So games, milestones and the checklist match their age. Stays on this device.
Five minutes of play, a few times a day, is the plan.
Your words and games are saved only in this browser. Some phones clear website data that isn’t opened for a while, so do one of these:
Wondering if your child is on track? Check milestones and when to call
Made by a dad for his daughter, free and with no ads. Read why or help get it expert-reviewed.
Every game is built on strategies speech therapists teach parents. Tap a game to play it step by step, with a 5-minute timer.
0 new this week, 0 two-word phrases
Count it when it’s used on purpose for the same thing, more than once. “Ba” for ball counts. Every language counts, and so do signs.
The next big step, usually once a child has about 50 words. “More milk”, “daddy go”, “big truck”.
For lap time, together. Tap a card to hear it, then say it yourself, point, and wait. Five minutes is plenty.
Tip: little words like “up”, “more” and animal sounds are easier than names. Start there if names aren’t coming yet.
Research-based reference points, not a diagnosis. If you are worried, that alone is a good reason to ask for an evaluation.
Copy one message with words, phrases, milestones and notes, ready to paste into a patient portal or email. Tick the lists below first for a fuller summary.
The CDC’s 2022 list shows what about 3 in 4 children do by each age. Think of it as a minimum bar, not the average.
Researchers link these to a higher chance that late talking lasts. Tick any that apply; they go into the summary below.
Every state runs a free Early Intervention program for children under 3. You can call them yourself, with no doctor’s referral. The evaluation is free, and services are free or low cost. Ask for a hearing test too.
Toddlers learn to talk inside conversations with the people who love them. Studies of parent-led programs find they improve children’s expressive language, especially when used during play, routines and shared book reading. Talk Baby Talk turns those strategies into short daily games.
Learning two languages does not cause a speech delay. Keep speaking the language you know best and love most; rich talk in any language builds the same skills. When you count words, count both languages. “Dahi” and “yogurt” are two words to say, and both count.
Pediatricians advise keeping screens to a minimum under age 2, apart from video chats. Talk Baby Talk is designed for the grown-up: read the game, put the phone down, and play. Picture cards are for looking at together, on your lap.
When our daughter was 18 months old, she had only a handful of words. My wife worried about it every day, and I wanted to give her something practical we could do together, beyond waiting and hoping.
So I built Talk Baby Talk: short, everyday games that turn what speech therapists teach parents into five minutes of play. Everything in it comes from published research and public guidance from the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and ASHA, with the sources listed in How it works. What you enter stays on your device, and nothing is sent to anyone.
I hope it helps your family too.
Sameer, a dad in North Carolina
Talk Baby Talk is free, with no ads. Contributions go toward having its games and guidance reviewed by speech-language pathologists and pediatricians, plus basic running costs.
Contributions support this project directly. Talk Baby Talk is not a registered charity, so they are not tax-deductible.
Talk Baby Talk is an educational tool for parents. It does not diagnose, treat or rule out any condition, and it does not replace a speech-language pathologist, an Early Intervention evaluation or your child’s doctor. If you are concerned about your child’s development, talk to a professional.
Picture-card art by OpenMoji, the open-source emoji and icon project, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Card voice recorded with Kokoro (Apache 2.0 license). Moving gradient adapted from ShaderGradient (MIT license). Milestone checklist from the CDC (public domain).
Changing the name, birth month or languages keeps every word, phrase and game you’ve logged.
There are no accounts, so your progress lives only on this device. To move it, or to keep two parents’ phones in step:
Adding combines the two: every word, phrase and game from both phones is kept, and nothing is deleted.
This removes the profile, words, phrases, checklist and history from this device. It can’t be undone.