How many words at 18 months?

[Santosha]

Both my kids have had in the hundreds by then, but are both quite precocious verbally (not so much on the motor front ). I remember that the rest in my mother's group had between 3 and 50 and the one that had 3 didn't have many more than that by 2. They're all now just over 4 and you'd barely know there had been a difference in their language development except that my DD is still quite a chatterbox and the little guy who had 3 words would rather be up a tree or kicking a ball. When he wants to, he can express himself perfectly well, though I've noticed that he's still mastering a few sounds.

Language development seems to be incredibly uneven but should 'level out' by three-ish. What is of greater importance in development at this age is communication. This means all the non-verbal stuff used to share ideas, draw attention, show mutual enjoyment, reciprocal emotion and to get needs met.

[chody47]

DD1 had several hundred by that age. She was putting up to 5 word sentences together and could sing entire songs (eg old McDonald, ABCs).

[Razzberry]

My son sees a speechie for feeding issues and she said by 18 months they expect to have about 20 words give or take 2 months either side. My sons high risk of speech issues due to sensory oral motor control problems so is being watched closely. He has about 10 words and is 15.5 months.

[Heaven]

Same as chody. Both mine have been 'talkers' and they had a couple of hundred words at least by then. They were speaking in sentences, answering questions, and singing songs etc. There is just a huge variety I think and it happens all of a sudden, mine just seemed to get to the 'word explosion' stage earlier.

[wysiwyg]

Both my have had in the hundreds by then, but are both quite precocious verbally (not so much on the motor front ). I remember that the rest in my mother's group had between 3 and 50 and the one that had 3 didn't have many more than that by 2. They're all now just over 4 and you'd barely know there had been a difference in their language development except that my DD is still quite a chatterbox and the little guy who had 3 words would rather be up a tree or kicking a ball. When he wants to, he can express himself perfectly well, though I've noticed that he's still mastering a few sounds.

Language development seems to be incredibly uneven but should 'level out' by three-ish. What is of greater importance in development at this age is communication. This means all the non-verbal stuff used to share ideas, draw attention, show mutual enjoyment, reciprocal emotion and to get needs met.

Same here with both mine, very good verbally not so good in other areas (as MCHN said when she asked me and I said I didn't know, if you don't know how many they can say, then they most likely have loads because you have never felt the need to count them). At DD's MG there were massive variations - the boys especially didn't seem to use many words until well over 2 - now they are all four and are all pretty much the same. I was expecting DS to be very different to DD in terms of speech development just because of the difference between the boys and girls in MG and other anecdotal evidence but he is the same.

[raffy]

Ds2 attempts anything we say so all the usual ones he's just starting to string a couple of words together to, tonight he said 'love you' for the first time