Did your child start talking 'late'??

My ds1 had 3 words at age 18 months. His hearing was fine and he communicated well otherwise. We could tell he was very bright, but he just wasn't talking. In addition, he had very few sounds. He basically was quiet, except for whining and grunting.

We felt something was wrong and had him evaled by a speech pathologist. Turns out he had a very tight frenulum. At age 20 months, we had it surgically corrected and by age 24 months with the help of speech therapy, he had about 20 words, and more importantly, he was begininning to make different sounds.

After age 2, he progressed quickly and was appropriate for age level by age 2.25 and was d/c'd from therapy. And today, he's 3.5 and has amazing speech and vocabulary.

Personally, I think there was more to his speech delay then just the frenulum.

If you are concerned about your dd, then read up on what is normal for a child her age. If she is well below what is considered the norm, then I would have her evaled. I know some here take more of a 'watch and wait' approach, but imo, speech development or the lack thereof is an important issue and a simple speech eval is non-traumatic and non-invasive. And truthfully, I think 24 months is the cut-off for the 'watch and wait' approach anyway. I think most peds automatically eval (or at least order evals) for all 2 year olds with little to no speech.

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Hmm, I wasn't under the impression that the OP was looking for jokes here. That's the oldest speech pathologist joke in the book. 10 years old and not talking, yeah right.

My oldest didn't talk until he was 22 months. And it turned out that he's advanced, which we weren't paying attention to due to his lack of speech. I'm not saying that late talkers are all advanced in other areas. But in my son's case, people assumed that he wasn't as smart because he didn't speak, and it turned out that he's very advanced, particularly in visual-spatial areas. I hate the assumption that speech is linked to intelligence.

With my son, up until 22 months, he said, "Dad", "dissie" (nursie), and "dissis?" (this is?). He knew a few signs, but I had been somewhat lazy about introducing them. He had fantastic receptive speech, i.e. he could understand and follow directions, point to a variety of requested objects in books, etc. He made his needs known through lots of grunting and pointing. He made a lot of eye contact and sometimes would animatedly babble to other people, which always sounded like, "Da da da DAda DA da dada DA". He didn't even say, "Mama".

One day, when he was 22 months, I gave him some water and he said, "Tay-too....". And he said, "wa-bwa", which was "water". That incident seemed to open the flood-gates for him. He started repeating any word we'd offer to him. He started using words to communicate what he wanted (e.g. "shoo?" /shoes for going outside). Within 3 months of this, he basically sounded like any other boy his age. And at some point, he spoke very well (by 3 maybe). He just turned 4 and he has great speech. He creates long sentences, uses big words and just manages to express himself well. People easily understand what he is saying and he is very chatty with adults.

Our ped really pushed for an evaluation, but we opted to skip it. DS was only 15 months at the time and we felt he just was operating on his own timetable. I read an insane amount of material on late speech, autism, hyperlexia (he knew all the letter sounds), everything you could name, and I worried myself a fair bit. I had read that most kids have a jump in speech around 18 months and around 24 months. So we decided to wait until age 2 to give him a chance to develop on his own. It seems like most people do the eval and intervention these days, but based on our gut feeling and what we observed with ds, we decided to wait and see instead.

You asked for anecdotes. I hope this helps in some way.

I also wanted to say that you should go with what you gut instincts as a mother are telling you. Those are very strong, but we often don't listen to them. In my heart of hearts, I really felt that nothing was "off" and I was right. A PP said that she had a gut feeling that something was wrong and her child ended up having a tight frenulum. Your gut can really lead you in the right direction, but it can be hard to hear with all the messages that everyone gives us.

I heard a lot of those messages when my son didn't speak. I heard, of course, the boy explanation. The most annoying one I repeatedly heard from people was that it was basically MY fault, because I spoke to him too much and met too many of his needs. He's not speaking, they said, because you're doing so much for him and he doesn't *need* to say anything. The implication was that I was hurting him in some way and that he was being lazy. : On the other side of that coin, I heard that he didn't speak, because he wasn't with enough children so he couldn't copy them. In that case, it was also a "blame the mother" deal, because he was an only child and why wasn't he in a preschool program? Someone subsequently told me that research shows that children acquire speech primarily through adults rather than other kids and that they use lip-reading to learn a lot of it.

So, try to go with your gut feelings on your child, rather than what well-intentioned but usually misguided people tell you. You know your child best.

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Are you serious, or just poking fun??? Really!

My dh didn't speak until he was about 3. He was raised bilingual, which often has an effect on speech. He started talking in full sentences and it was a pretty abrupt beginning. Not overnight, but it was within a few weeks that he went from pointing for something to verbally asking for it. When he started speaking, as my SIL once told me (well... not me because I don't speak Armenian or Turkish... translated through my husband) he was speaking both languages and was fully comprehensible from the beginning. None of this babbling business.

It sounds like with signing to help her out, your dd is able to get her point across. Good for her!! I'm sure she'll start speaking when she's ready and you'll be surprised by how well she speaks.

I vote for the idea to go with your internal system. I had a nephew who didn't talk until about 3, and something is wrong, as even at almost 9, he doesn't speak very well. However, they're not sure what is the cause. They certainly have a whole list of what isn't wrong with him.

However, my m-i-l says my husband didn't say much until 5, and he's clearly intelligent enough. My ds said exactly what was required to get his point across and no more in a most stubborn way until last year (about 4.5) Now, he's 5, and sometimes he wakes up talking and doesn't stop until he falls asleep at night. I went with my gut on him, and not what the books or anyone else had to say about how little he verbalized his needs.

And definitely a pooh-pooh to the ones that think it's the mom's fault for responding to all his needs without "making" him learn to ask. That just puts the parent and child in a "Who's more stubborn than whom?" situation. I know, because I bought that crudola for a couple months, and it didn't "encourage" him to ask at all!


Pyra