28 month old.

[Kkyla]

My grandmother has recently made me question my daughters milestones. Normally I let what she says goes over my head as this is the same grandmother who tried to give my 1 year old Pepsi ( i didnt let her) but shes got into my head.

My daughter is pretty smart imo she can say most toddler words i.e cat, strawberry, baby etc. She can recognise and colours. Count to 20, say the alphabet, recognise letters. I credit a lot of this to her obsession with Miss Rachel.

However she doesn't yet show any interest in communicating with other people. She is affectionate and comes for cuddles but unlike some of her peers she would rather play alone and feels no need to talk to us. On occasion she has said 'I want water' or ' i love you'.

I have 10 year old twins and they were all chat at her age but they had eachother.

Anyone have anything to say about this. Experience or advice?

Many thanks

It’s hard when people you’re close to make comments about your DC isn’t it?

I remember a DA insisting that my 12 week old “should be on full dinners by now”.

If you’re concerned at all then I’d just do this simple 2.5 year progress checker from Speech & Language UK. It will tell you if she is on track or needs a bit of support

Thank you. Thats very helpful! Yes very hard. She can't seem to help herself. I try to let a lot of it go as shes in her late 80s.

If she’s in her late 80s she may not have Dementia but there may be some cognitive decline.

Try to just smile and nod and do what you were planning on doing anyway

How did your DD score on the progress checker?

Yes. I think thats the case. She has the tact of a bull in a china shop. It came back as needing support with social communication and emailed me lots of ideas. So tysm. Really very helpful!

Ok if it has come back as saying that she needs some support I would do the things that they’ve sent you. Speech and Language UK are such a great charity and really know their stuff

I would also contact your HV and ask to see her. She will need to refer your DD for a hearing test, which is just standard practice when there is some speech delay. She will also need to refer her for some SaLT, be warned though, the waiting lists can be long but the sooner she’s on the list the sooner she’ll be seen

I would also fill in these two assessments:

30 month Ages & Stages

and the 30 month Social & Emotional Ages & Stages.

You can score them or you can ask your HV to score them for you

Not to alarm you but she sounds very much like my son who is autistic was at her age.

My husbands nana asked if my son could read books properly yet? He was 4!
Er no luv, Hes not Einstein, he still thinks licking his pals cheek is an informal greeting and laughed when anyone farted (that hasnt changed) 😆
That was 2 years ago, and his nan was nearly 95. Sometimes old girls cannot help themselves and they have no filter 🤦‍♀️

Did you manage to fill in the assessments @Kkyla?

F

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

On this, I think it'd definitely worth speaking to your HV. I think it's unusual for a child that age to not really communicate at all with other people.

I'd agree it's worth doing the questionnaires @BunnyRuddington linked to and getting in touch with the health visitor.

I would be flagging the preferring to play alone and the 'feels no need to talk to us'.

Most two year olds are very driven to get attention and interaction from adults and older children and sort of loosely attracted to peers (lots playing alongside, some are discovering the basics of actually playing with a peer). They typically may play alone for a bit, but that will be mixed with wanting interaction – if DD plays alone for long periods or with minimal interest in you/dad/older siblings joining in, I would think that's unusual.

For speech, how does she use her words? If she's labelling things she sees, there's an important distinction between 'dog!' because she wants you to see the big dog as well and just sort of saying it for herself, you hearing her or not doesn't matter to her. A mix is common, she's learning a language, and so it's natural to practice words, but if it's all or almost all saying it for herself, again, I'd think that's unusual and flag that to the health visitor.

How much of what you say do you think she understands? (Acknowledging that many a toddler understands perfectly what 'put that down!' means but doesn't do it!)

I am 65 and have no interest in communicating with other people. She is learning early.

Just so you know I filled this progress checker in about my child (27mo who spends all day every day chatting and I have no concerns about) and it still said needing help with social communication (I answered yes to all Q's but one which i put not sure) so I'd take it with a pinch of salt though obviously any resources may still be useful and hopefully will lead you in the right direction. All children are different so I'd try not to worry too much right now just keep an eye on it.

I think the Speech and Language UK questionnaires are very conservative – they will suggest getting in touch for almost anything less than all yeses. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as it does mean no one will slip through the cracks and giving parents some tips on how to support their child's language development is no bad thing, even if it wasn't, strictly speaking, absolutely necessary.

I think the Ages and Stages questionnaires also linked above take a bit more of a balanced view – one standard deviation below the mean is the cut-off for white, 'appears on track, they can't all be perfectly average', 1-2 standard deviations below is grey, 'monitor, but roughly 1 in every 7 or 8 children naturally falls here, so could well resolve itself', and two or more standard deviations below is black, 'refer for further support/investigations'. (Even for black, roughly 1 in 40 children will naturally fall there, so it will still sometimes resolve itself, particularly if it's only one area in the black and the child would be 'in the white' for the previous age questionnaire.)

Thanks everyone. All super helpful You couldn't write this but this week all of a sudden shes all chat. What happened is we went on holiday and she was so happy to be in all these new places she just started talking to us.