He's 25 months and only uses between 10 and 20 words regularly, no word combinations. And I'm counting sound effects as words. (Car sound and dog sound, which is the only animal sound he knows.) He crawled late and walked late and was anemic for a while, which probably set him back a bit. (Might still be slightly .. he's due for more bloodwork this week.) He communicates most of his needs really effectively with the few words he knows, plus pointing, body language, and some signs he made up on his own. But no talking. There are a number of words he'll say once and then refuse to repeat. He's never been a babbler. He can understand complex instructions, so his hearing is fine. But he's notorious for stonewalling us if he doesn't want to "perform," so there's no way for me to quantify what he actually knows, you know? His pedi isn't concerned but I keep seeing how kids his age are supposed to say 50 words and combine them and I can't help feeling like my baby is broken somehow.
So for the past month or so he's suddenly been terrified of strangers. Any and all strangers. I hear that speech therapy has been great help to a lot of toddlers but I can't imagine for a second that he'd be at all receptive of it. (This is a kid who the nurse at his checkup couldn't even get proper measurements of because he's flinging himself around screaming in abject terror.)
So I'm a bit worried. But I don't know what I can do about it. Any advice?
(I know a lot of kids have vocab explosions somewhere between 2 and 3. But I had to literally bribe this child with food to get him to get up the confidence to crawl/walk unassisted -- which he could, perfectly, as soon as he gave it a try. I'm thinking he's maybe a massive perfectionist. His understanding of spoken language seems fine. Then again, I can't bribe him to talk.)
So for the past month or so he's suddenly been terrified of strangers. Any and all strangers. I hear that speech therapy has been great help to a lot of toddlers but I can't imagine for a second that he'd be at all receptive of it. (This is a kid who the nurse at his checkup couldn't even get proper measurements of because he's flinging himself around screaming in abject terror.)
So I'm a bit worried. But I don't know what I can do about it. Any advice?
(I know a lot of kids have vocab explosions somewhere between 2 and 3. But I had to literally bribe this child with food to get him to get up the confidence to crawl/walk unassisted -- which he could, perfectly, as soon as he gave it a try. I'm thinking he's maybe a massive perfectionist. His understanding of spoken language seems fine. Then again, I can't bribe him to talk.)
