2 year old speech delay - advice please

[yorkshiremama]

Out DS Is just 2 (last week) so I'm fully aware that he is still very young!

His speech is delayed. Don't get me wrong, he is a chatterbox, and he communicates with us through words, his understanding is incredible, and we are told he is ahead of where the 'norm' is for his age for pretty much everything else but speech.

However he will only speak in 1 syllable words. If a word has more than 1 syllable, he will just use the first syllable of that word.

He has a huge vocabulary of 1 syllable words and half words, and generally has no problem getting across what he wants to tell us (most of the time). He is also starting to put a couple of (half/1 syllable) words together to make a sort of short sentence, but still only using the first part of a word.

Has anyone any experience of this and any tips of what I / we can do to help him a little? I don't want to be too pushy with him though as he clams up and gets upset!

I'm a SAHM , and we do socialise with other children / people.

How would he let you know what he wanted in say, the fridge? Or which toy he wanted?

Are his one syllable words correct? Or is it random?

Is he talking in sentences of one syllable words. (Would he produce something like 'look doggy' or even 'look big doggy' & if so how would he say it?

My son is 22 months and we've just seen the HV for the exact same reason. He's meeting all other benchmarks, understands instructions and communicates in other ways so she wasn't particularly concerned.
In fact, my DS probably only has around 15 "words", none of which are clear so it sounds like your child is doing slightly better.
She did say they would pick up on it at his 2 1/2 year check if things hadn't improved. The HV used the Ages & Stages questionnaire: www.bournemouth.gov.uk/ChildrenEducation/EarlyYearsProfessionals/EarlyYearsDocuments/24-month-questionnaire-asq-3-be-av-1-1-15.pdf

We are due his 2 year check with the HV , but they seem to be running very behind with these in our area (considering he had his 1 year check at 10 months old...)

He uses the correct first part of words for everything - he doesn't use wrong words for anything (that I can think of) although he does say some incorrectly - for example, he has started to say cake, but instead of cake he says 'hake'(maybe he just wants fish instead ) , but he does have trouble with the hard 'c' at the beginning of words.

If he saw a dog, he would say just the first part and miss off the g (he has said it correctly a few times though)

He can, for example say 'stick man' if you ask him to say it - although it comes out more like 'tick ma' most of the time.

If he wants to do sticking for example, he would say 'sticks' or 'ticks'

If he saw a horse, he would say 'hor' .

If he saw grandma, he would say 'gra' , dinosaur would be 'di' , mog is 'mo' , monkey is 'mun'

He can count to three (on, toooo, free, ten'

He has got loads of other words (well over 100) these are just the ones I can think of right now as he's saying them!

He might say 'go der' for go there, he can say milk , although it sounds more like malk!

Sorry, drip feeding.... he's also just got the hang of big and small and says 'bi' and 'sma'

doesn't sound too bad to me - i do think you need to push ahead with seeing your HV though.

At 2, children should ideally have about 50 words and be joining two words. How they pronounce them doesn't really matter. It sounds like he might be doing 'final consonant deletion' e.g. do for dog and 'weak syllable deletion', missing off the unstressed syllable. Also some sounds like c/k are harder to pronounce and commonly are a problem until 3 or older. He sounds like he is doing fine at the moment!

Would you say there's sounds from the front of the mouth he can sound? Like T, S ,L, R, J

Or can he sound words from the back of his mouth better? Like G, H ,K?

Or no difference at all?
Does he have a dummy?

I should have said the final consonant deletion and weak syllable deletion is normal at 2. If you Google them, you should get more info. Just carry on talking to him and reading with him etc. It is helpful if you repeat the whole word e.g. if he says 'hor' you can say, 'yes it's a horse' so he hears the whole word.

yes - my dd is 2 and a quarter and she says 'swossant' for croissant - but i think since he's getting the right words and understanding concepts like big and small and trying to talk I'd not be too concerned. I'd be more concerned if they weren't picking up the words at all.