Toddler speech/pronunciation

[beachgirl]

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone has information on proper toddler speech development. My 21-month old will repeat almost any word we ask her to; the problem is it sounds nothing like the original word! 

For example, when she is frustrated, I tell her to ask for "help." She repeats "ruh," fully thinking she is saying "help." She calls "water" "luh-duh-luh" and the telephone "rahrah."

It's not just that she's making up her own words for things. She will repeat back a word we've just said when we ask her to, just with very incorrect pronunciation.

Is this a sign of glue ear or a hearing deficiency? Can anyone help?

[lkmiscnet]

I'm interested in reading responses to your post.

Our 26 mo old is the same way in how he mispronounces things. He's been delayed in all his milestones and was a preemie at 35.5 weeks. His hearing was checked in the NICU and no issues were found. He can hear the slightest noise, so I know he has no hearing issues. His ped hasn't found any issues.

We used to worry about his delays and even did some physical therapy early on at about 6 mos, but came to realize that he was just developing in his own time and we stopped the PT. I've been learning to not stress as he seems normal in every way. I've had other moms tell me they had "late" talkers. Some as late as 4 years old!

We find the way our son pronounces things to be so cute and he seems to be developing his words every day. He has also been getting better at the ABC song, but only can say maybe 4 of the letters that are the easiest. I've noticed subtle changes when he tries to sing it each day. He does pronounce some words correctly, but some consonants he just can't get.  "Apple" is "ado-gee". "Tractor" is "dado-gee". I'm trying to video tape him saying various words because I know it won't last and it's just too cute. I'll miss this stage!

[Verloren]

DS is like that too. He didn't really start talking at all until 21 months and quite a few of his words were only understandable to me. He would say Babu instead of Opa for example. He has been starting to correct his pronunciations for the last few weeks (he is 26 months). One thing he did for a long time too was to call animals by the sound they made and now he uses their names. I figure there is nothing to worry about if he is correcting himself. I think it's pretty normal. There's a lot of different sounds they have to sort out and some of them just take more practice to get the hang of it.    

[mckittre]

I think drastic mispronunciations are normal when kids are learning to talk.  My guy talked a bit earlier, but also pronounced everything so badly when he started that only I could understand him.  He just slowly corrected more and more words until he could talk to the rest of the world too.