List of Skills by Age
1-2 Months
2-4 Months
4-6 Months
6-8 Months
8-10 Months
Requests actions (e.g., “Up” with arms) and/or requests objects (e.g., reaches toward adult)
10-12 Months
Gives objects to another to request an action (e.g., hands toy to adult to activate) (e.g. “mama”)
Asks for help from adult with gesture or vocalization
12-15 Months
Uses rising intonation to request information
15-18 Months
Points to request actions or information
Uses single words with intonation to request actions (e.g., “up”)
18-21 Months
Occasionally requests clarification (“huh?”)
21-24 Months
Requests information with gestures and words (points to and uses “questioning” expression)
Makes statement with rising intonation to ask a question (“Mommy go bye-bye?”)
24-27 Months
Asks “What that” questions for information
27-30 Months
Starts to ask “who” and “where” questions
30-33 Months
33-36 Months
Regularly asks for clarification
Asks a variety of questions, including “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “is,” and “do”
36-42 Months
Regularly requests clarifications
42-48 Months
48-54 Months
Asks questions about how another person feels
54-60 Months
Asks about another person’s perspective (e.g., “What do you think about…?”)
 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015
©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.