My 21 month old is quiet

[Theyarellthesame]

Please don’t tell me I’m lucky or should count my blessings, I’m genuinely really quite worried.

my DS is 21 months and I’m just a bit concerned about his development. He’s got quite a lot of words, lots of animal noises, he can count to 10 in sequence (you say 1, he says 2, you say 3 etc etc), he can tell you what he needs (breakfast, juice, bum bum, apple, toast, more etc etc) and he knows words for car, dog, train, lots of every day things.

he walked independently and confidently at 11 months but couldn’t crawl or use his knees, so he couldn’t stand up from a sitting position until he was about 15 months. I had his hips checked and legs scanned at this point and all was fine. You had to stand him up and he would toddle off, but otherwise you could basically park him on the floor and he couldn’t move. He started being able to crawl last month so 20 months and at the same time he’s now started crouching, sitting to the side etc so his physical movement seems to have caught up. He still isn’t mega confident on his knees though.

I’m less worried about that though, more worried about his general lack of boisterous toddler energy. He’s very interactive with people, makes good eye contact, smiles and reacts to being spoken to etc but he’s extremely laid back. In situations with other children he prefers to sit back and watch rather than get involved, and at soft plays he will focus on one task (throwing balls up the slide, throwing balls back in the ball pit etc) for a very long time rather than run about like the other toddlers his age. He can sometimes do the same task for up to half an hour at a time.

At home he’s generally quite happy to play independently but also likes to play with you with his cars or train track. He gets a bit over obsessed with one particular TV program so we have to limit screen time, as he’d happily sit with you and watch it all day if you let him.

He gets quite overwhelmed with lots of noise and energy around him. The symptoms of this are he’ll suddenly sit down on the floor and go a bit vacant, my husband calls it ‘opting out’ and it’s a good description, it’s like he goes somewhere else for a moment. Or, he’ll grab your hand and take you somewhere quieter where he’ll then cuddle for a minute before going back to where he was before he got a bit overwhelmed. This happens more when he’s tired, but can happen 2 or 3 times in a 2 hour play session.

my mum friends with kids a similar age have commented how he’s ‘so chilled’ or ‘so laid back’ and they’re right he is, but I’m a bit worried because I’ve not come across this before and I’m not sure if it’s his personality and he’s just a quiet kid, or whether I need to possibly be a bit concerned about his development?

Full disclosure, part of my concern is that he’s looked after at home and doesn’t go to nursery. I’m worried this might be why he seems so different from other children and I’m really quite concerned we’re going to get to school age and he’s going to struggle to adjust. Would we be better getting him into some form of childcare now?

If I’m being ridiculous and it just sounds like his personality please do tell me, I’m just really unsure!

Awww he sounds lovely. I have noticed nursery children tend to be more outgoing and boisterous than non-nursery kids. There doesn’t sound anything imminently concerning there, more of a watch and wait type thing, if he’s happy and making progress at his own pace I wouldn’t worry just yet.

Thanks for replying, He is lovely (I’m biased, obviously) and I feel like a nutter for worrying about it but he’s just so different from every other toddler we know and as a first time mum, it’s hard to know if there’s a reason I’m worried if that makes sense?

He may just march to the beat of his own drum a bit which is obviously nothing to worry about, but then there’s that niggle in my head that he’s missing out on interaction with other children by being at home.

im sure if he was in nursery I’d be worried about him not getting 121 time with adults so I doubt I can win here!

he sounds normal but im worried about your breakfast preferences….

Hilariously, if he wants a normal nappy change it’s ‘bum bum’ but if it’s a particularly stinky poo he’ll loudly announce ‘POOOEEEEEY STINKY!’, cackle and run off and the only way to get hold of him is with the offer of dried apple slices - so sometimes, he’ll announce ‘POOEEEEEY APPLE WEEEEEEEEE’ which takes some explaining to the uninitiated…

He’s probably fine. My friends little boy was like this. He’s 4 now, and still the same. Very pensive, thoughtful and observant. He’ll sit back and watch before interacting with anything. Not anything like my boisterous boy. However, he’s also very intelligent. It might have something to do with it? It sounds like your boy has a brilliant attention span for his age, maybe he’s just smart.

His grandma has a PhD so fingers crossed he’s caught the brains that bypassed me

Pensive is a good word for it - he’s definitely one for contemplation and the attention span thing is definitely true - he will focus on a task for ages and repeatedly do the same few movements with a toy until he’s sure he’s exhausted all the options of what it might do. So for example, the beads on an abacus toy will be moved in every direction, spun around, wiggled etc before he’ll move on to the next bead and do exactly the same again. The longest he’s ever gone was 6 hours playing with a wooden train set, pushing the trains up and down the ramps and letting them go at different heights to see what happened. He got very upset when I took him to go for lunch and went straight back to the same thing after lunch. He was also fascinated by the magnets on the carriages snapping together when he pushed one too close to the other. That was a good hour of it. I wondered though whether that was potentially a sign of ASD?

I think he sounds fine. They're all different - ds would sit and play independently for hours and hours but Dd never played alone until she was 4.

Also Dd could walk and run but not crawl etc. She's 12 not and dyslexic which can apparently be related but it's not holding her back.

Interesting you mention dyslexia, his dad and grandad are both dyslexic and the health visitor (when we went about him not using his knees) mentioned it too, she said it can sometimes be linked to late physical coordination developing.

