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What does the child understand in 1-1,5 years?

 
, medical expert
Last reviewed: 19.10.2021
 
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Mastering the native language is the second most important achievement for the child. Of course, the child at the end of the infant period also understands the speech of the people around him, but this understanding is still too narrow and peculiar. The child's dictionary grows faster after a year, when he, having learned to walk, meets with an increasing number of subjects.

Usually a child in 12 months says 3-5 words, consisting of two syllables ("ma-ma", "ba-ba", etc.), and already in 18 months his vocabulary is about 20 words. Thus, great achievements are noted in the development of speech. From uttering sounds, exclamations, individual words, the child proceeds to form sentences of 2-3 or even several words. This is the birth of a child-specific speech - with original distortions and fictions, which gives him more opportunities for self-expression and the formulation of questions.

To denote this or that subject in order to have "concepts", the child must understand them. The stage of research and "conquest" of the surrounding world largely contributes to the development of speech. This is facilitated by a constant, diverse in form communication between the child and adults. For example, if you are clothing a child, be sure to accompany your actions with a story about what you are doing right now: "Now we'll put on a shirt. Where's the shirt? Bring it to me." And now we'll put on panties. "Where are the panties? Bring them."

Performing such simple tasks, the child exercises in listening and understanding words and whole sentences. He begins to listen to the words that denote objects and actions with them, and soon begins to understand what objects surround him. When you are playing with the child, show him the nose, eyes, cup, spoon, teach him to bind certain parts of the body or objects with certain sound combinations. This is the first step to a real understanding of words. And when next time you ask the child: "What is this? What is this?" and the kid responds, although not quite right or distorting the words (for example, instead of "sugar" - says "tangal", or instead of "worm" - "chevryak"), then you must repeat the name of the subject for him. This will be the consolidation of the concept.

Most of the words in children up to two years of age are nouns. Very often the same word denotes different, albeit similar, items. For example, the word "shapa" denotes both a cap and a kerchief, and a cap-that is, everything that is put on the head, and the word "zhizha" is a burning match, fire, burning coals, hot water, etc., although in our understanding "zhizha" is something liquid.

Such words have a very vague meaning and denote all objects that have some common, sometimes completely random, sign. As experience accumulates, the child learns to distinguish objects and hence begins to use words more correctly. So, for example, one girl in a year and nine months distinctly distinguished the ball, a ball for playing ping-pong and an air ball, although only two or three months ago the ball called everything round.

Gradually, children from individual words pass to sentences. Initially, these proposals consist of two (a little later - three words): "Mama. Kanaka" ("Mom, that's a pencil") or "Tol Kaka!" ("The table is bad" - after it hit the corner of the table). Naturally, in order for the child to speak with sentences, his vocabulary should consist of 30-60 words.

Gradually the phrases are getting longer, but they are also composed of individual words that are not quite consistent with each other: "Matsik snow bok" ("The boy fell into the snow"); "Give me that kit" ("Give that book"). And only by the end of the second year the child begins to change words, in particular nouns, according to cases.

Thus, from one year to two years, the child's dictionary is quickly replenished. And although this sharp rise in the number of spoken words varies noticeably among different children, on average this growth is evident. So, if by the end of the first year the number of understood words was about 30, and the number of spoken words was one, then in the next 7-8 months the number of spoken words increased to 250 on the average.

Another feature in the formation of concepts in children is that they remember the name of an object (for example a cup) and believe that this is the only specific subject. All the rest, although similar, are called differently. (Tanya (1 2 months) knew her calyx well-it was green with white spots, she did not identify all the other cups with the name "cup." And only later, when this word was learned by her, she learned to combine all the cups into one group.)

So the child learns to combine objects into categories and groups. He learns to distinguish the main features of the object (cup shape, handle) and is distracted from such insignificant differences as color, size, pattern or pattern.

The development of speech is important not only for the mental development of the child. The mastering of speech plays an enormous role in the formation of the first moral assessments. Already at this age the child has a relationship to the good and the bad, to the beautiful and ugly. It is from these rudimentary relationships that genuine moral feelings will be formed: "What are your dirty hands, they need to be washed up urgently"; "You can not eat sweets before eating!". Children, meeting with different attitudes of adults to these or those phenomena, begin to understand the words-evaluation: "good" and "bad." And they learn at the same time and that intonation, and the facial expressions that accompany this assessment.

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