Anyone else’s toddler not really imitate ?

[L20]

My son has just turned 2 and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve done something that he has immediately imitated back to me.

I don’t really have any developmental concerns - he’s a bit behind on his speech but is now linking 2-3 words together although they aren’t always super clear. But otherwise he is really confident, social, smiley etc etc

But I’ve just noticed that in comparison to his peers he definitely just doesn’t imitate me in the way the others do. For example, some of our antenatal group are doing their numbers and alphabet now whereas my boy won’t copy me when I count up to 5.

Some of me wonders if it’s just a personality thing, as if I say a new word and ask him if he can say it then he will just say no and not even try!

Anyway, just wondering if anyone has been in the same boat ?

My DS didn’t imitate when I said it but then later did, so he will count when there’s something to count without me doing it, such as pencils in a pot, but he wouldn’t do it necessarily if I did it to him. I didnt even think this was something to think about!

He does imitate actions though, so the way my husband dries himself after a shower is how my DS dries himself. I sometimes say “oi” to get someone’s attention and he’s started doing it too (whoops). There’ll be thinks you don’t realise and timing of when he imitates

Do you sing together? Lots of opportunity for using words in real context.

Thank you for the reply - I suppose my son must do some imitating as that’s how he knows his words ? And can point out his body parts etc.

But we were just with all the antenatal group this weekend and their little ones were literally like parrots but DS just doesn’t

We do a little bit but I could definitely do more since our music class stopped. Thank you for the idea

Your little boy sounds lovely.

Reading your post has reminded me of what we did with DD at 4. It's fun thinking about it 20 years later 😊

We had an English Heritage collection of nursery rhymes that we played in the car and sang along to on the way to nursery every day

We sang the same song ('The time has come to say goodnight') every evening before she went upstairs

We used shop name signs to identify letters eg the first letter of her name

The song the nursery rhyme 'One, two, three, four, five, Once I caught a fish alive' which uses numbers to ten

There was an alphabet in magnetic letters on the fridge. She liked putting the letters in order, and using them to spell her name (seven letters) and other basic words

We sang the alphabet song (lots of versions on YouTube) a lot

Songs with actions are fun - 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star', 'Wind the bobbin up' and 'I'm a little teapot' are all easy to learn

Singing 'There were X in the bed and the little one said' is good for counting down - from 10 with teddies, less with children, or a mixture of children and teddies

'10 green bottles' is great for teaching numbers back from 10, with falling on the floor for the line 'But if one green bottle should accidently fall'

We used hazlenuts on a table outside to do addition up to 10 and multiples of 10

Without thinking about it, we sang a lot, because we all enjoyed it. For a while, my five-year old god-daughter lived with us when DD was three so then there were four of us singing rather than three.