Probably be abe to string two words together to make a sentence now

[Magneto]

At 17 months, really? Is that normal? Ds is 18 months and has very few words and while he will babble as though he is saying a whole sentence, what he's saying is not recognisable words.

He says daddy, mum, woof, meow, again and then there is "raah" like a dinosaur says and something which is trying to be "tickle tickle".

He has no problem understanding simple questions or phrases such as let's go upstairs or put that in the bin and can fetch items if asked to. He can't name anything and wont point to things in books if i ask him to but he knows that dogs woof and cats meow.

So is he behind or about right for his age? I knew there was a reason I stopped reading about these "milestones"

hi there, my son is 2 nxt mth and says a handful of words, the main thing I think as long as they're happy, they'll develop in their own time. My other son was the same and now he doesn't stop talking :-)....I suggest by talking to him constantly and name objects, say their colours etc, he'll copy soon

DD is 18mo and says daddy. That's it. Her understanding is frighteningly good and she signs but no words. I am flatly refusing to get panicked, but I am starting the ball rolling in terms of getting a learning pack from iCan which has loads of games and ideas in.

I didn't speak until I was almost 3, but when I did I spoke in sentences, DD was an early walker and I've been told it's a case or walking or talking!

My DS is 17 months and has quite a lot of single words but hasn't put any together yet. I go to a playgroup with other babies of the same age and none of them are anything like speaking in sentences yet.

Sounds normal to me!

My DS just turned 2 but he was exactly the same as your DS at 18mths in terms of vocab and understanding. For some reason there were quite a few people who expected him to be talking more at that age but the hv and gp were never concerned (didn't see them specifically for this, just asked while I was in about something else). Now I would say his words resemble somewhere between 50-70, no sentences yet but can count to six and understanding is great. Apparently he's still on the low side of average for his age but I'm not worried, he's learning new words every day so thats the main thing.

I wouldn't worry, sounds like he's just going at his own pace, they all catch up to each other eventually. It sounds like his understanding is fine, I would only worry if you had concerns he wasn't understanding you.

I don't think he is behind at all. DS, who was considered to be a good speaker at 2, said just a few words at 18 months, then the number increased very gradually between 18 and 21 months. Between 21 and 23 months the number really took off until he had hundreds of individual words but did not put them together to form a sentence in any way. The nearest he got was saying the individual words in some sort of order eg 'boy, bike, cat' for look at that boy on a bike carrying a cat. Then just before his second birthday he started stringing them together to form proper sentences.

Of course, not all DCs are the same. While my DS said individual words very clearly, my friend's DS of the same age, used to tell long narratives which made perfect sense to him but were completely incomprehensible to anyone else, although his mum could get the jist of it.

dd2 couldn't do that even by 2. She's now 2.5 and can't shut her up! dd1 wasn't early starting either but caught up (and overtook others) very quickly. my niece on the other hand was pretty fluent at 18 months - they're just all very different!

DS started to string two words together around 20/21 months, but all pretty basic (more crisps! more crisps!) At 18 months he had a handful of unclear words.

He's 2 next week and is starting to speak more and more in short sentences which are slowly becoming descriptive rather than functional (nice tea mama, mama play with it, look blue snowman) (people use food colouring to enhance their snowmen round these parts! Who knew!)

He is average for his age. Some of his peers speak fluently, others still use single words.

I believe the fact he can understand is the key. As long as he can do that, I'm sure he's very normal.

I remember getting stressed about this with DC1 . Then, at her developmental check, they only wanted to know if she'd said seven words. She actually had about 40 when I listed them (she was older than your DC).

Dh was taken as a 2 year old to a speech therapist as he didn't speak. MIL was sent home with a flea in her ear as that was considered fine. DH now speaks four languages and reads three more.

OP your DS sounds normal. I agree that it is not fun to look at milestones, they are helpful only as a general guide and children vary massively at this age.
If you have concerns then consider getting his hearing checked.
My DS2 was at about that level at 18 months and our slightly highly strung HV insisted that he had a hearing test that he passed as we knew he would and at age two she insisted that he be referred to SALT. She irritates me to be frank but the SALT (hanen) has been really educational for us as parents and consequently useful for DS who, at 2.5, has maybe 20 words ten of which are the numbers one to ten

DS is 26 months and in the last week he has started putting words together. Papi gone, train gone, bye-bye Papi, all gone is what he can say now :)

DD2 is 19 months and has been stringing words together for a couple of months, roughly.

She'll say things like "I want that" "I thirsty" "there's mummy's hair" "where's Nanna?".

She has loads of single words too. DD1 was the same and Health Visitor/midwives, pre school etc always said her talking was advanced so I would say that it's quite an ambitious milestone to expect all DC to achieve by that age.

If it's a babycentre update I would delete it and unsubscribe as they always seem to have very ambitious milestones on there and the only ones my DC have ever 'met' are the talking ones.

Both of my DD's were slow when it came to rolling, crawling etc and those babycentre updates used to freak me out!

Thank you, you have all reassured me it was a Boots baby club update.

He was an early walker, was walking at 10 months despite not even being bothered to roll over until 5 months... I panicked slightly about that at the time too so maybe there is something in the early walker or early talker thing.

I'm sure his hearing is fine, I just think he's very good at ignoring what I say (Stop throwing things at the cat for example gets no response but "do you want some chocolate" is heard fine )

He was late to wave or clap too and still won't do it if asked unless he feels like it. I'll vey in a month or two I'll look back at this thread and long for the days he was quieter

I reckon lots is personality too. When DS was about 9 months old I went to a friend's house and she proudly demonstrated how her daughter would do "arms up" and "cuddle mummy" on demand. When I got home, I tried it on DS and he did it straight away. I then asked him to do it again, and he looked at me like this and ran off.

And now, he'll do things the first time and then gives me a "but I've just done that, why are you asking me to do it again?" look. He'll often wave to people, but if I say "wave bye bye" he gives me the same look.