Feeling sad about lack of development in my 2 year old

[Pidapie]

I'm feeling very sad about how my 22 month old son seems to be slow at developing. I am in toddler groups with similar aged kids who can count, recite alphabet, talk with a great vocabulary, and build whatever they want in duplo. My little one can do none of those things. He can build duplo if I hold a piece for him, and he puts another on top, so he can build little towers, but needs assistance. Same with puzzles, he can do them with some assistance.

He has had maybe 15 words in total, though he's stopped using any of them. He does respond to things I say even when facing away (such as "Let's go change your nappy"), so I know his hearing is ok. He doesn't even say "mummy", but calls banana "mammii" for some reason

We're not due the 2 year check up just yet, but I dread them saying he's too slow, needs SALT or something, and a lot of extra stuff, when to me it's hard enough being a parent without thinking about all that extra teaching. I try to talk to him a lot, describe what we see and count things with him etc. I have some signs that I should try to use more, but I just forget...

I don't know what I can do to help him more, and I don't know if I am overly worried for no reason. My friends' kids seems so much further developed than my son, and it worries me that he will struggle at school. I know it's bad to have high expectations, and it sounds like a brag, but I'm very intelligent so expected him to be the same. Now I'm not so sure, and I don't know how to "relate" to him the same way, because he might not "see the world" the same way I do. It probably makes no sense. He was early with gross and fine motor skills, crawling at 6m, walking at 9.5m, so it's not like he's slow with everything - it just seems to have stalled now.

Please can someone offer me any reassurance or some good advice? Sorry for any spelling mistakes, English is not my first language.

Perhaps my little one is an observer too :)

Learning two languages is great and yep, it leads to slower language acquisition initially, but then you get the hilarious phase where they mix languages in the same sentence, or use the grammar from one language with the words from another, and then you watch them able to switch effortlessly between the two without even really thinking about it. It's brilliant. Parents of monolingual children might get more words earlier but they skip all of those stages, I think the trade off is worth it

This is actually my friend's blog, but she writes brilliantly and so reassuringly (she has a background in language acquisition work, and her children speak four languages!) and she has done some great articles. I hope it's okay if I link:

www.thepiripirilexicon.com/p/be-multilingual.html

Scroll down for the list of articles about language acquisition. They are very reassuring.

BTW - you might have to educate yourself about bilingual language acquisition, because sometimes educators don't always have the same expectations or knowledge. When you learn about it, you know things like the progress being slow initially, you understand that there may well be phases where the child rejects the minority language, but others don't necessarily know these things and if you're not up to date, they might worry you unnecessarily. So in my experience, it's well worth reading and learning just a little bit yourself about language development especially in bilingual children, and also find yourself some places where you can go to get good advice, either online or in real life like a language therapist who knows about multilingualism, perhaps a teacher of your native language, or even a facebook group about multilingual children (there are a few).

I think your DS sounds fine. My sone didn't say any words other than animal sounds (!) until her was 2.3 by which point he had been referred to SALT.

We only ended up doing 1 SALT session as he went f pm no words to full sentences within weeks!

He is the same with loads of things. Never seems to attempt things until he can 'do' them.

Not to say you shouldn't look for referrals if you are worried - just that all develop at different rates!

I am amazed no-one here has said this but if you are EVER PROPERLY WORRIED about your child's development then go see your GP and discuss it. There are experts and your GP will refer you if they think it is a good idea. Yes, he's young. Personally from what you say I'd be most worried about the loss of language, not the acquisition of language.

Also, I've never heard the early crawling and intelligence association. Without a proper link to a sensible article, I doubt it. I also see no reason why crawling would be linked to intelligence, whereas I readily see a link as to physical milestones and physical disabilities etc. The only correlation that I am aware of is that early talking MAY be a marker of intelligence but that does not mean that if your child does not talk early, they are not going to be as or more intelligent than a child that spoke earlier. There are many matters that a child has to grasp to learn speech.

Good luck - go chat to your GP.

I think that your being very intelligent makes you much more sensitive to this. I remember a mum to a small baby a few months old who convinced herself that he was already talking, and got very upset when she was proved wrong and he became a late talker - she used to say that she and her DH had PHDs and she expected her child to do likewise, and was hugely pushy with him to improve him academically.

my dad has 6 children and the youngest had a different mother, meaning that she was brought up trilingual. my dad was really worried that she was very slow in all areas, compared to his other children. by age 6 she was a chatty and trilingual! unbelievable!

Ask your cm for a report on him. Cms work within the EYFS so she should be recording his development
They have to do a 2 year check too so it might be worth talking to the cm and sharing your concerns

I have already spoken to his CM and she says that he'll probably come out with language when he's ready, but that he is a bit slow. I've already phoned the HV and left a message, so I don't think it's necessary to go to the gp as well, if we get to see HV she should be able to refer him.

Thank you for the link Bertie :) I found it useful. I will go with my gut feeling that something is not quite "right" here, even though that is something my partner disagrees with. And just work hard with 1-2-1 time to learn.