18mo taking - starting most words with the same letter?

[diyqueen]

Just wondering if this is normal. Dd (nearly 18mo) understands a lot of words and is trying to say quite a few but still has the same consonant sounds she had at 9mo (m,b,n,d,w) and doesn't seem interested in trying any new ones. She says most things with a 'd' sound - so we have die-da (tiger), dah (car), da'dah (tractor), doo (shoe), daddi' (rabbit), ded (grape), diddoh (window) etc etc. I know there's a big range but most similar aged toddlers we know seem to be able to say 'g', 'c' and 's'...

Will she just start making more sounds when she's ready or is there anything we can do to help? I'll say 'oh yes, look, a little white rabbit!' etc so she can hear the sound of the word, and am just encouraging her efforts - I can understand her most of the time but we do have the odd case of 'diddah! diddah! DID-DAH! uuuuagh! uuuagh!'

Most things to my 16mo DD are 'boosh'. A tree is a boosh, a bus is a boosh, my mouth is a boosh, as is my nose. Occasionally they are 'ah-boosh', but mainly just 'boosh'.

Never heard any other toddler make those sounds. DD never did the gaga, baba stuff. It was straight into boosh / doosh. In the past month she has added 'nana' (banana), 'ice', 'ah-bull' (apple), 'eyes' and 'fish'. She still can't or won't say Mama or Papa. Today she had a good stab at 'aeroplane'. And last week wandered around muttering 'murder', which was a bit creepy.

I think what I'm trying to say is, a lot of kids don't do the standard speech stuff. My DNephew is 20mo and can only say 'oooh' and 'eeeee', which doesn't seem massively unusual either.

Similar story here. 18mo DS just gives everything a repetative approximation. So, 'wewa' for feather, 'nina' for dinner, 'wewe' for seven, 'maama' for hammer. He hasn't developed many consonnants as you can see. I guess they'll come with time. He will go 'hhhh' for hat and 'ssss' for crisps.

Weird the words he's been saying, yet I've encouraged him to say nana for banana since the beginning, never says it...When we visited my mother (nanny) for the first time in a year, he called her 'nana' almost immediately! What goes on in their little brains?