My mother and her anxieties over DS - Am I being unreasonable no. trillion...

[feastofsteven]

My mother is driving me round the twist. DS is 21 months, points a bit, probably has about 20 words, seems generally a happy kid. My mother is constantly on at me that she is concerned about his language development, keeps asking me (sometimes on a daily basis!!) whether he has had any new words, and now says that by this age she would expect him to have several new words per day. Any advice as to how to politely tell her that language acquisition isn't a race????????

Tell her (as I did my DP's mum) that our HV doesn't do a check on speech till 3yo, because of the variation in age when it kicks in (rotten sentence but you know what I mean!)

Nah, i dont do polite

My parents are the same. And they are adamant that either a) she obviously cant hear properly or b) its because of her dummy.

Speech develops at varying ages - i can see now that DS's speech is more advanced now that DD's was at his age. Thats just how it is. I think parents/grandparents forget about milestones because its such a long time ago that they went through it.

I had this with DS1. He had even less words at 21 months and didn't really 'talk' until he was very nearly three, but in our case it was my in-laws who were 'concerned'. I think all you can do is reiterate that, as you say, it's not a race.

It used to get us down as they'd often give DS1 'sympathetic looks'

selfishly it does make me feel better to hear that other grandparents get a bit neurotic about speech! suppose I have to carry on grinning, bearing and ignoring as much as possible!!!

Yep! And it won't be for long, either. The grandparents now complain that he doesn't stop talking.

is he your only child?
i only ask because second (and subsequent kids) often are slower to talk... partly because they don't need to! if you have an older sibling who plays with you, gets stuff for you etc etc... you get offered drinks etc when THEY ask for them.. you just don't need to talk as much

yes, only child starlover!

ahh ok so you can't even use my argument!

my mum is always finding something to be concerned about.... i tend to just nod and agree and then change the subject! lol

You want them to speak, grandparents ae desparate for them to speak, then they start - from sunrise to sunset, stopping only to eat and sleep
'Mum, guess what bunny's favourite colour is?'
'Mum, Tigger wants to sing to you'
'Mum, teddy is going to tell you a story'

and looking back now I think aaaahhhhh, but at the time I remember thinking 'will she ever shut the f*ck up?'

And the answer is 'no'.

I'm guessing that she's from that magical generation where all children were apparently toilet-trained at 6 months and speaking in full sentences at 8 months etc.

It sounds as though ds is right on track with his language development. I know that at the 24mth development check parents are asked if their child can say 20 words. Your ds is already there 3 months early.

Can you suddenly go into hyper-worried-mum mode (you know, "OMG, you really think there's a problem? What should I doooo?! Is there a specialist I should see? Help me, Mummeeeee!")?

Then when she looks at you as if you have flipped say "Is that what you'd prefer me to be doing, hmm?"

We took our DS1 for speech therapy in the end. Did B all for him (except to make him feel there was something 'wrong' with him) and B all for us. We used Makaton (not even sure if I've spelt that properly, that's how impressed I was with it) sign language for a while.

As soon as he started nursery, at very nearly three, he started talking.....and talking.......

He had about ten words at 21 months and we were only concerned as he seemed to be getting frustrated with us not understanding what he wanted.

Strangely enough the comments about my ds1 stopped as soon as he got his diagnosis of autism. There was a sudden change from "He's not doing X,Y or Z and it's all your fault!" to "There's absolutely nothing wrong with him!"

grandparents are always such experts eh