Helping kids to talk

[JLeigh29]

Ladies, it's nice to know DS isn't the only 'not so great talker'! He says ma-ma, dada, bub-ba (for his name) and has ooooooodles of noises (for animals, vehicles plus clicks his tongue, smacks his lips etc for other stuff) plus a few sounds (e.g mmmmm is more/milk/yum and lalala means music or singing) but words, not so much! At mum's group, most of the others say 'hi' and 'bye' and there's a few who say quite a few words. DS understands more than most of the others though and does a lot of gesturing to communicate, but just doesn't verbalise. It doesn't 'worry' me as such, but I often wish he'd hurry up and talk! And if one more person says that one day his language will just 'explode' and he'll suddenly get it, I'll scream!!
I think it's all normal, but I'd also like to know DS was on the advanced end of 'normal' rather than the other end, iykwim...

[ElleJay]

DS is 2 next month and he's not really saying much either. He used to be such a chatterbox and now not so much. I'm not overly concerned, but DH is. Only just recently he's been just coming out with 'Mumumumum' and 'Dadadadad' (of course, when DH isn't around ) and 'Nanananana' and lastely 'No no no no' (of course) but other than that, he's not a big speaker. All I've been doing is repeating words to him and sentences and he seems to be understanding them, but not being vocal

[HotI]

Is late talking more common in boys? Seems to be more Mums of DSs than DDs replying.

[deletedit]

Miss 3's first word was 'cat' when she was maybe 9 or 10 months and words just flowed after that. She really really liked the cat.

Master 1 is also utterly obsessed with the cat but when he sees her he just gets excited and starts giggling. Actually a lot of things get him excited and make him giggle, he's just one of those babies. We keep pointing to ourselves and him and saying people's names and now he thinks that's hilarious and goes around poking everyone in the chest giggling, and then Miss 3 starts poking everyone yelling "POKE POKE POKE" and ... well, its not hard to see why he doesn't talk ...

The cat is almost 6, still doesn't talk, and is not very impressed with small children.

[deletedit]

Is late talking more common in boys? Seems to be more Mums of DSs than DDs replying.

I have 3 kids - 2 girls and a boy.

From my experience I can say that girls with brown eyes talk extremely early, boys with blue eyes talk late, and girls with green eyes are very grumpy

[Jellyfish]

Is late talking more common in boys? Seems to be more Mums of DSs than DDs replying.

There is my DD but she does have a speech condition so not sure where that fits in. I wouldn't consider 17 months late for talking though, I think right around 2 is very common

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

Oh HotI i don't know if your DH told you but she said GIRLS and was trying to say AVA while she was here the other day.
I think every child is different although the MCHN did tell me later speach is more common in boys but having a look around i think it's suggested that most 18mth old will have roughly a dozen words.
After having your DD and mine together the other day i'd almost give anything that mine spoke a little less

[SunnyRain]

The cat is almost 6, still doesn't talk, and is not very impressed with small children.

That cat needs both speech and psycho therapy, immediately!

My son struggled with speech. When he started talking, it took me 2 months to understand "tooty" meant thirsty. All along dh and I have been the only ones who understood him. For the longest time he didn't pronounce consonants on the ends of words.

We have always known his comprehension is excellent, and I have a family history of delayed speech*. We weren't overly worried, but he started trying really hard to pronounce words properly and started stuttering the end consonants, so we finally took him for a hearing test and everything was fine. That's where we've decided to leave it because the fact is his speech is improving every day and he's getting over the stutter really quickly.

But at 17 months he didn't have much to say. Now he's nearly 3 and he tells knock knock jokes, plays with homonyms, makes up his own fairy tales, composes his own songs, and is really amazing.

And now to my point: You need to ask yourself if YOU feel you need to worry about your daughter. Don't compare her with other children or lists of milestones. Every child is an individual and they all focus on different things to learn and develop at their own pace. Perhaps she's busy listening and taking it all in. I think at 17 months old you should keep observing her quietly and not worry too much, just keep talking with her, reading and keep her part of family conversations. And know that she's understanding a lot more than she lets on.


*I didn't talk until the day before my third birthday, my great uncle was 5 before he spoke - my great uncle was also a bonafide genius like Albert Einstein, who also didn't talk until he was 4 or 5, in fact it's a common trait in geniuses. Not that I'm a genius, sadly.


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Jude 07/10/2008 | Lilac 16/06/2011

[Lenny]

I think 17 months isn't late. I wouldn't be surprised if 2 years is kinda average.
I wouldn't like to guess how many people tell little white lies to their MCHN, because we are told our LOs should have X number or words by X age. Also, everyone seems to remember that little girl/boy/cousin/nephew who started talking at 12 months. But i don't think it's the norm.

