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Every child has particular capacities, has rights as an individual, and navigates the speech and language pathway by his or her own schedule. This bears on whether a child needs speech and language therapy, and if a child does need speech and language theray, when this should be. But the ordering of the steps on the pathway is surprisingly uniform.

By three, most children can, and do, say things which have never been said before in the whole of human history. It is a considerable feat.

TheFirstMile

Milestones

There are three well-accepted milestones in the development of speech and language.

Words++

Chatter boxes

One new word an hour and 30,000 words a day

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Irregularities, universals, Universal Grammar

Hidden by the way language evolved

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Infinite creativity

In two senses, in the sense of poetry and in the sense of ‘discrete infinity'

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Curiosity and attention

Responses to children's interests

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Convergence of minds

On a target of commonly shared competence

OrderInDisorder8

The paradox of order in disorder

Order where there should not be any

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Co-morbidities

Why should things be typically complex?

Language from the heart

Language from the heart

Bilingual, trilingual, multilingual families

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