10 month old doesn't say 'da da' or 'ma ma'

[user242526]

Hello,

Is it worrying that my 10 month old doesn't say 'ma ma' or 'da da'? She also doesn't use furniture to lift herself up to start cruising... she can sit unaided and crawl, has newly learnt how to clap and do her own version of a wave is it normal that she can't say 'ma ma' or 'da da'

Thanks

She was born at 37 weeks if that matters?

Yeah, it's perfectly normal.

They tend to pick one big skill at a time and work on that. Some go for walking first, some talking, some potty training etc.

They all get round to doing them all eventually.

Most star with gaa and gee and random noises. Remember she'll also do things when she wants to and not when a chart says to. She's choosing clapping and waving.

She’ll do what she’s ready to do. She sounds great! Enjoy her :)

Sounds fine, our DC started commando crawling around then and proper crawling at 12 months, but didn’t walk until more than 6 months after first crawling. He was over 2 months early. Basic ‘mama’ etc happened when he was over 12 months.

My DD1 crawled at 10 months, walked at 1 (on the dot) but didn’t say much until about 18 months. My DD2 crawled at 5 months, cruised at 8 months and at 1 still isn’t walking but has just started saying mama, dada, dog. They focus on one skill at a time - either physical or communication. DD1 was physical first, DD2 seems to have switched and is now working on communicative skills. They all get there in their own time!

Totally normal. When dd started to clap/wave, everything else was on hold 😂 they really do focus on one or two things at a time

Thanks everyone. She squeals and copies the shape my lips make when I say blue (when pointing to the colour blue) and she says ghee but no mama and dada yet. The HV made me anxious about it a few weeks ago when she mentioned that DD is behind for where she should in regards to speech and I keep thinking about it 😭

I’m going to go against the grain here, I don’t think it is normal. In my experience, words at 10 months is very common but no babbling at all is not.

My 10 month old also doesn’t babble. Just cooing, no consonants. She is definitely behind with her talking! If you look at the different types of babbling she is supposed to be doing “conversational” bubbling now, which sounds like speech, lots of different consonants mixed together, with intonation and everything. My DD is nowhere close!!

I’m teaching her basic sign language as my guess is she will be a very late talker. Babbling is a pre-requisite for speech so I don’t think she’ll speak without babbling and she is 4 months behind on that and counting…

Weird and incorrect comment from the HV. It’s not a concern.

OP, since writing the first post your DC has already changed. It may still not be babbling, but in some way that suits her and possibly not visible yet to you.

Remember, just as some adults some health visitors included like to make noise for the sake of it, others are good at listening. It's a good thing if she's analytical.

I agree with this.

As mum of an 8 month old who has just started babbling (literally today) I was stressing about this.

My DD is still behind her peers but I'm hoping she'll catch up. I'd booked baby sign classes for us just in case.

10 months is late to babble so if you local baby sign classes it might be an idea to sign up.

I understand the worry, I had little niggles with DD1 even and she's just been referred for an ASD assessment so I'm watching DD2 carefully.

Well she's likely to fail the ASQ so that's not entirely true.

I know this because DD2 was in the grey for not babbling consonants at 8 months.

She didn’t say she isn’t babbling consonants. She says she isn’t saying mama and dada.

Have you can consider teaching her a few Makaton things? It may be that she's not ready to speak but she can do the signing. It won't delay her speech but may help her avoid some frustrations when she can't communicate what she wants.

If I understand correctly, it's not that she isn't babbling, just that she's not said 'mama' or 'dads' in particular. I'm no expert, but just going if my own anecdotal experiences, I don't think that's a concern at all a 10 months. Mine would babble and occasionally hit on mama or papa by around 12 months, but wasn't t mimicking sounds and wouldn't say anything resembling words regularly. At 10 months he would just constantly repeat baba non-stop. Lots of the other babies around us the same age we exactly the same and all the mums in our NCT group would constantly comparing notes and only around half had said mama by age 1. They are all nearly 2 now and all have made loads of progress. Mine has hundreds of words and uses phrases of up to 4 words, which I think is bang on the average for age 2. It felt like it took ages for him to start speaking, and there was a point I was a bit worried, but not any longer and definitely wouldn't worry about this in such a young baby. That said, if you are ever worried about anything with your child's development, i do think seeking out support from professionals is a good idea. Mine was a bit delayed with some of the gross motor skills and people were constantly reassuring me that it was normal, but eventually was advised he had a lot of tension in the left side of the body, probably originating from as early as pregnancy and birth and once he'd had help resolving this he was able to do so much more almost overnight, so I wish I sought help sooner on that one