Family Support Blog

Enjoys social play, interested in mirror images, responds to other people’s expressions of emotion and appears joyful often, responds to own name, begins to respond to “no”

Shy or anxious with strangers, cries when mother or father leaves, enjoys imitating people in his play, shows specific preferences for certain people and toys, tests parental responses to his actions during feedings

Imitates behavior of others, especially adults and older children, more aware of herself as separate from others, more excited about company of other children

Imitates adults and playmates, spontaneously shows affection for familiar playmates, can take turns in games, understands concept of “mine” and “his/hers”

Interested in new experiences, cooperates with other children, plays “Mom” or “Dad”, increasingly inventive in fantasy play, dresses and undresses, negotiates solutions to conflicts

Wants to please friends, wants to be like her friends, more likely to agree to rules, likes to sing, dance, and act, shows more independence and may even visit a next-door neighbor by herself

Follows instructions given to group, asks how questions, uses past tense and future tense appropriately, uses conjunctions, has a receptive vocabulary of approximately 13,000 words, sequentially names days of the week

Understands left and right, uses increasingly more complex descriptions, engages in conversation, has a receptive vocabulary of approximately 20,000 words

Stories contain complete episodes with internal goals, motivations, and reactions of characters, and multi-episode stories appear, language is used to establish and maintain social status.

Stories include complex, embedded, and interactive episodes, understands jokes and riddles based on lexical ambiguity, vocabulary used in school texts is more abstract and specific than used in conversation.