18 month old boy not talking

[colditzmum]

Hi I am new to mumsnet. I have an 18 month old boy. He is an only child, so I have no previous experience, and my health visiter says he should be speaking by now. His hearing is fine, andf I know he understands me, but he makes no effort to speak at all. I try not to give into "point and whine" but he just gives up! I am getting Quite worried, and wondered if anyone out there has some tips to encourage him to talk

Well had 2 non talkers at 2. One autistic and still non talking at 5 and one who now at rising 3 doesn't shut up. I never worried about ds2 because although he didn't speak he clearly understood everything I said (ds1 still wouldn't be able to follow an instruction as complicated as getting a Bob the Builder hat whereas ds2 could do that from before 2) and he also pointed and communicated perfectly easily in other ways.

Now he is talking his vocabularly is pretty rich (sort of went from nothing to full on in the space of 2 weeks) and funnily enough he tells me stuff from before he was talking- for example the other day he was doing the okey cokey and I asked him if he did it at nursery and he said "no mummy swimming" and he was right he did it at baby swimming over 8 months ago. A lot of people say they think he didn't talk because he was copying ds1. I'm not convinced- his speech sounds came in all in the wrong order so he obviously had some sort of disorder- he just sorted it out very quickly. In his case nursery did help BUT BUT BUT he was spending a lot of time around severely autistic children so maybe that's not surprising.

Anyway moral of this story is if he understands and can communicate wants and needs then 18 months is too young to be worrying about speech. it's language development which is important at 18 months which is an entirely different thing. BTW most HV's know absolutely nothing about language development.

I am glad of this thread. My ds2 is 15 months and says nothing. He babbles, grunts and points and that is pretty much it. He says "ba-ba" when he waves goodbye and everything he points to he says "da". No animal noises, although when I do my fantastic impression of a dog he sort of looks all intense and tries to blow like he was blowing out a candle
I have read too many books and talked to 2 different HVs and they have ALL got me worried. HV suggested speech therapy, which I have so far turned down. The books say that a word should emerge at about age 1. ds1 went by the book, ds2 has obviously not yet read it!!

My brother was 2.5 before he was "talking" my friends boy was 21 months - can't shut either of them up now.

My dd was slow to talk and it turned out to be to do with hearing problems but since that has been sorted out she has come on leaps and bounds. However she still sees SALT as she is reluctant to talk outside of home, though getting much better. But I wanted to say that the best piece of advice I was given, and it has REALLY made a difference was to acknowledge non-verbal communication (ie pointing, gesturing, etc) as valid communication and praising both that and comprehension without putting any pressure on the child to actually verbalise. It has really made a difference to dd's confidence now that I have backed off completely and accepted that she doesn't always want to speak. Worth a try.

Dont worry, my nephew didn't say anything until 2.5yrs old, then it was an incomprehensible mum or dad noise and nothing else, he was sent to nursery which did nothing for him, as he didn't want to speak! at 3.5 he eventually started communicating properly, although he had to have a few months of speech therapy when he started school aged 4, just to ensure he was upto speed, he is now full comprehensible. Some kids just do it their way.

No time to read the other posts so sorry if I repeat and don't add anything fresh to the discussion.

Firstly I don't think there is too much to worry about....give him time to develop at his own pace. A friends daughter was saying nothing at 18 months but now at 2.5 has caught up with her peers.

However, the following helped my dd with her language development (i) lots of reading books to her (I'm sure you do that anyway) and (ii) making an effort to be consistent with words and use very generic words, eg using the word 'shoe' to cover the different types of shoes. Thus 'shoe' was used to describe wellington boots, trainers, sandals, slippers etc. I didn't use the individual nouns with her until I thought she had grasped the concept. My view was that using too many differentiating words would be confusing to her. Does that make sense?

Hi
It has been ages but Im in the same boat now.
I wonder what happened?:)
Thanks