How quickly can speech develop in 22mth old?

[pollywollywoowah]

DS is 22mths old. His communication and understanding are both excellent but he can only "say" daddy, juice, bye-bye, and there/that.

I have seen our HV about this and she agreed his understanding was good but said that if he wasn't using 6-24 words and making two word sentences by his 2yr check then he would need to be refered to a SALT. But she said he would be classed as low priority due to having good understanding.

So anyway my question is, what are the chances of him improving that much in 2 months? Until Christmas he could only say bye-bye, so has come on a fair bit quite quickly.

I keep reading posts about silent toddlers who became excellent talkers almost overnight and am hoping DS will do the same! Not that I'd "mind" him having speech therapy of course, I just wondered if he is likely to improve enough to avoid it.

Dd could speak 3 words at 18 months. Then suddenly (not quite overnight but near enough) she just picked them up. A month later she could probably say 20. So it can happen.

However, a friend as just seen a SALT with her lo and was really impressed - got lots of ideas of ways to help her.

Both DD1 and DD3 had virtually no speech at 22 months, then both just exploded - DD3 is now 28 months and in the last 2 months has gone from saying about 3 words to chattering non-stop, in sentences.

My son went from 2/3 words at 19months to speaking in (albeit not always intelligible) sentences at 23 months. Massive word explosion. Children develop like this though, the little blighters. You think there must be something wrong because they don't do anything new for months, and then suddenly, wham! It all happens at once.

Ds2 is 21 months and has lots of single words, but can rarely put two together. Sometimes 'baby (long gap) sleeping'. I wouldn't worry too much if he has good understanding the rest will follow.

My son's speach developed overnight. I remember the day so clearly, it was the Friday before his 2nd birthday. It was is if he swallowed a dictionery overnight. He was spouting new words all day. His did have a few words before that and putting some together, but his vocabularly made huge leaps that day.

That was his type of development, everything he did he went from hardly being able to do something and then became expert overnight. He did go on to have speach therapy as he pronounciation was not good.

DD was the opposite, everything learned on a gradual basis and the increase in her vocabularly was a few words every so often so it was not noticeable.

If his understanding is good (he can understand an instruction like get your shoes and sit on the chair without you pointing to give him visual cues) and he is communicating well non-verbally, by things like pointing, gesturing, nodding, facial expression etc, I wouldn't worry. My two ds' were total opposites, ds1 has a probable language disorder and barely spoke at 2 (understanding a bit ropey too), ds2 is 17 months and virtually speaking in sentences now, and seems to understand everything I say.

It might be worth getting yourself on the SALT list just in case you need it - waiting lists can be long and you can always cancel if it doesn't seem necessary, but it sounds to me as if he just needs a bit of time and then he'll be off and running. SALT has been great for ds1, so highly recommend it if you do need it.

Wow thanks for all the replies.

Nice to read that it could all happen quite quickly then. I'm not worried if it doesn't but was just curious.

If we are offered a SALT referal I will prob still take it though to be on the safe side. Good point kettlechip.

DS very similar, coming up to 22 months and understands everything but says very little.

my nanny friends charge said NOTHING in September... was 2 in October, and spoke pretty much fluently (well almost) in november!