Worried sick about my 14 month old daughter

[Monroebeae]

I have a 14 month old baby girl.

She has no words at all. She does have a few baby signs “all done, more, help, milk,”

She points, waves bye bye in socially appropriate situations, reaches, makes good eye contact, etc. she does pretty good with imitating actions (when she feels like it), I think she has good receptive communication.

My concern is her lack of babbling back snd forth. I see videos of kids her age who are having “conversations” back and forth with their parents and she just doesn’t do that. She has very little interest in repeating sounds or trying to repeat words. I have no idea if this is normal. That’s fine if she ends up being a late talker or whatever but I’m just worried sick.

I should also add that she didn’t babble until 2 days after 10 months. So she was on the late end of babbling so I’m not sure if that impacts it. She was an extremely early crawler, walker, etc

It all sounds perfectly normal to me OP. The signing is really good to as it shows she had an understanding of language.

I'd try to relax and enjoy the now for a bit. If she's still not talking at 16 months, just pop back and update us

Thanks mama. I posted here a few weeks ago. Since that post, she has started index finger pointing within the last week and now points all the time so I’m hoping that language will pick up :(

@Monroebeae my son had three words at 18 months and two were mamma and dadda. At about 21 months he slowly began adding new words- he had 100 words at 2. Now at just 3 his vocabulary is pretty good and he speaks in pretty long sentences. I don’t feel like his language is delayed at all. Some do start a bit later but soon catch up- personality may never some of it.

I just worry because she isn’t very interested in back snd forth babbling. Occasionally she will babble, I will copy her, and she will copy again but it’s not very often. I’m just not sure if I should wait until 18 months to worry because she was later to start babbling to begin with...

@Monroebeae my little one didn’t really imitate us for a while, if you’re worried then contact your GP though.

My daughter didn't really do the whole repeating sounds thing as a baby (she would take turns babbling with you, but not repeating the same sound), and her early words were all about the actual thing. She had no interest in saying 'duck' because I'd said it, but squealed 'duh!!!' at the sight of any real duck, rubber duck, or picture of a duck. I don't think she really started trying to repeat our words directly until she had quite a few words that she used independently and was starting to put two words together. She's on the early side with talking, so that early direct imitation seems to be something that some babies just don't do.

If your wee one is babbling, pointing, using a few baby signs, and understands a fair bit, then she sounds like she's doing fine – just making you wait for that first word.

My DS never back and forth babbled. I posted on here at the time as I was so worried. He’s a very very verbal 3 year old now :)

Ugh the anxiety is killer. So hard not to worry

@Monroebeae It’s exhausting isn’t it. I understand totally. But she is still very young and has incredible positives. Language will follow the pointing I guarantee it. Just hold your nerve for a few more months and I’m sure things will seem much more positive.