18 month old speech

[hermylife30]

Hi all! Just a quickie about speech & language. My little girl has just turned 19 months old, I wouldn’t say I’m particularly concerned about her speech (yet!) I’m just not sure what to look out for. She can say
Hiya
Bye bye
Cup
Car
Cat
Up
Duck
Ball
Mama
Daddy
Book
Bird
A-a (meaning banana - don’t think this counts yet LOL)

Yup
Uh-oh
Yuck

She can make noises for all of your typical farm & jungle animals & uses plenty of hand gestures when she’d like something. I saw on the NHS speech website that they should be saying AT LEAST 20 words which obviously my little one isn’t yet - is this a concern? She’s my first child so I have no clue if she’s on the right track and I don’t want to phone the HV quite yet for fear of them thinking I’m a completely useless mother.

Thanks all!

That's more than my son could say when he was 2.

At his 2 year review they were unconcerned with his speech development, even though it is something I have flagged since he was 9 months (didn't really babble).

They did say that if I was still concerned after a couple more months to get in touch and go to one of the speech drop ins. Basically they said a lot of kids have a speech explosion around 2 so just wait for that.

That didn't happen for him though. We did the drop in where he was assessed, then went on the waiting list to be seen. Covid happened and then by the time he was seen by a therapist he was 3 ½ and whilst a little behind he doesn't need therapy.

Sounds perfectly on track!

(forgot to add that animal noises count as words)

This is great to hear, I think it becomes easy to compare when you see other children of similar ages not necessarily even saying more, but just different things that seem more advanced than your own can say. Thanks again guys! X

My 18 month has 5 words, two of them are animal noises and none of them are me or partner. My other son was latish talking aswell, so I'm not too concerned...yet! He did seem to have a Lang explosion just before two tho.

She sounds fine, hermy.

I took my son to the HV for something else when he was 18 months and they said they look for six to 20 words at that age, so not at least 20.

You can find the ages and stages questionnaire for each age online together with the scoring system they use, which might give you an idea of how your little one is doing. It sounds like she's doing well to me, though.