16months and no words, tips on encouragement please

[flywiththecrows]

dd has certainly found her voice, has been blabbing away for months, but still we have no actual words from her.

well, except the odd mum mum mum.

she's ok in all other respects, like she recognises what we say - for example, when we say dance, or clap hands she does it. Or when we say bedtime, she walks over towards the stair gate...

she more or less points to what she wants, like during meals if she wants her juice she'll lean towards it, or point and make noise - so everytime she does this and it's clear what she wants we say 'juice' in an attempt to get her to repeat but nothing.

we read to her but all she was interested in was biting the books and this seemed to cause a massive fuss when we stopped her from biting - so we stopped doing this before bed, because she was getting worked up rather than settling for bed.

Her development is down to us, and I'm looking for tips please on how to encourage her to speak.

Any comments appreciated. :)

if you're really into this then the best thing to do is buy the Hanen book "It Takes Two to Talk"

not least because if you don't, the anxiety you're feeling may lead you to adopt strategies that aren't so great (like saying, "ball, ball, can you say ball!" or, even worse, doing that while your child is trying to indicate that she wants something to drink). We've all done it!

I made my own flashcards, numbers, alphabet, colours and every day would quickly go through one of the sets. I would talk all the time about what I was doing and why I was doing it. Talked abut what was going in the shopping trolley when we went shopping, sang songs at bed times, read books, drew pictures and talked about what I was drawing. Literally talked at my son all day, which now that I have written all that down sounds a bit like torture!

It all worked though - he wasn't talking that much about your one's age but when he did start talking he really wouldn't shut up and now I'm on the other end of what I used to do to him! Lol! It's all good though!

One thing that I would say is that no matter the level your child is at right now by the time they are at primary they have all pretty much caught up with each other and are usually on a level playing field...obviously a big percentage of that will have been what you have done to support your childs development!

well I hope you dont mind me explaining our situation, DS has a speech disorder and we raised the alarm when he was quite young. We 'knew' that something wasnt' right as he was not babbling like other babies. He never ever babbled. He was just making the sound 'mmmmmm' and grunting. He was very very quiet and would prefer to play by himself. Yes, we did speak to him all the time, did everything we thought was right, and couldn't figure out why he was not speaking. A lot of people said 'you should speak to him more' which made us really because we were doing everything we thought was right.

In the end, he started babbling when he was 2.5 (I remember exactly when/how his first babbles happened) and his first words came soon after, and he could say only a handful of words at 3 yo.

We were very lucky because he went to a special speech unit for nursery (school-based) and was refered to a specialist speech unit in a very good hospital, where he was diagnosed with a specific speech disorder (Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia). Most children who start speaking later will develop very normally, but there are some clues and I firmly believe that parents 'know' when something is not right.

And he doesn't have this disorder because we didn't speak to him, or because we didn't speak to him the right way, or because he watched too much tv, or because we didn't read books. Others might be judgmental of him, and of us as parents. I still get comments now (he is 4 years old) that can be very hurtful, as if it's our fault if his speech is not perfect like other children. It is very upsetting. But it is not our fault, it is not your fault, we are all doing our best.

Blueberry, I was just going to write a post saying to the op, that she musn't feel as though it is all down to her and her dh, and that speech development, like other areas, can be delayed however much 'work' you put into it. So if their dd did have some sort of delay (which she really doesn't at the moment), then not to beat themselves up that they are responsible because they didn't do enough.

Ds is 20 months, and has yet to start babbling, he is delayed in all areas of development, and only makes the sound 'ah,ah,ah' - and even that not very often. he sees a SALT and we do lots of work on developing his speech, and the whole family is learning makaton to encourage speech. Ou dds (4 and 5), both started talking quite early, and dd2 was speaking in full sentences and with a huge vocab before she could walk (which she was very late in doing!), we did the usual things with both of them, reading (we are a very booky family), singing etc, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I also get lots of well meaning people saying things to me like, 'well dd did talk early, but i talk to her all the time...' which makes me feel as though i spend my days grunting at ds. Sometimes however much we do for our children their will be problems, and it is just not possible that every iota of development is down to what we do.

Hi Blueberry sorry you feel sad. I think your point is what I was trying to get at in my general advice and on the hanen book. Its important when there are difficulties to try to work out why exactly they are there, not just to talk more and more. (We bombarded our poor D with language when she didnt speak - it was exactly they wrong thing to do in her case (you made me laugh lingle that was definately us, 'say this, say that, blah blah blah'). People often dont seem to get that its not necessarily about parenting when a child develops differently to the norm and you can feel very judged by people who havent a clue and who often dont even have the insight to ask whats actually going on. Its a very painful experience.

Having said that I didnt mean to freak you out flywiththecrows in the sense of immediately thinking something is wrong. Sorry about that, I posted in a rush this morning. Your D sounds ok from my limited knowledge. If you feel something is really not right find a resource to help you analyse more exactly what it might be.