Should I be worried about 21 month olds lack of speech/imitation?

[Blueskythinker83]

Would love some advice on whether I’m rightly or wrongly concerned about DS speech development. He will be 21months in 10 days time and currently has a list of about 20 words that he says (albeit not always clearly i.e. did-gger = digger) plus a list of about 7/8 words that he used to say but seems to have forgotten.
His understanding is pretty good i.e. if I say “shut the door” or “put it back“ he will and If I ask him where something is he will look to it (including in books) but doesn’t ever point to things. He responds to his name and constantly babbles at you and makes good eye contact.
But he never verbally or physically imitates me or DH and the words that he does have (and has had for sometime) do not seem to be improving in pronunciation.
DH and various family and friends have told me not to worry but I would have gone to the HV by now had it not been for COVID as compared to my NCT group he is behind. Otherwise he is a happy healthy little boy and he hit all other milestones early/on time.
Am I just being anxious for no reason?

He sounds like my little girl. Her understanding was good but speech pretty limited until about 25 months when her vocab just seemed to explode overnight. Now she’s 30 months and you can’t shut her up.

Thank you - that gives me a bit of reassurance

Could it be that your NCT group children are ahead??...

Remember each child is unique.

The things that would reassure me: eye contact and understanding are good.

Try a few facial muscle building activities. Drinking through straw. Blowing bubbles, blowing out candles. Pull funny faces. Make sure he can see your facial / lip movement as you are Reading singing speaking to him ( sit opposite / face on to him)

Read read read....
encourage silly noise making ( when appropriate)
Socialise with others when you can.

Thank you for the ideas - part of the issue is he won’t imitate so I struggle to get him to do blowing or pulling faces, however we do lots of silly noises and reading. I realise all children develop at different rates - he was the first to sit and walk in the same group but it’s hard not to worry Or do the inevitable comparison when some are already doing two word sentences but I’ll definitely have a go with some of your tips!

Hi, I'm not sure if you have anything to worry about but these are the questionnaires the health visitor uses, they might give you some reassurance.
steeplechasepedi.com/patient-corner/forms/ages-stages-questionnaires/

I've also been listening to the teach me to talk podcasts. It talks about the 11 skills needed before a child can talk and how to work on them.
My daughter was a little behind on her communication but since listening to the podcasts and following the advice my dd's communication has really improved.
teachmetotalk.com/2020/03/26/11-skills-podcast-series-ce-credit-available/

Oooh thanks for this - will definitely have a listen!

Hi @Blueskythinker83 was there ever an update on this, honestly sounds exactly like my 18mo!

Hello! We’ll he’s now 3yrs and 3mths and he has an amazing range of vocabulary - he knows more words than most 3yr olds (according to nursery) and he speaks really clearly and now all he does is mimic/recite entire hey duggee episodes or any Julia Donaldson book! However he still really struggles with initiating speech/expressing himself or conversation and he doesn’t often do more than 3 words together really (though we started to see some improvement there in the past couple of weeks). Along with a couple of repetitive behaviours he has and his lack of attention/focus, between nursery, our HV and us we’ve decided to get him referred for assessment (as there is a 10 month wait - based on the fact we can cancel if he improves). And I should say that’s despite him scoring normally in the ages and stages development review and in their dedicated social/emotional one. (Phew sorry that’s long!)

@Blueskythinker83 thank you that's very helpful! Hope all goes well for you!

update: he is now nearly 5 (will be 5 in Nov) and has recently been diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum possibly with ADHD (awaiting further observation). His speech and language has come on loads and we identified he was a Gestalt language processor (he’s a stage 5).
we ended up waiting 14months for a Speech and Language assessment and 17months for his ASD assessment.
following his S&LT assessment we’ve then had to wait another 4.5months before they’ve started therapy - first session was last week and was terrible, they’re only geared up to deal with non verbal or limited verbal children. She even said to me at one point “he communicates really well” (which he does), but they don’t know how to increase his spontaneity of speech or creating unscripted sentences so I’m now looking at private Gestalt specialists.

If anyone else thinks their child is learning scripts/sentences as a whole I would look up the Instagram account meaningfulspeech - she’s an American speech therapist who explains Gestalt language processing really well. Was such a relief to find her account and realise we’re not alone!