Also, this is my experience - I *think* DS1 may have had more words than i gave him credit for. But because i didn't *get* them or hear them properly, then he didn't get the reaction that he needed, so he probably gave up. My DS2 started using baby words and i was used to hearing them from DS1, so i responded and encouraged and reacted more. But DS1 is no slug now. He just took a lot longer to start than some.

[Sunny Love]

Trillian and Kuaraiza have hit the nail really hard on its head in their post. Major rep points to them!
Im finding that our high frequency words are what DD is really picking up on right now (for example: please, ta, car, juice, Chevy (DS' name) Axel (doggies name), mum, dad, nan, bubby...)
Just keep talking to her
xx

[beansbeans!]

With the girls we ask them to use their words when they want something or see something, especially once we know they know what it is called, 'can' do it.
So when the point to their drink, I would just say 'can you use your words?' I would ask them everytime they wanted something. Eventually they got the idea that it was much faster to say the word than to point to what they wanted. verbalising everything helps, like you are doing as well. They will talk in their own time, and I wouldnt be too worried about it right now, but keep on encouraging her.

[HotI]

I had my MCHN appt and she wasn't concerned at all. Her advice was similar to what you guys said, just keep talking to her and she will be fine. I also discovered i was misinformed i thought that she had said last time that by 18 months kids usually have 50 words. BUt the 'standard' is 5-10 words at 18 months and 50 words at 2 years! And when we add her words up, she has at least 10. She doesn't use them all the time, but she can when she wants to.

Also, she was home with DH a couple of days this week, and he naturally talks alot more than me, and she seems to be more chatty. So maybe i just need to make more of an effort to keep talking out loud as well.

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

See she's a talker after all by the 'norm' anyway.
She's doing well hun and she did say something new to me at the BB catch-up but i still cannot remember.
Send her to my house and give yourself a day or two rest, she'll come home and wont shut up - she'd be fighting to get a word in

[JLeigh29]

HotI - That's great news about your DD! 5-10 words isn't that much when you think about it. I was also reading that toddlers who are at home one-on-one with an adult tend to have their needs anticipated and met more than say, day caretots or those with lots of siblings, so they may not have the need to talk to express what they want so much. That makes sense to me!

I wonder if they count animal noises and DIY noises (DS does a drill, hammer, screwdriver and saw, complete with actions, lol!). I have also noticed some of the words DS uses are becoming clearer, so that's exciting.

[meow]

Ugh. I hate the "just talk to them" or "just read to them" lines. Like I never talked and read to my child. Oh that's right, I did. Now we're healing him he's talking so much more and responding to our talking in a much more 'normal' way and it's so nice to see it wasn't me and how I parented him!

Your daughter sounds like she's doing great. Yep 5 to 10 words is the aim at 18 months so she's doing fine

[Tilda]

HotI, I just picked up on this thread. And I may have missed exactly where you're at with it now so sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick. It's great that the MCHN wasn't concerned about your LO but neither was mine at the 18 month check a few months ago. Then my GP suggested I take DD1 for a hearing test last week and we found she had some (hopefully) temporary hearing loss due to fluid on her ears. No one else had picked this up and she doesn't have a history of ear infections and her comprehension is incredible. Anyway, I'm so very glad my GP realised that her speech wasn't where it should be and that we should start on the path of looking into it. There's no harm in checking things out. Best case, there's nothing to worry about and if there is, you can get onto it.

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

I babbled away to DS, talking non-stop, sang a lot - he started talking just to shut me up! To be fair, what sort of toddler wants to hear about how their vegetables gain nutrients from the ground? I did a mix of stating what I was doing and short sentences and talking to him like an adult. And just babbling about what I was thinking, which can be a bit bizarre at times.

Having said that, he was early with basic sounds so early talking wasn't that much of a surprise. I also detest baby talk and refuse to do it (aside from "aren't you gorgeous?"). I hate it when DS's mispronunciations are repeated by my mother and he continues with it. It's a flipping TRAMPoline, not a JUMPoline. Just cos DS got it wrong doesn't mean you have to re-enforce the mistake. How much did you laugh at me as a pre-teen for making these mistakes you never corrected as a young child?

Yeah, I also have issues, maybe I should have said that earlier.

eta - I read my DS Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings before he was 6mo - maybe it's the quality of the book you're reading? But then he didn't sleep without me reading to him and even then it took him a while. We did a lot of Discworld too. I have a friend who speaks well, speaks "adultish" to her children and her son didn't speak til gone age 2: he can speak fine, just decided not to. It isn't always the parenting (as a speech therapist's sister, I have to say it sometimes is!), it's often the child.

[JLeigh29]

I made a bit of a list the other day, of DS's words. I stopped when I got to 20, and there were another 20-odd animal noises etc. Plus all his gestures and sign language is another 20. So now I feel guilty for thinking he wasn't talking 'enough'!