Daughter isn't talking

[SamanthaH92]

My daughter will be 22 months soon and is barley talking. She has been able to say bye for months. We have had ball, sky, door and dog. Maybe a few others. She understands you perfectly she just does not speak. If i say go pick dolly up and give her to daddy she will do just that. If we are reading and i ask where a animal is like a fox she will point it out. I just don't understand why she isn't speaking when she understands what you are saying. I wasn't worried but my sister told me yesterday her friends daughter who is 2 is a good little speaker but they have refered her to someone for her speach. How can i improve it?

Yes agree with PPs about glue ear. My DS was exactly the same with comprehension & little speech and (finally) got screened by audiology at 32 months after about 6 months of being monitored by nursery & the health visitor.

We noticed it much less because we spent more time with him in quiet environments, but he was really struggling at nursery.

He's now 3 (just) and speaks more but his speech is very unclear. Bless him, he has a range of techniques to make us understand because he doesn't have the range of phonology that we have so for example he'll say "bix" and it might mean "bricks", "fix", "bits" or "weetabix". If he wants weetabix he'll take us to the cupboard where it's kept.

He's actually due a follow-up with audiology soon & we've been told that if he still has a glue ear hearing loss then he'll probably get an ENT referral & grommets.

As GreenTulips says, ask choices so she has to reply with words, my friend's son said his first word at 10 months, I offered him a biscuit by asking 'Do you want a plain biscuit or would you prefer a chocolate one? ' - and the answer came straight back 'Cocolat!'
So he got offered lots of biscuits after that, and was soon chattering away in a matter of days/weeks as he gained new words every day.
If you try to stick to what is known as open ended questions - these are ones that begin with eg how, what, where, why, when, which - and are more difficult to answer with a straight yes (nod) or no (shake) then you'll encourage a reply.

My son barely spoke at 2, my hv was really horrible towards me about it and referred him to speech therapy. Some of the things suggested were give them choice questions so do you want juice or milk. Try to expand on what they're saying so if they have a car in their hand and say car, you can say, yes it's a blue car. The speech therapist said words need to be used so many times before a connection is made in their brain.
One thing that isn't recommended but really helped us was some youtube videos. Not the ones of children opening kinder eggs or playing with new toys but ones that concentrate on language - a great channel is Steve and Maggie.

My DS is exactly the same, he says a small handful of words which are said very rarely and also 'what dat?' and 'who dat?' and 'dere' for there. It's hard though as he's getting increasingly frustrated.
When he turns 2 I'm going to take him to the HV and insist on a hearing referral then go from there. In the meantime I'm going to keep chatting! Sorry not much help but you are definitely not alone!