23 month old DSS not talking.

[LauLauLemon]

My DSS who we have here every weekend is not talking. He can nod and shake his head to say yes and no, grunt and make noises to tell us what we wants, point and wave to indicate 'hello' and 'goodbye'.

Is it just me or is this not right?

He can't say any other words. We try to get him to repeat after us and he understands tone and mimics our tone and syllables but not the actual words. He just tends to walk around making noises like baby talk whenever DD who's two and a half talks to him.

At 18 months DD was talking properly. At 2 and a half she talks in full sentences and you can have full conversations with her.

Is she bright or is DSS lacking in language?

DH is going with DSS' mother to his two year review and is planning on bringing up this with the health visitor but I was wondering what your personal experience was with language and speech and possible speech delay and whether it's anything to be concerned about.

Physically he's developing well and was an early walker at 10 months. He's very sociable and loving, too.

Sounds absolutely within normal developement to me. My dc3 is similiar age and only says a few words accurately - I am not worried at all, she is communicating and that's what is important (as is your dss). Also they can develop so quickly from 2 to 3, probably wise not to compare dd and dss.

At 23 months, I would be a bit concerned. It might be an idea to get his hearing checked just to be sure. And from about 2 years old, he can go on a waiting list to assessed by a Speech and Language Therapist - GP or health visitor can refer him. I don't know what to recommend as he is your stepson, but maybe the mum has already done this.

But I would like to point out that some children develop speech later and this has nothing to do with parenting a such. I have two children - one who spoke early, and has an amazing vocab, and one who didn't talk until he was 3 years old. We are the same parents!

There are lots of tips on how to positively encourage a child to express himself, but it is very important not to put pressure on him. don't ask too many questions, for example, and don't ask him to repeat after you.

One nice game we played was to blow bubbles, and say 'ready steady... GO' and then blow the bubble and encourage the child to say pop when he pops the bubbles. Then, say 'ready, steady... and wait for him to say go or say anything at all, and praise him lots when he makes a sound.

There are lots of games like that just to encourage him to make sounds.

There is a very interesting book called 'it takes two to talk' that gives really good tips and guidelines on how to support good communications. It's a bit expensive but you can usually get it from library.

DH and I have always been under the impression that he'll talk when he's ready to and not a moment before but at around 22 months concerns were raised by our Health Visitor which prompted this post. Since ExP and DH live in different towns we have different HV's for DSS and our two DD's so DH is waiting to broach the subject with DS' HV as ExP is constantly saying that nothing is wrong or could possibly be wrong. DH is concerned over what our HV said and asked me to post here for advice.

I've searched this and come up with people saying to get an appointment with a GP, a speech therapist and so on to people saying it's perfectly normal and healthy so I have no idea how to settle DH's mind while he's fretting.

I would get it checked. It's verging on not normal IYSWIM and as a childcare professional I would be raising concerns that he's simply mimicking sounds/tones/isolated syllables - it could be indicative of a hearing problem. Partial hearing impairments often allow some sounds through but important consonants are indistinguishable.

What concerns me from your post is the level he seems to have plateaued at. Most children do have at least a couple of fairly intelligible words at rising 2 and use them in context.

That said I wouldn't worry overmuch as children sometimes don't speak properly until 2,5 or 3. One of my cousins didn't say a word until nearly 2,5 although showed great receptive understanding (just didn't want to vocalise) until one day he pointed and quite clearly and appropriately said 'butterfly'. That was it, he's not shut up since.

Only from my own experience, it took 3 months to get an appointment with audiologist, and 4 months to get an appointment with Speech Therapist. so I would say that if everything else is developing fine with DSS then his speech will start when he is ready, but at the same time i would recommend that he is put on a waiting list as it takes so long to get appointments.

It's impossible to know or to say whether there really is something wrong or not - but I really do think that at 23 months an assessment is needed to get a fuller picture of the child's development and what needs to be done to increase communication ability. There's a fine line between offering well meaning but ill informed re assurance, and on the other hand scaring parents unnecessarily - so only real life assessments will give you real information to go on,