16 month old speech.

[Writerwannabe83]

Can I ask how well your child's speech is at this age?

About a month ago DS was relatively quiet but would have maybe 7-8 words that he said relatively clearly and in the right context.

Fast forward to now and although he has about 10-12 words now their clarity isn't as good and he now needs prompting to say them.

For example, whenever he used to see his shoes he would repeatedly point at them and say, "shoes" but now he only says shoes if we pick one up and say ,"what's this?" He also used to yell "cat" really excitedly when he saw one of our cats but he doesn't that anymore, he only says "cat" if we point to it and say, "who is that?"

His two current favourite words are "this" and "there" which he uses correctly.

His initiative and eagerness to speak (as in clear words) has decreased but now he won't stop excitedly garbling in baby language. It is absolutely constant. He's clearly having conversations with himself that make no sense to anyone but him and it never stops. It's lovely that he's making so much noise but I'm worried that it is just "noise" as opposed to words.

His understanding is fantastic.

Does this sound normal? I'm worried things are going backwards instead of forwards.

[Lindor]

sounds normal. He's still very young and the garbling is probably his brain making sense of everything and part of the natural learning process. At this age I would have no worries at all about him.

DS said nothing until he was 2, although he had great understanding. He's at uni now :)