Anyone have/had a late talker?

[JulesR4]

Our son is coming up to 18 months. A few months ago he would say “ball” and the odd hello, but that seems to have stopped. He does babble with mamama and dadada but I don’t think he really associates them with us, he just says it.

He also talks A LOT of gibberish. I do talk back, as if I understand, unsure if that’s productive or the opposite but anyways yeah he will stand there for ages and just talk nonsense that makes no sense to us but I ts like in his head he knows exactly what he’s on about. It’s pretty cute. When I try say a word it’s very rare that he’ll try imitate it but his gibberish, he could talk for hours.

When do I worry? If at all? He’s very loud and he does understand instructions like “where is daddy” or “let’s go brush our teeth” etc. Every single piece of info is telling me he should be saying 50 words by now and that’s simply not the case here. I don’t wanto to worry, but I also don’t want him to miss out on any extra support if he needs it? Feeling stuck :(

My son is now 2.5 and wasn’t talking at 18 months either. Like your son, lots of babble, but nothing intelligible. He started saying ready steady go at about 21 months, after a lot of me modelling it with his cars. By 2 years he had lots of single words and now at 2.5 learns new words every day. He now puts words together, 2 or 3 at a time too. He’s also only just in the last month started to point at things (he would only point at things in books before, not in real life).
I’ve been in contact with HV about it regularly since his 9-12 month check (when he wasn’t babbling at all) and she’s asked questions to the SALT team and got back to me, and the consensus was that as he was saying words by 2 and learning new ones, he was just going at his own pace. If that stalls and he stops getting better with his speech himself, though, they’ll refer to SALT. They develop at very different rates with all the different skills at this age - his friend of the same age was speaking 7 words sentences at 2 but wasn’t fussed about learning colours, numbers etc, whereas my son had put his efforts into that instead. I know how frustrating it is though trying to communicate with someone who can’t talk back. I would always “listen” to his babble and respond as though he was talking to me seriously, because to him it was serious, then at other times model using single words clearly.

My son is a late talker, he's two in a few weeks and only says the odd word, with not much consistency. I've been asking various doctors, HV and even saw a SALT (only twice as she said he was too young for speech therapy) since he was 18 months who all weren't concerned and have said it will come in time. He's starting nursery tomorrow and I'm hoping that will help.

Depends what you mean by late talker?! I wouldn't say that your kid is behind by what he is doing at 18 months. By 18 months my 3 year old could say boo mamma dadda and roar. At 3 I don't think he seems to be behind at all.

Sorry I meant to say that too. At 18 months making a few sounds doesn't sound speech delayed. He could have a language explosion in the next month and take you by surprise.

I don't know where these mystical babies are that can say 50 words at 18 months. I'm in a group of around 10 mums and some of the babies are really quite advanced but none were saying 50 words at 18 months. It's only now as they're all about to turn two they're saying 50 words or more and joining words together. But that's just my experience and I'm a first time mum.

My son wasn’t talking at 18 months at all ( he said a few words around his first birthday but had stopped saying them all together ) . He understood everything I said and babbled ( jargon ) a ton !

He started talking at 21 months . It was like he woke up one day and it clicked !

He is 2.5 now and is talking in full sentences .

You have nothing to worry about :)

What about me who's son is 3.3 and only saying single words. We are under salt and have a peads appointment this week but I'm still nervous

DS1 was similar at about 18 months. He could say really basic things like mama, dad, hi etc but nothing more. I was worried as other babies as a similar age had such large vocabularies

But something happened between 18m-2y and his speech exploded. By the time he hit 2 years we were having proper understandable conversations using 5-8 word sentences

I personally wouldn’t worry if there’s babbling and some small words at this stage

My son was language delayed and the pediatrician noticed it at 24 months. He was my first, so I wasn't sure what to expect. We got him tested and the local educational authority eventually gave him speech therapy, which helped. It still delayed his reading.

He's fine now, just going into his last year of uni and doing really well, but it's not something you want to ignore. I wouldn't panic, but do keep an eye on it.