10.5 month old does not respond to name or babble

[Bells2023]

My 10.5 month old does not respond to his name. He was doing a small amount of babbling - bababa but has put a pause on that now. He makes oh ah and lip trilling sounds. He does not point, wave, reach to be picked up or show that he knows the names of anything.
he does smile, he likes when I play peekaboo but does not do it himself (my daughter was doing it at his age), he crawls and lately pulls to stand.

Im not sure if this is something to worry about or if im just panicking because my daughter was so far ahead in all these areas.

I had this with my 3rd baby who is 2 in 2 weeks. From his 12 month HV appointment he was referred to audiology, ENT, speech therapy and the paediatric development team.
he didn’t babble and had no words. Sat late at 9 months old, and wasn’t crawling at all. He had weaned normally, and sleeping was normal. His eye contact was normal and he played with toys.
audiology found glue ear and mild/moderate hearing loss and he’s had 3 monthly hearing tests since.
ENT we see just after his 2nd birthday having been on the waiting list for nearly a year!
soeech therapy we see next week, also having been on the waiting list a year.
he started to say dada around 14 months and babbling from then but with no real words until 20 months when he had about 7 words reliably. He’s now just started putting some 2 words together “me, out” to get out of his high chair for example which is wonderful to hear obviously.
he started walking late at around 17 months, no apparent reason - you wouldn’t know now.
hoping his words just catch up the same way to be honest. We’ll not know if his hearing loss is contributing to his speech delay but hopefully he’ll be ok soon enough.

i think it’s entirely normal to panic, get in touch with your health visitor would be my advice - the waiting lists are years long

I do agree that speaking to your HV is the best thing to do.

I would do this simple progress checker first. If it says that he needs some support you can book a call with one of their SaLTs. This is free however they are a charity, so you might want to make a donation, if you’re able.

Also agree that it’s worth considering the possibility of Glue Ear.

You might have to insist a bit with the HV on the referral for a hearing test. In my experience most HVs will want to adopt the “wait and see” approach, which would be fine if you could get help when it’s obvious there’s a problem.

I would also do these two assessments before you see her:

10 month Ages & Stages

and the 12 month Social & Emotional Ages & Stages.

You can mark them yourself, ask us for advice on marking or ask the HV to mark them for you.

I would ask to see the HV again at 12 months to monitor progress.

speak to your HV as others have said it could be worrying, but my first was like this and it was fine. She never really babbled just started using words all of a sudden, she had no words and then by 18months she had over 100 reliable words including naming colours and some counting. I was stressed at 10m though because she didn’t wave or point like the other kids. But She did sign so I knew she could communicate just not with the particular gestures the nhs lists expected, so I never saw a HV. I also don’t really point or wave so I assumed that was part of the issue.
I was pretty confident that she was fine judging from the child as a whole, but on the tick boxes of things she could and couldn’t do it did look alarming.
Just saying here for some balance to help you not panic too much

I’m assuming you are worrying about ND? My son hit his social communication milestones but I felt something was a bit off. He’s now nearly 20 and was recently diagnosed with auDHD - he wouldn’t have met any thresholds back then and has had a fairly uneventful time since then (until it all fell apart a bit at uni). My point is if you think something is a bit off it often is - but just be vigilant and stay aware - it’s a huge spectrum - I wish I’d pushed earlier (health visitor dismissed me) because we could have had more understanding and support early on. BTW my son is awesome.

Our DD was the same. She started babbling at one and her speech is now perfectly fine at age 3, just to give another perspective.