Developmental milestone question

[odyssey2001]

Can anyone shed any light on what age their child
a) became interested in making animal noises and
b) became interested in joining in with nursery rhymes?
Is there an average age specified anywhere for these milestones?

Thanks in advance.

Hiya - I think it varies. My first child was about 20 months or so before she properly started doing nursery rhymes, second one is earlier - was probably about 13 months. Animal sounds - I reckon any time between about 11 and 18 months. Not scientific though! Are you worried?

look up the EYFS development matters
it's what childcare professionals use
here
look under communication and language

My ds started animal noises at about 11 months. He joined in the actions to nursery rhymes at around 10/11 months but he's now 16 months and still doesn't sing the nursery rhymes I'm interested as to when that usually happens.

Mine love making animal sounds and started showing an interest in this around 15 months, by 17 months they could point out animals in a book and make the sound. They listen and enjoy nursery rhymes but apart from both of them singing Row Row Row (the only part of Row your Boat they can sing) they don't sing any yet. They are 19 months in 2 days.

Thank you everybody for your responses. They have been very helpful. We are playing catch up as we adopted him from care at 34 months and he is only now at 40 months starting to show an interest. I will take a look at the EYFS stuff.

IME a child will learn to do things when they are taught - as long as they are hearing properly and don't have any delays. So if you spend a lot of time with your 12-month-old mooing and baaing and singing nursery rhymes they will do those things much earlier than a child who's caregivers don't do that. DC can just organically pick certain things up, but many things have to be taught through endless repetition. So if your DS didn't have that kind of input at an early age its not surprising that he is only now starting to do it.

I have worked with small children and sometimes they lost interest in animals and nursery rhymes quite early. Possibly he's done the animal noise stage and isn't interested in doing it again.

I completely agree Juneau. I am just wondering why he is just showing an interest now. We have been trying for five months to do animal noises and join in with nursery rhymes but we got nothing.

It took just one nursery rhyme at nursery the other week to get him hooked on all of them. His interest in animal noises has been triggered by Timmy Time!

Funny how something so insignificant can trigger such a major shift in a child's behaviour.

It may be that he just understands what those sounds signify now - whereas before perhaps no one had take the time to explain and show him. DS2 had glue ear for about 10 months, we think. As he was pre-verbal when it started we didn't realise, and only did so when he wasn't speaking when he should've been. Anyway, because he wasn't hearing and his brain wasn't making those connections it took him aaaages to start knowing his animals and the sounds they made. I actually got membership to a local children's farm in desperation to try and teach him! He got there in the end, once he'd had his grommets in for a while and the sounds were making sense to him and he understood what they meant. It was very eye-opening for me to see what a difference hearing (or not), made to his life. If your DS never had anyone take the time to talk to him before and engage him it was probably a similar sort of thing.

Thank you all for taking the time to comment. Thanks for your personal insight Juneau. It is really appreciated.