Interesting. Our daughter is 2 months away from her 2nd birthday and just in the last month or so, her speech has started accelerating at quite a pace. Whereas from 8 months or so she was making noises and started to form her first words, these days it's almost one new word per day, and she's starting to make lots of 2 and even 3 word sentences.<p>Another interesting point: we're bringing her up to be bi-lingual (Dutch and English), and because her environment is primarily Dutch, almost all of the words she speaks are in Dutch, though she understands a decent share of English too, now. I wonder if because language development is a bit more prolonged with bi-lingual children, if this vulnerable phase is also then prolonged, or if the brain starts to be more resilient as soon as a "first language" is settled in?<p>I love this stuff!
I knew that the onset of a variety of mental health problems is during the late teenage years, so I'm not surprised at all. What did surprise me was that the babies sustain lasting damage because they were never "cuddled and played with" in their early years. So much that it appeared in brain scans when they were adults. Interesting.
> Throughout the first two years of life, the brain develops at a rapid pace. However, around the second year, something important happens—babies begin to speak.<p>I began to speak way before learning to walk, around my first birthday. I personally know of child that began to speak before his first birthday. As in, complete sentences.<p>Is that rare and my sample set has been biased? I thought it was normal for babies to start speaking at age 1, not 2.
> In short, your ability to maintain proper social skills and develop a sense of empathy is largely dependent on the physical affection, eye contact, and playtime of those early years. Even something as simple as observing facial expressions and understanding what those expressions mean is tied to your wellbeing as a toddler.<p>Crap, is that true? Anyone knows other studies confirming this?
Spoiler alert: "the terrible twos" / "toddler" and "teenage years." So, a broader range than the clickbait title implied.