another speech question!

[LeBFG]

Hi Ladies

I've another speech question. They say speech broadens quickly between 18-24 months and by 24 months they usually have at least 50 words and start combining words (obv many toddlers are doing a whole lot more than this). So, the question is, when did your DC begin this big development phase?

My 19mo DS has a few words (most of which the paed calls baby words i.e. words that only DH and I understand). About 20-ish maybe. The clearer words are nut (yes he eats pecan nuts - bad mum), up and down (clearly v v important to a 19mo). I'm waiting avidly for his big leap.

My friends' babies started to talk a lot more, quite suddenly, around 20/22 months. Is this what you found or is the much more variation to it than that?

at 17 months started to put 2 words together like big girl, good girl, where teddy.
by 20 months both dds talked in sentences, hungry want grapes please, mine crayon for drawing.
for mine 15-20 months was rapid development from 20 words at 15 months upto 50+ by 18 months.

DD's speech was very limited until she was about 2.4.

She went from saying very little to speaking in long, complicated sentences with very good pronunciation in about a fortnight.

I had been very worried as DS was speaking in sentences of 6+ words by 22 months. Now, at 2.8, her speech is at about the same level that his was at this age.

LeBFG do you have any older children? We think DS was 'interpreting' for DD as he could understand what she wanted and would answer for her. Also, he is really talkative and tends to 'hog' conversations. She was quite happy to just sit and listen. Now she is firmly in the terrible twos she is much less compliant.

Still waiting at 26 months.

Wow, quite a wide spread. I can't believe it'll ever come...but it surely will. Just last year I couldn't believe DS would ever walk and he did of course .

He's the only one so far radical. I think those sibling effects go one of two ways - older one translates and talks for the younger one, or stimulates the younger one. I think lots of the variation is just natural (nature) rather than stimulation, although this does have a large role to play. We don't have any family near us. It's mainly DS, me and sometimes DH most days so I've wondered about that.

At 19mo dd was similar to how your son sounds.. suddenly she seemed to grasp things more at around 21 months and then now as you say it does seem like she's having a big leap and in last couple of weeks she's managing to string things together and literally I feel her vocabulary is expanding overnight. Her cousin has just turned 2 and she can do longer sentences, so I'm also thinking there will be another leap between now (22mo) and 24mo.

i was told by a salt at surestart, to add to what they say,
"grape", ... want grape or grape please or green grape.
"want grape" .... want green grape or want grape please.
it quickly expands their vocab. as does offering choices of blue bowl or green bowl and then even if they just look or grab at the blue bowl you say, oh you want blue bowl.

DS2 is 22 months and hasn't said a single recognisable word apart from 'daddy'. And he usually doesn't mean 'daddy' when he says that. I think. I haven't heard about the 'big leap forward' at the age you're talking about, OP, but I do know that almost any variation on speech development under the age of 2 is viewed as 'normal'. Which includes tiny toddlers speaking in complete and complex sentances, and my little boy not saying anything at all.

(I do wish he would, though.)

Dd... 12-13 months. She was speaking in sentences by 18 months.

Ds1... About 15-16 months.

Ds2... A month before his third birthday

26 mo

DS is under paed care as he was premmie. She said the two year check up will be the big one. They assess four main areas, one of which is communication. They gave me a questionnaire to fill in just before the check up. The communication area covers mainly vocab (50 words) and joining two ideas together 'dog out'. The words can be baby words (e.g. DS says wewe for seven, we understand but no one else does) which surprised me. I thought the words had to be intelligible to others?

Amazing how many DC are speaking in sentences before 18mo. I wish we could do a poll to look at the distribution!