My DS still not talking at 17 months

[archiesmummy]

Hiya,
My DS is still not talking and he is soon 17 months old.
He says mamma and dadda and very recently started saying bye bye but I'm not sure if this is just a coincidence as most of the time when he waves he says dada but sometimes he says bye bye.

I'm Swedish and my partner is English and I try to speak swedish with DS but find it difficult as I tend to get distracted and start speaking english all the time.
Will this confuse DS a lot? Will it slow down him speaking either language?

When did your bilingual DC start speaking?

I felt the same Kewcumber, when my dd1 was 18 months, and she was only saying mama, dadda, compared to other children who spoke sentences.
does your ds understand russian?

wel he did but has lost most of it now, I really don;t use it with him, as I feel he needs to learn English first and I'm not relaly fluent enough in Russian to keep it going properly long term.

yes archiesmummy - the father is Swedish, mother from Northern Ireland and they live in Sweden.

My friend's DD was born the day before my DS, in July 04. Both are being brought up bilingual. Friend's DD (German/Italian) spoke early, was speaking in complete sentences before my DS (German/English) was saying anything. DS wasn't speaking much till about a month or so ago. He is now at the "speech explosion" stage, where he seems to learn a dozen new words a day.

I don't believe that it makes any difference if bilingual or not, each child develops at their own pace.

I haven't managed to stop speaking German to my kids, but I am trying. It is more difficult for them to learn the minority language if they don't hear it a lot at home.

DD is 18 months and can only say ooooozat when someone comes in the door or drives onto the drive. She is not that physical either, having only last week taken her first steps...... but I have no doubt she is bright as a button and will be a very good tennis player, in time.

archie's mummy - my dd1 is also being brought up bilingual.

She was also past 18 months when she finally started talking. And now at the age of three she is talking reasonably well, mostly in flemish. I speak to her in english and she is gradually picking that up.

Dd2 is also being brought up bilingual and can already speak very well at the age of 20 months, so I'm not sure late speaking is always is due to being bilingual. I think it's more likely to be hereditary.

My advice is to persevere with speaking swedish to him - their brains do eventually learn to cope with both languages.

kewcumber, they do learn a lot from watching videos and tv though. my children watch french videos regularly, to keep their french up.
agree, it would be a bit hard for you to keep up by talking to him!
for slightly older children, there are Saturday morning classes available in some areas for Russian speaking children to practise the language.

Yes I did think about Russian classes when he;s a little older. Got to get him talking wnglish first though - mind you his gibberish could be fluent Russian? Think I would have recognised some of it though...

wnglish sounds like the language that dd2 (3) speaks.

Hi all,
Just want to share some good news with you.
DS was looking in book earlier with DH and pointed to pic of bananas and said, several times, anana or ana very clearly - wow.

We were both soo impressed.

Thanx for all the support.

they talk when they are ready! ds2 today said "pease" (please) in relevant situations, the 1st time we dismissed it as just a sound, but the 2nd time it was v clear.

Ds is going through the very irritating phase of saying what sounds like a word then refusing to repeat it on command. Todays word was "shoe"... "lets put your shoes on" "shoe" says DS, then remains tighlipped despite various antics of mine... did I imagine it?

Oh, Kew we have gone through this fase for months i think.

DS even said "bye bye" as clear as day when he was about 8-9 months (twice even) only to not say it again until the other day.

I think we are making progress now though coz today DS pointed a a cow and said baa baa. LOL, so cute. When I pointed out it is Moo, he said MmBaa..

No doubt they will all have vast vocabularies when they get older, but now there is so much to learn.

This thread is so reassuring. My DD didn't really say a lot until 18 months, also makes up words (tu-tu for car, bus, aeroplane, umba for biscuit etc.) and eats her words to the extent I have to really listen to figure out what language they're in.

Now at 22mo she seems to be behind most of her peers, yet the annoying thing is that at 8/9 months she had a repertoire of a few words she used to pronounce really clearly, but has said hardly any of them since (and she never repeats anything if you ask her to either, especially in front of other people. Aargh, just too frustrating!!!).

I did wonder if she was regressing and there was maybe a problem behind that, but all your replies have set my mind at rest. I will now relax and eagerly await the language explosion which is bound to be around the corner....