Receptive/Expressive at 24mos

[irangel]

I have had three drastically different children. My oldest was an early talker (sentences by a year), my second had a moderate expressive delay and didn't start talking until 2yrs. Now at 3yrs he's saying short sentences but has poor sentence structure.

My youngest who's just shy of 24mos is far more delayed but I don't know what to expect. Compared to her peers she has much lower receptive comprehension and expressive. She does not say any words but does babble a small amount. She communicates by pointing and signing "more" and "help" (she uses the same sign for both but we know what she means). She'll point to someone and then point to an object and then sign "more". But no words. She gets frustrated very easily because of this and there's A LOT of bodily harm due to tantrums when I don't understand.

Receptively she understands things to an extent. If I tell her "no", she gets very upset though I don't know if it's because of the word or the tone of voice being firm. I can ask her where a few people are and she'll point to them. I can ask her to go get certain toys and she'll go to them but she can't follow two-step commands like, "go get your ball and bring it to me". She'd go to the ball but won't bring it to me. She's clearly there cognitively and understanding a lot more than you would expect given she's non-verbal but she seems so far behind her peers. She does get SLP 2x a week so therapy isn't an issue. I'm just curious where a 24mos old should be in terms of receptive and expressive language.

[heatherdeg]

You can look here at the 23 month level or 2-3yo level depending on your dc's age...

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/speechandlanguage.asp#milestones

HTH

[khaoskat]

Hi, I went through this a year ago myself.

I originally brought my problems with DS2's speach to the Ped at 18 months, but was basically pushed off saying there is still time. If he cannot say 5 two word phrases by 2 we will refer. (Basically things like "more juice".)

Well, at 2, he still barely had 5 words. He would pick up a new word, say it for a day or two, and then we would never hear it again. We were referred. He wasn't even really babbling or trying to talk. He had a Speech and Hearing Eval done. Hearing came back fine. Speech put him at an 8-14 month level when he was 25 1/2 months of age.

We have had one additional eval about 6 months later through the program he is involved in through MRDD, and they put him at a 12-14 month level.

We are not going on 2/20 for the EIP eval for services through the school district. But his teacher has warned us to not expect much, as he is only behind in speech so to qualify he has to be 2 1/2 levels behind where he should be to get services through the school district. She doesn't think he is that far behind right now. But on the other hand, his private ST thinks he will qualify.

I guess the short answer to your question is that by age 2 they should have several words (like 20+) and be putting some two word phrases together (ie more juice).