Trilingual 2yo late/no talker

[Tomino]

Hi, My biggest worry atm is that little one does not say anything. And I mean not a single word. He understands some instructions but he does not say even mama or dada or anything that would actually be a word. We do have 3 languages (czech, russian and english) so being late talker is kind of expected but he is going to turn 2 soon and from what I read around he should say at least something. Lot of people complaining that their kids dont say more than 7 words (for example) but at this point I would be happy with that! Our boy does not say a single word. He refuses to repeat as well, when we try to get him to repeat something he gets upset... I know his hearing is fine, he could hear a pin drop at the other side of the house... Should we look for professional help?

Yes you should look for professional help, being trilingual should not cause a delay like this.

He's not saying mama or dada or things like that but what about other babbling? Consonant sounds?

Does he make sounds at all? Use monosyllabic babble? 'da-da/ga-ga/la-la? My DD is growing up bilingual and was a bit slow with saying understandable words (which I know is common when there is more than one language used at home) But she suddenly caught up with her peers across both languages when she hit 2 (2.5 now) but was using sounds and words like mama, papa etc. for a while before that. If I were in your position I would be seeking professional advice

Yes he is babbling, he is quite noisy actually, lots of grunting, babbling etc. Nothing that would make sense though. Just recently he started pointing at stuff and shaking his head in disagreement. Yesterday he said pretty clear "Ne" which is "No" when I tried to feed him but might have been an coincidence.
When he "speaks" he said "ba-ba-ba-ba" he does not change to "la-la" or anything else, just "ba-ba". When he has had enough of something, he connects his hands and says "aaaa-gu".
Other than that he communicates via screaming. He screams and cries a lot... but I guess thats different topic.

The fact he's babbling is a good sign.

Do you have an appointment for a standard 2 year old check up? The check up gives you an opportunity to discuss whether further investigation or intervention is warranted.

My own DS’s late talking was picked up at that point and he got some speech therapy. He didn’t say a single word until he was 2.5 or start making sentences until he was 3.5. (We were a monolingual family only too.) He is now 16 and doing fine. The only slight residual weakness is that he might find it harder than some to pick up information through listening. He prefers to read.

But that’s my DS, not yours! I only mention it to let you know that late talking doesn’t have to signify something is seriously wrong.

You mention that your DS could hear a pin drop but it’s worth remembering that there’s more involved in understanding language than sensitivity to sound. Some children find it harder to distinguish between different phonemes (units of sound in a language) or they have a shorter auditory memory, both of which can get in the way of picking up language.

One thing you could try is to see if your DS will copy you clapping rather than making sounds with his mouth. Also if you want him to repeat what you say, start with a single syllable and work towards greater complexity. Try to articulate clearly so he can catch all the sounds involved. Maybe try some animal noises too!

Are you a family of scientists, engineers, mathematicians or engaged in other such pursuits that involve visual thinking? Some children in these types of families have a tendency to explore the world from a visuo-spatial perspective initially. They like shape sorters, blocks and puzzles and their interest in language develops more slowly.

@OutwiththeOutCrowd Thank you for exhausting info!

I tried to get him repeat all sorts of sounds/words/syllables but no joy. Animal noises dont work also even though I think me be doing cat noise sometime.

Your last paragraph blew my mind though, the description fits perfectly, I am an engineer and little one loves puzzles, shape sorters etc!

No two children are the same, so even other people with similar experiences won't really do much to put your mind at rest. I understand where you are coming from though, waiting for your child to speak is very difficult and it is good to get checked out. I went several times with my son, he's now 15 and fine but he didn't start talking until he was 3 and even then only we could understand him. He would have completely silent tantrums, just throw himself on the floor with no crying or noise or anything. Has your son spent significant time in other countries? Because we had lived in three different countries by the time he was 3 and six different cities by the time he started year 1, that was thought to have a bigger impact, rather than just the languages. My subsequent children spoke early or on target, even my youngest who has an ASC, as they had more stability and other children to model language, rather than just adults.

My husband is an engineer. That's interesting OutwiththeOutCrowd.

Yes, the connection between late talking and engineering is an intriguing one.

My DP (physicist/engineer) was a late talker too and two colleagues he talked to about the link also turned out to have been late talkers.

And, as it happens, my late talking DS, whose first sentence at 3.5 years old was ‘Look, a plane!’, is now hoping to study aeronautical engineering at university!

There’s even a book by Thomas Sowell on the topic called the Einstein Syndrome: bright children who talk late.

The term Einstein Syndrome is used because of some peculiarities of Einstein’s brain architecture, which might, it is posited, be present in the brains of children in this group. (The brain of Einstein, who was a late talker, was preserved after his death and there have been studies done on it trying to ascertain the origin of his genius.)

Steven Pinker, who researches into language acquisition in children, has written about the studies, saying:

The neuroscientists speculated that Einstein's parietal lobes expanded early in prenatal development, giving him larger, undivided lobules that accommodated richer and more tightly integrated circuits for mathematical and spatial reasoning. This may help explain Einstein's other famous cognitive trait: he did not speak until he was 3 years old. Many late-talking children grow up to be engineers, mathematicians and scientists, including the physicists Richard Feynman and Edward Teller. Perhaps this is because different mental functions compete for real estate as they develop in the cerebral cortex.

So the suggestion is that a part of the brain associated with linguistic processing can be ‘crowded out’ by a burgeoning neighbouring region associated with visuo-spatial processing.

I’m not suggesting that any one of us has a mini-Einstein on our hands but there does seem to be a distinct class of children – mainly boys – who are late to talk and who demonstrate this pattern of visuo-spatial strength/linguistic weakness.

There is research done in France on the brains of children and adults with different skill sets that show quite clearly how highly quantitative people have brains where certain functions, such as face recognition, are “crowded out” by numerical reasoning. Clearly our brains, while plastic, don’t have room for everything and we are born with predispositions and preferences.