Help with speech

[Worriedmum166]

Hi everyone,

Hope you are all well. I'm looking for some advice on my nearly 29month old son and his speech development. I'm concerned as my daughter was fully fluent by this point. I'm aware that she isn't him and was talking well beyond her time but now I'm not sure if we have a problem or this is near enough where he should be.
So he can name most things, has lot of nouns in his vocabulary and is picking more up daily. He can communicate his wants and needs no problem, 'change bum mammy' 'want more juice' 'sit beside mammy' 'more toast mammy'
He will point and shout out things he sees, 'yellow school bus' 'green tractor' etc points and names things in books, asks questions such as 'what you doing daddy?' 'Where the doddy?' 'Mammy where are you?'
He's starting to answer basic questions, 'what are you doing?' But sometimes just gives a random answer.
He is still quite echolalic and would repeat maybe the last 2 words of what you say! He has learnt some phrases from us, such a 'bye see you later' 'bye see you next week' etc he uses them to say goodbye and in the same tone we would etc.
Should I be worried about the repeating still or the fact that he's not really conversational yet, can have a brief 2 way conversation about what he wants for dinner but he couldn't tell you what he did during the day or anything like my daughter could. Again she was very good so I'm not sure if my son is behind or is ok.
Any advice on encouraging speech is most welcome.
Thanks for your time 🙂

Hi,
I'm a Speech and Language Therapist working with many children this age.
I know that it's hard when comparing with an older child. I know it's impossible not to do!
However, it sounds like your son is doing well. As a general rule, we say that children should be putting 3 words together (e.g. want toast mammy) at age 3. So considering he's only 29 months, that's good.
I should also note that I see waaaay more boys with language delay than girls. Nobody knows why, but they generally seem to take a bit longer to get there.
Obviously if he doesn't make progress or you're still concerned, you can talk to your local SLT service. But at the moment, if he was referred to my service we wouldn't accept him as he's totally within average for his use of language.
I hope this is a bit reassuring!

@JenJam123 thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I really do appreciate that and it has helped so much.
We will keep going and hope he continues to make progress, if not I will definitely seek help from my local SLT service.
Your message was definitely reassuring, many many thanks 😊