning. They also learn
to read earlier than boys. The structure of the female
brain is responsible for girl's superior verbal skills:
the speech centers are more tightly organized in the
female brain than in the male brain and have more and
better connections with other functions of the brain.
Language in boys.
Boys are almost always slower than girls at developing
language skills and this discrepancy lasts throughout
childhood. Boys are later in talking than girls, are
slower to put words together in sentences and take longer
to learn reading skills. Speech disorders such as stuttering
are far more common in boys and boys outnumber girls
in remedial reading classes. Although this difference
in linguistic ability levels out somewhat during the
teenage years, you can help your son's language skills
by reading aloud to him and playing lots of word games.
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