16mo has zero words

[Oceandriver]

Just that really, my DS is 16 months and has zero words. He babbles a lot and has a few sounds he uses for everything but no words that I can comprehend.

To be honest I wasn’t worried until I met up with our NCT group yesterday and most of the babies (he’s the eldest) are saying words. Some of the girls are saying a lot!

He gestures and points a lot at things he finds interesting, he can follow instructions like ‘find your shoes’ so I think his understanding is ok. He was an early crawler and has been walking since 11 months, physically his development is very good.

When should I be worried and who would I contact? It seems a stupid thing to go to the gp about.

I contacted my HV around the same time about my sons lack of speech approaching 2 years old. They told me to wait and see and it'll be discussed at his 2-2.5yr review (which is in a few weeks time). So far his is saying more and lots of 2 word phrases. It's hard not to compare - at 2 my eldest son was saying loads! At least 4/5 word phrases and could hold a proper conversation. Kids develop at different rates so try not to worry too much. Some of the other mums in the group might be looking at your son thinking that their toddler isn't as physically advanced. No two kids are the same so I'd give it a bit more time.

I spoke to my HV at 20 months about my daughters speech, similar situation I spent a bit of time listening to one of the other children in the NCT group and realised that his language had developed from the last time I had paid attention where as my daughter hadn't. She only had a working vocab of 3 words as she lost an old word when she learnt a new word she first had 3 words at 9 months so there was quite a long time of stagnant development. When I spoke to the HV it was this that was more concerning than her having no words at all. She nearly exclusively communicated with pointing until 2. I'd push for a hearing test referral potentially before the 2 year review though just due to waiting times. It was the first thing my daughters paediatrician suggested when we raised her language with him but my daughter had already had a hearing test at 7 months due to a delay responding to sounds as an newborn.
We were given some exercises and they said if there was no improvement by the 2 year review they would look at referrals. We moved at 24 months and she had about 10 words and had her assessment at 26 months by which point she was using 2 and 3 word sentences.
I know a few children who didn't start talking until 24-36 months but progress quite quickly to sentence.

They often concentrate and have energy for one thing. Yours is movement. Theirs might be speech. It’s likely to develop especially if he understands. If he’s understanding then hearing is probably ok. You could try to encourage him to use words a bit more instead of pointing etc. Just make sure you talk a lot even if it’s totally random stuff to encourage understanding and speech.