15 month old doesn't speak much

[YukoandHiro]

She has four words which include dada and an attempt at her sister's name. Other than that it's all babble. She can follow exactly what's being said and uses gestures to demonstrate that eg pointing to something we're talking about.
She's an early walker and is running fast and climbing already. My first was the other way round - didn't walk til 20 months but had about 35 words by this age.
Basically what I'm asking is, is this normal or do I need to see the HV?

Completely normal. Don't worry yourself about it.

From your description of what she does do - good understanding of what’s being said, pointing, babbling walking - she sounds fine. My DD and DGC were similar . They started speaking more at about 20 - 24 months and very quickly were chattering away all day.

My 15 month old is very similar. Around 5 words and I think that's fairly normal. The milestone is 10 words by 18 months I believe.

My DS was the same, I’m afraid mostly it was our fault, he just pointed to what he wanted and made a sippy sound when he wanted a drink or food. At 2 he had a check up with health visitor who was concerned about lack of speech, but he was way ahead with everything else. We had to stop pre-empting what he needed and he soon started talking more. At 2.5 health visitor phoned to ask how he was doing and I let her speak to him on the phone, they had a really good conversation. My second DS was complete opposite.

I'm sure you'll get loads of post like mine but my eldest didn't talk until really late (or walk). She's now in a super selective secondary and looking at doing medicine at Oxbridge. My second talked astonishing early, short sentences at 12 months, we thought we had a genius on our hands. He's now very average and didn't get in to the super selective secondary.

If you’re concerned speak to your HV. I did. I got speech therapy for mine as the nursery agreed with me.

Have a look at this:

ican.org.uk/media/3288/my-15-month-old-child-is-not-saying-many-words.pdf

It's from here in case you need a non-PDF link.

ican.org.uk/i-cans-talking-point/parents/parent-faqs/

My child didn’t properly start taking until 26 months and within weeks you would have never known a month beforehand they could barely say anything.

My dd has no words at all at 18 m but I’m not too worried I’m sure she will soon

Totally normal. Mine said hardly anything until age 2 and then suddenly got it and had a real language explosion. By age 3 she was ahead of her peers in vocabulary and diction.

Dd1 was a very early talker so it was a bit of a worry when dd2 still had few words aged 2.5. Certainly she said nothing at 15 months. By 3 she started though and by 5 I was having teachers commenting on her impressive and incredibly advanced vocabulary. Now she's 8 she's just normal 😆. It all balances out eventually

Normal, especially given their physical abilities.

My DS was running at 9 months but has only started talking a lot now he's 2.

*walking not running (Though that didn't take too long either!)

I wouldn't worry about it; it sounds like she's communicating well, even if it's not all through words. And given how active she is, it's not surprising that she's progressed slower on the talking front when she's so developed on the physical front.

That said, there's no harm in asking the HV if it's going to ease your anxiety. That's one of the things they're there for.

My 15 mo can't walk and only says Dadadadadada as a way of getting attention from anyone. I'm not worried.

I think your eldest was probably a bit ahead in the talking stakes so maybe it's best not to compare (though obviously difficult!).

Sounds familiar.

The app speech bubs is quite good, and the BBC’s Tiny Happy People.

I found naming things helped ds (before that, I had been asking questions all the time).

Think mine said even less than 4 words at 15 months. Now just turning two repeats pretty much everything we say including sentences (and also including dada’s slip up of explicit words 🙄). Couldn’t say exactly how many words but is a lot.
So, completely normal