Does your 16 month old understand what you tell them?

[Anonymous]

Most of the time, I mean. Like if you say, “go into your room and get the Brown Bear book and bring it to me” will your young toddler understand/do it?

[Anonymous]

It depends on the child—that’s a three step direction which I think is a milestone around 24 months (2 and 3 step directions ). If Brown Bear is a familiar book, by 18 months go get brown bear should be a direction that can be followed. DS would’ve had no problem with the directions you laid out in your OP by 16 months, but DD would’ve struggled if we didn’t simplify it to go get brown bear. Now at 2 she’d be fine with these directions.

[Anonymous]

No. He’d just look at me. That’s really young for a 16 month old, OP. That request had three parts plus finding the book based on the cover.

[Anonymous]

Maybe 50% of the time? Understanding multi-step directions is a later skill though, especially when asking them to go into another room- mine gets distracted by that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. He’d just look at me. That’s really young for a 16 month old, OP. That request had three parts plus finding the book based on the cover.

+1. Mine will vigorously nod to most requests like he strongly agrees with me but unless it is one of his favorite books he would definitely not do it.

[Anonymous]

My 16 yr old doesn’t seem to understand what I tell him.

[Anonymous]

Yes ours did

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 16 yr old doesn’t seem to understand what I tell him.

Same, girl, same.
Actually, no, I take that back. He will understand the request, but would rather spend 20 minutes arguing about it (why do I need it, why can’t his brother brother get it, it’s not in his room, etc) rather than the two minutes it would take to go get the damn book.

[Anonymous]

I would say yes, if he’s very familiar with the book. But I think following at least one step is good enough for 16 months. Mine is closer to 18.

[Anonymous]

She will sometimes follow a direction like "go find a ball" but other times she will ignore that same direction. It's very hard to tell what she understands. There is a HUGE difference between my 16 month old and her cousin who just turned two in terms of this. Remember how different a 2 month old is from an 8 month old? Things change fast.

[Anonymous]

Understanding language is different than processing a sequence and deciding to comply. Kids understand a ton, more than you’d think. But no, the average kid isn’t going to follow a multi step instruction at this age (or ever, ha)

[Anonymous]

No, but mine had a language disorder. That is receptive language. That may be too complex and you need to do one step directions before three step.

[Anonymous]

Definitely. He even understands things we DON'T tell him. Like if we say "I'm going down the street to the corner store," he'll go running and come back with his shoes because he wants to come.

[Anonymous]

My 16 month olds could have understood a direction like “please bring me that ball” if it was directly in our line of sight and I pointed at it. No way would they have been able to go to another room and get something and bring it back. My 2 year old probably wouldn’t do that yet.

[Anonymous]

Mine would have. I feel like his receptive language was very advanced at that age tho, so that may not be the norm. His expressive language is still very delayed tho, he didn’t really talk until 24 months. I think they just all develop differently.