At 18 months they are supposed to have a minimum of 5 words. DS only had 4 words so MCHN packed him off for a hearing test which came back fine.

I took him to a private speech pathologist for an assessment which was very reassuring in terms of discovering that his understanding was perfect for his age, but for whatever reason he wasn't communicating back. I hadn't been worried but the MCHN was and I couldn't stand the wait, she'd made me paranoid.

The speechie gave me some exercises to do with him which basically involved trying for a minimum of half an hour a day to only speak to him in one and two word sentences eg "Milk? Want milk?" to try and encourage him to repeat back to me. She did warn me not to overdo it, I would drive myself nuts LOL.

DS at first looked at me like I was an idiot and then got frustrated and angry. He knew exactly what I wanted him to do and would either get embarrassed or cross, so I decided to relax on that part and I would wait and see how he was at the age of 2.

However, there were other tactics that he had a better response to. If he pointed to a bird I would just say "bird" not "oh, look there's a bird!" And if he pointed to a picture in a book then repeat that one word a couple of times. If I got no verbal response in 10 seconds, then carry on. If he did give a verbal response, even if it was just "uh", to encourage that I would say "yes, bird!". 10 seconds is quite a long time to wait but it was interesting to do so, most of the time I found he would make a verbal noise.

The other thing of course is books, books and more books, preferably with him being able to see your face and the book so he can see how your mouth forms words. And if you play on the floor with him, follow his lead, see what he points to, what he is interested in.

All of a sudden, about 2 months before he turned 2, he had what they call a "word spurt" and it all came all at once. So in the end he was just a bit late to start and hadn't really needed speech therapy.

I do believe that concentrating on a couple of words and emphasising them did help a bit though, I was talking to him in the most part in a fairly adult way, which he understood perfectly but had no hope of imitating at that age. It's all worked out fine though because he does have a very mature vocabulary and speech pattern at the age of 3 which quite tickles people to listen to. "Actually, I think I might just go and play cars right now" for instance.

I recommend you go ahead with a hearing test and put your name down for speech therapy. Better to get onto these things asap - you can always cancel the appointment if you decide you don't need it anymore by the time it comes up. The hearing test in particular is very easy and such a simple thing to take out of the equation, at the very least go ahead and do that.