DS won't say his own name

[Grainger]

He's nearly 2yrs 8 months, surely he should be calling himself by his name by now?

Any tips on how to get him to use it? It's not like he doesn't know his own name, he just never ever says it.

He's a bright child on the whole (he's freakishly good at jigsaws) and talks non-stop, but his pronunciation can be a bit unclear at times, and if you don't know what he's saying it annoys him a lot.

On the whole, I'm not worried about his talking, at worst he might need to see a speech therapist in the future, but my brother went to one when he was 4-5 and after that had no issues.

When my son was age 2-3 he had very little language, but if anyone asked his name he used to say 'Pierce'. Which was fine, except he is called James.(??) Funnily enough he did have SALT input later on for a short time. Aged nearly thirteen , can't bloody well shut him up!!!

I would say no need to worry about the name thing and he's only a baby to be worrying about pronunciation just yet. I would mention to Health visitor at next review.

Took me a while to work out what SALT was, lol.

I'm not worried about it. He's a great kid in so many ways, he's great fun, cute as hell, sweet, clever and he's brilliant with his 11 week old brother. If he has speech issues in the future, well, we'll deal with it.

I just wondered if anyone has any tips for how to get his head around "what is your name?".

He tends to not 'get' things for a while (if you try to 'teach' him stuff he'll ignore you at first), but when he begins to understand he picks it up immediately. Like, one day he didn't know his colours, the next day he knew them all, including black, white, silver etc. He'll then become obsessed with whatever he's learned for a few weeks.

You could be describing my DS at the same age down to a T. We were referred to a SALT after his 3 year health check. So far he's been to 12 group sessions during the spring/summer. He's now 3.6. There are times when I still can't make out what he's saying.
We had a speech therapy assessment yesterday and they said the only problem now is that he replaces some sounds when he says a sentence with a "h" sound. We're on the waiting list for some individual sessions. Being at preschool has also really helped his speech as when they get to 3, they want to play/talk with their friends At 2, they're quite happy to just play alongside.

I think the name thing could just be down to pure stubbornness, try not to make a big deal out of it, don't ask him to say it. If he's asked just say "oh no DS can't say his name". He'll soon want to prove you wrong

The speech thing is odd, because sometimes he'll get the consonant sound completely wrong.

Like, his little brother is called Aden, but he calls him nea.
Monkey sounds exactly like doggy.
He tells me 50 times a day that Aden is cute, but says "mummy, nea doot".
We've actually made progress today in that it's changed to 'nean' 20% of the time.

Most words are decipherable though, and many are as clear as day.

Ds called dd1 "urry" for ages. Nothing like her name at all.
We would just say "that's right. XXX" and when was was about 3yo he started saying it sometimes fine, and then always fine.

DS1 had similar, e.g. he refused to say 'mummy' for a long time. If I said 'can you say mummy', he would say something like 'dower'... He had lots of code words at 2, like 'purple' for 'chocolate'. He went to a SALT at 3 and they said 'L has an unusual speech pattern because although some simpler words were produced incorrectly, more difficult words e.g. 'flower' were pronounced very clearly'. Then a few months later suddenly began to talk in sentences and was discharged. He seems to take an individual approach to all his learning, generally he will only make the effort to master something when he's recognised the need to do it himself. Maybe similar to your DS?

Sounds very similar to DD1 (2 years 9 months). Until very recently she didn't say her own name at all and refers to herself as "me". Has just started nursery where there's another girl with the same name as her which she thinks is very funny and seems to have prompted her to start using her name occasionally.
She also has a lot of her own words for things and pronounciation is not great.

just say his name a lot

John says hello, hello John

Does John want a banana?

Is John tired?

Does John want to go to bed

and accept that it's no big deal - the child has to get used to being called by name, you, he, we etc

DD2 also aged 2.8 has only just started to attempt to say her name.It's always 'Babba' or 'Babbi'. She is the youngest of three [DD1-13 and DS-6].Her name is Felicity which is quite a mouthful,but we usually call her Fliss.Activate has got the right idea-this is exactly what we started to do.Use his name at all times and to a ridiculous degree!!

A lot of children find questions very hard.

Whats your name? may be too much for him.

Some children can answer questions but dont like to

Avoid the questioning and just use his name as previously suggested.

All mine have spoken at different ages. My DC4 is v.bright (even if I say so myself) but didnt get going till he was over three.

If he is understanding you, can follow simple directions 'get your shoes please' and is giving eye contact, is sociable, I wouldnt worry too much.

"Nea" is sort of "Aden" with the sounds in the wrong order. Ay-[d]N = [d]N-ay, with the "d" sound being that not-quite pronounced, "dead" consonant.This sound is quite common in English but hard for them to get around in words. Or, possibly he's hearing the D sound but just missing it off, as missing the first consonant sounds off words is really common as well.

DS does this a lot on new, complicated or unfamiliar words. E.g. Barstick for basket, for ages he would call our cat, Bernard, Birnden. A hilarious one was brown-eye for eyebrow And for ages he said my, instead of I'm (which is a perfect example of the sound-inversion as in your Aden example) and still quite often says my instead of I. "C" is often "T" or "D" - I have a family member called Catherine who was "Damin" for ages, then "Tamin," "Tafin" and now "Tafrin" It's just an easier sound for them to make, even if they make it correctly in other places in words - DS' first word was "Look" for example which has the C sound at the end and yet he's only recently started saying car instead of tar.

He's just 3 now and though I can understand him perfectly 99% of the time, others still sometimes look puzzled and look to me to ascertain what he is saying. I don't think he tends to use his own name much, recently he's found it very funny to pretend to be me and then insist "You are !"

Definitely agree to avoid any kind of questioning or teaching process. Just keep on using the correct word around him and he will pick it up. Don't correct him or keep testing him or asking him to say things etc. (I don't even go out of my way to repeat words back to him correctly. It just seems to make a bigger deal out of it than it should.) Your DS sounds like he's doing great :) And it's quite cute/funny to see what interesting alternatives and in-between words they come up with! My absolute favourite was wuddles, for puddles. And at the moment he's particularly concerned by people having forms stuck to their feet, or in their clothes, or in their eye (he means thorns - in other words any small, sharp or annoying thing )

Names seem particularly hard for them to grasp, by the way. I don't know why that is. But I know of so many families who have a relative or a grandparent with a strange, nonsense-sounding nickname, which came from a small child learning to speak, and they were so delighted with it that it stuck.

Update: I bribed him days after my orginal post and told him I would put Thomas (the most boring tank engine in the world) on if he said his name.

He whispered it at first, but then said it louder and since then has been saying it constantly and has now gone to the other extreme of referring to himself in the third person a lot, lol.

The pronunciation is an issue though, as sometimes when he says his own name it sounds like "toe-rag". Given his issues with some consonant sounds I'll leave you to guess what his name actually is, lol.

see, I said it was stubborness. Glad the promise of Thomas solved it for you.