The health visitor referred us to physio where his hips and knees were scanned. They also checked his back because he’s stiff as a board when hes crouching/ running. He’s quite stocky and square, very broad shouldered and we think it’s his build that makes him a lot less physical than smaller kids! Nothing untoward on the scans, his height and weight are spot on so the physio gave us some gentle movements for him to do and he started crawling a few weeks after that.

Interesting that your DD sounds like she had a similar issue with not crawling/ using her knees but could walk/ run, I’ve not met another baby like DS so it’s good to hear there are others like him!

He sounds great OP. I can't see anything in his behaviour to be worried about.

At this age it's good for them to mix with other kids, but they don't need nursery, just toddler group/playdates/activity classes/the park etc. They need to mix with people of all ages and types and he'll get that much better being out in the world. Pre-school is an option from 2.5/3, maybe look into that.

The only thing that would concern me is his knees, but you've had that checked and all ok, so just enjoy your lovely boy.

He sounds lovely. Nursery might not be a bad idea when he is 2 or 3, when socialisation becomes more important, and it would be useful to spot if he is not able to cope with peers before he starts school. But he's still very small.

Look for him continuing to meet S&L milestones. One of the first flags for my son's autism was "falling off the curve" on meeting these. He also didn't initiate interactions much. He was happy to humour me if I joined him but he wouldn't seek me out to play (unless he needed me to do a specific task), or point out something of interest to call my attention to it. He was very self contained, and had amazing focus as you describe (still does, it's one of his biggest assets). I remember feeling he just wasn't driven to communicate like his sister was. My friends said that's boys for you. It took until junior school for us to realise it was more than quirkiness.

It's probably nothing, and I know the autism flag gets raised every other post, but I hope you will forgive me doing so here. There was something about what you've written that chimed. But your son is still so young, and a lot of what is considered a flag for autism at 2 or 3 IS developmentally normal at age 1. I'm not attempting a diagnosis, I'm just suggesting it as a thought to keep on the back burner as he develops.

I understand and thank you so much for sharing your experience. He does initiate play (he likes to wander up to you and shout ‘BOO’ so you’ll pretend to be scared and then tell him off so he can run off giggling) and he’ll also come to you specifically to grab your hand and take you somewhere or for a cuddle, so he does interact willingly but it’s sometimes difficult to get him to interact if he’s focused on something else.

as a previous poster said, it sounds like a watch and wait situation more than anything. He has tons of input from both sets of grandparents so he’s getting more than just me and his dad. I’m keen he builds relationships with other people so he’s happy to go off to preschool when the time comes. The preschool he’s going to intakes at 3 years old so I’m thinking of maybe a couple of days in nursery a week from 2 onwards just to see if it brings him out of his shell a bit?

My son is 18 months old. He couldn’t say or tell you half the things your little one is. He started walking at 16 months and his HV is very happy with his development, she even said at his last visit (about 17 months) that we needed to be careful what we are saying around him as he is picking up every word… he can say things like bye bye, hi, mummy, daddy, Nana, etc, but nothing like you’ve described.
He doesn’t go to childcare or nursery. We take him to soft play and classes when we can and he does tend to sit back and observe more than he gets involved. I’m not worried, as such. I’ve noticed he repeats things a lot, like he will fixate on a drawer handle and go back to it several times, sometimes I have to stop him as he does it non stop. He’s always been quite an observant baby. I’m sure it’s absolutely nothing to worry about, every child is different. But I completely understand where you are coming from and it is so easy to worry that there is something wrong with their development. We’ve also decided to cut tv time as I felt he was being quite non responsive at times when watching. It’s hard to tell at this age if there is an issue, but he sounds brilliant to me and if the HV has no issues, I’m sure he is grand.

His language has always been good but it was only last month he started stringing words together, at 18 months he sounds like he was fairly similar to yours!

We’re at the stage where we get some fairly obscure concepts because he doesn’t always know the word he wants to say so he takes a good guess based on categorisations of other things - for example for a while he kept repeating ‘splasssss quaaaaack’ whenever we went upstairs and it took us ages to work out he wanted us to open the bathroom door because he’d left a rubber duck in there at bath time that he wanted. Splash is the noise the bath makes, all ducks are quacks. it was only when he started banging on the bathroom door and sorrowfully quacking that we worked it out. We then started getting ‘baff quack’ which just meant ‘I want a bath please’ but for some reason, he forgot he could just say ‘bath’ and kept adding the quack . Baths are still ‘baffquacks’ and probably always will be now

I do wonder if he’s standoffish at play groups because he’s at them so infrequently? We probably manage one every couple of weeks but we perhaps need to do more.

He sounds like a lovely little lad.

my oldest who is 23 now never crawled at all. She hated being face down. If he’s walking I wouldn’t worry about that.

some kids like some adults are just quieter. I get overwhelmed by lots of people and noise; it took me til recently to realise I’m very introverted and that’s ok. I need encouraged to mix; you might find a playgroup or similar would help him to adapt and get ready for school. I don’t think it’s either or with childcare, a child who is used to quiet will without doubt find a noisy environment different and need to adapt to it but that doesn’t mean nursery necessarily.

the duck thing is adorable. He’s showing some real logical thinking there.

Sounds really similar to my DD who is 20 months, especially behaviour at soft play and toddler groups.

Although she has no words yet and wasn't delayed with crawling everything else sounds exactly the same!