17 month old development

[atay27]

Hi everyone,

my little girl is 17 months old today. I am concerned about her communication development. I was wondering whether anyone has any experience of the same type of thing.

I have to confess, she watched a lot of Miss Rachel during her 10-12 months. We were moving house and I was extremely stressed… we have now (from about 13 months) minimised screen time to 30 minutes a day, if that.

Doesn’t always respond to her name (getting a bit better at this)
Eye contact 50/50 (on her terms)
she waved at 9 months old (I guess we didn’t practice much…and now she refuses to)
only gestures include arms up and high 5 (no clapping or waving or pointing)
she follows my point up and down but not really to the side
says dada (not in context) and started to roar like a lion last week (now she won’t)
doesn’t follow simple instructions
she bangs toys against the baby gate, wall, etc quite a lot. Not for long periods of time, but frequently throughout the day.

she’s booked in for a hearing test start of May, but she hears me when I sing nursery rhymes. She looks at me amazed whilst I sing them, and then just carries on doing her thing when I stop

She is so loving. She gives a kiss when asked and by herself and runs up for a cuddle. She knocks our towers down when we build them. She can put cars on a ramp, balls in her whale toy playing with us. She can climb up the stairs and on the sofa herself. She eats really well, loves her food. She sleeps well.

Lots of things I google point to autism. She’s coming up quite high on the m-chat quiz. Did anyone else’s little one come on lots after 17 months?

thanks in advance

My dc2 is 20 months so I’m trying to remember back a few weeks. Some of this doesn’t sound too far off but my lo can do a bit more but she is older. Hard to say really!!

she could probably say 8 words at 17 months. Mama and dada to the right person.
waving and high 5.
pointing and going to get things we asked for.

Also to add she turns pages of a book and likes to read with us. She doesn’t point at the pictures (I’m now modelling this lots) but she does lift the flaps

Thanks. The understanding just doesn’t seem to be there for my LO. She is independent but when I look back at my son (now 4) at those months, he communicated so much more.

she also can stack small blocks herself when prompted, but wouldn’t choose to

Hi I have a similar aged baby and I have some knowledge of child development from work.
See what the hearing test shows first.
It's great that she loves looking at books and singing. Just try and continue to do lots of this amd lots of talking to her about what's happening and what she can see. Lots of repetition. Whenever she says dadada, say yea it's a ..... they go ......( noise).
It's common for babies to learn a word or sound, say it all the time and then seem to forget it the next week. My baby does, he learned rabbit last week and then this week every thing is a rabbit ( babit) even things he used to know the name off such as car, tractor, flower car. Its how they learn language.
Keep talking with her and reading.
Have you looked at baby signing? That might help her communication and understanding.

Thank you! I’ve not looked at signing, purely because she’s so adverse to using gestures!!
thanks for your tips. I’m doing all of this but honestly probably only within the last 2 weeks. If I say “can you say mama, mama, can you say mamas name?” (Miss Rachel lol) she always responds “baaa baaa”

can you please provide any update on your baby?

@atay27 how is your little one doing now?