Is every one else's 14 month old talking or are parents talking crap?!

[bohemianbint]

Just wondering - a message board I used to go on has tales of babies of around 14 months saying up to 20 words!

Hmmmmm. My wee chap says many things, but nothing I would (even in my proudest moments) call a word. He understands a surprising amount of what I say to him - if I tell him to brush his hair or teeth, or pick up his blanket, he will, but he certainly isn't telling me what he wants for tea or passing comment on the weather.

I try not to worry about stuff like this - but are other kids really reciting the Gettysburg address? Really?

ha ha ha

no my dd said 'ook' at that age

she now upstairs (2.10 years) reading blue kangaroo with daddy and chatting quite happily

My twelve month old says:

'boob'

'bread'

'mum'

'catflap'

and

'bugger'

But understands a lot of words.

The one word she has trouble with is 'NO!' which seems to mean (to her) 'throw yourself on the floor have a complete tantrum, including streaming snot out of your nose onto the rug, then demand milk by pulling mummy's top up'

I wouldn't worry, mums boast on message boards - it's what they do. I bet it was on iVillage?!

but there are parents who 'interpret' rather too optimistically

my mil swears that dniece was talking at 5 months saying 'get down' and 'my knee'

she was inferring that at 8 months, dd was somehow backward. When I said that my friend's baby, the child of two parents who went to Oxford a year early, wasn't saying anything either she said "Well clever people can have thick kids"

oh how dh and I larfed. Through gritted teeth, with our fists clenched around our forks but especially our knives

i'm sure ds had words at 14 months, certainly by 18 he had too many to count and was starting to put them together.

dd, on the other hand, is 13 months, she says "Hiya" and "ta" and she's been saying them from about 9 months

i think it varies a lot and i would try not to worry about it.

my ds is 2.6 and still not talking in sentences although is advanced in the fact he can recognise all letters even write some he can recognise all numbers and can count objects by himself and write some numbers he can physically do anything

advanced by 1 yr and half on nearly everything but speech bless him dont panic at 14 mths if by 2 still not many words then seek advice from gp my son is under salt now so fingers crossed he'll stop acting like a 12 yr old in a 2 yr olds body and start concentrating on speech soon lol

DD2 had quite a few words by 2-ish but didn't really start talking properly until then and only recently (2.6) has it been alot. But dd1 was pretty fluent by 18 months (and she hasn't stopped since). I think they're all different and it's probably nothing to worry about.

DS1, barely spoke until he was 2, DS2 was saying 30+ words at 14mths (I wrote them down) and is extremely verbal. Really shocked me, they are very different in lots of ways, DS1 walked at 11mths, DS2 was 15mths. I can honestly say that I don't think either is more intelligent than the other, just very different and learning and developing in different ways.

I find this strange as I did same things with both of them (both love books for instance, and puzzles, I have always played/spoke with them a lot) but I guess that DS2 needs to shout out more than DS1 ever did. People think DS2 is loads older than he is (19mths) anyway as he is huge, so it's all good.

My youngest DD is 17mths and can say 'hello' 'byebye' 'whatsthat' 'mam' 'dad' and her brother and sisters names, however even some of these are only recognisable by me alone.

the only clear words my 18m dd says are 'no' and bye-bye
oh and 'mummy'-but she says that to dh too so she has a fairly free interpretation of that particular word...
she will say dada with a lot of prompting, and copies other words sometimes if we repeat them enough but doesn't really spontaneously come out with much else as yet

of course we're convinced she's a baby genius anyway

none of mine said much until they were ready to put words together at around 20 months - Now i spend all my time shouting 'will you all shut up!!!'
Lisa X

really don't worry - my ds is a chatterbox and could say about 200ish words at 18months. one of my friends who has a boy the same age only said 'dada' at the same age. they are both talkative 3yr olds, and you really can't tell the difference. it doesn't matter so much when they learn to talk, they all get there in hte end

dd3 is 2.7 & has had really fluent speech since about 20 months. I did notice that she seemed to 'come on' all of a sudden when ds was born last November & suddenly started speaking in sentences. ds will be 1 in a couple of weeks & he says mama, dada, ta-ta (& waves when he's doing it) & says ta when you give him something (immediately followed by dd3 saying your welcome - I'm raising a polite pair in this house). He learnt a new word on Saturday too - every time dd3 came near him with her gingerbread man he shouted disdit & tried to snatch it off her. He tries to sing too - makes a kind of tuneful babbling noise & opens & closes his hands so we're assuming he's singing twinkle twinkle little star

Ds2 (14m) babbles a lot but does not say much except:

'bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger'

and 'mam'.

:-)

They are all so different. DD is exactly 14 months and she def doesn't have a vocab of 20. She does however have nine clearly recognisable words:
"Mummy", "Dada", "This", "No", "MaccaPacka" (yes she watches telly, so shoot me), "Tickle", "Baby", "clap" and "E-i-e-i-o" (is that a word?).

She also has five clearly recognisable animal sounds. If asked what noise a dog, duck, snake, cat or elephant makes she responds appropriatley.

However she cannot walk and shows no real sign of starting soon!

lol at "bugger, bugger, bugger"

if only my daughter was as proficient at talking as I am a thread killing

DD is 13m and has said clear words since 11m. Her vocab keeps growing but she did start saying bugger recently too .

She says about 12 words clearly but also signs. The downside to her developing in this way is that she has been slow to develop her physical side so is not walking (did not roll until 10m). Her Party trick is to throw food then wave and say "gone" with a wicked grin on her face

dd had loads of animal noises and plenty of words by that age, i distinctly remember her learning 'choo choo' for train and 'turtle' on the morning of her first birthday.
and you know what, i really underplayed it in company for fear of being regarded as competitive, which i think is a bit shit, by the way because they are all different. i didn't notice the parents of early walkers trying to deny what their kids could do... but it was me saying 'oh really? maybe...' when my friends were saying 'did she just point to that turtle and say 'turtle'?'

My dd could talk clearly so that other people could understand her at 12 months. But that was freakish - she got in the local paper as a sort of 'And finally....."thing. It was made more obvious because she couldn't walk and was practically circular in shape! Her brother reached the same stage at about 2.75, I think. There is no difference in their intelligence, ability to talk now, progress at school..in fact I would say that ds is now ahead of where dd was at the same age. Early talking is really just a "performing seal" sort of thing and should be enjoyed as such. It means absolutely nothing!