How many words should a 2 year old know?

Wondering how many words your toddler should know? I’ll give you the short answer, the longer answer, and an alternative way of approaching this question.

How many words should a 2 year old know?

When we’re thinking about vocabulary knowledge, we need to consider whether a child understands the word and whether they can use the word themselves. Often children understand more words than they can use, which means that the ‘vocabulary comprehension’ number for a two year old is in the hundreds, whilst the ‘vocabulary use’ number is closer to 50 words.

Remember: there’s a whole lot more to communication than just word count. Your little one is busy figuring out lots of important skills, even if they aren’t yet using lots of spoken words. Find out more about all your child is learning and what to expect when in my free mini communication workshop.

If you’d like to dig into all the details of how we help kids learn to talk, then do check out Toddler Talk.