2 years old and very few words

[5dollah]

Hi, I'm feeling very worried. My two year old has very few words. Just mama, dada and a couple of others. I'm feeling anxious for her. I was wondering if anyone else has been in this situation.

Does she understand what is said to her? My son was saying very little by two, and we had a home visit from a speech and language therapist. The speech therapist played with him for a while and got him to do some little jigsaws. At the end she said his understanding was good so she wasn't worried about him not talking.
She also said it's common in children who have an older sibling (as mine did) because they don't need to talk if their sibling speaks for them. Big brother asks for a drink, Mum straightaway gives both children a drink etc

Is she just 2? Or 2 and a half? Or 2 and a quarter? Or nearly 3?

As Zov has said, if you can specify your DD’s age, we can give a bit more advice. There’s a huge difference between a DC just turned two who is saying little and a DC who is saying a month off being three who has few words

Thanks for the replies. She's 25 months. A lot of what she says is just garbled nonsense.

I would say she is late speaking but I wouldn't be worried yet. If she gets to more like 2.5 like 30 months, and she is still the same I would start to worry. Maybe try to encourage her to say words with activities you are doing...

I can understand you being concerned as I had a late talker too.

I would do this simple progress checker from Speech & Language UK.

If it says that she needs some support, come back and we can advise you on what to do next

Any second language at all? Ours is bi-lingual household and even though it looked like he has less words, it’s less words in 2 languages. He’s now 3 and still not getting any sentences or anything but nobody is concerned by this.

A lot of friends and family had slow starters too, they’ve all got there in the end

I know a lot of experts say by two they should be saying so many words etc but in the real world, I have worked with and known a great many 2 year olds and it is extremely common for them to not be saying much until they are nearly 3. So give your little one time. Over this next year I am sure you will see a lot of progress in speech.

Has she had her hearing checked recently, both of mine had a lot of glue ear and weren’t talking much at 2 but then took off like rockets and caught up very quickly

You know your child best, so please take this with a pinch of salt, but... we thought DS2 wasn't saying many words (esp compared to DS1 at his age) but after a while we realised that he was saying some but we didn't understand them. Is there any chance some of the 'garbled nonsense' is actually words to her? With babies, there's a very low bar for what counts as a 'word' - it's basically any sound that they consistently say to mean the same thing, but if they're very unclear, sound nothing like the thing, and all sound the same, they're very easy to miss!

Either way, there were definitely children at DS1's nursery who weren't talking at 2, and now at 4 you wouldn't know which they were.

My daughter had 3 words at 10 months and at 20 months still only had 3 words but different words she couldn't retain old words when she learnt new words, she even lost mumma and dadda. This was more of a concern for the HV than her only having 3 words. By 24 months we got her up to ~10 words as we managed to get a few old words back into her vocab but she mostly communicated by pointing. At 26 months she started using 2 and 3 word sentences and was communicating mostly with words

She's nearly 5 now and doing brilliantly in reception despite being the second youngest. Her vocab is great but she's not the best communicator around strange adults.

One thing we have definitely learnt is she likes to have mastered something before she will show you she can do it!