When my oldest son was about two years old he was below normal in his speech. We asked around and were told not to worry about it till he was three. So we didn’t.
One morning when he was 2 yrs. 5 months old he came walking downstairs saying something like “I want pasta. I want abioli (ravioli). I want breakfast. I want lunch…” and as the story goes, he hasn’t stopped talking since.
My stepson wasn’t speaking properly when he was three. At the start of school, he was still behind to the extent that other kids would say, “Ben talks funny”. He grew up in a bilingual household, and his comprehension was good, but his mother had spoiled him as a baby/toddler, and I suspect part of the reason he didn’t speak was that he didn’t need to - a grunt was enough for his mother to come rushing with whatever it was he wanted.
His speech was at a similar level to that of his peers by the age of six or seven, and now - he’s turning ten in November - he doesn’t shut up. Lots of lengthy monologues about dinosaurs and pro wrestling. 
That runs in my family. I was a fairly late speaker, and according to my mum, I never did the “mumumum” or “dadada” stuff - my first words were when I saw a hole in the panelling on the back of a sofa, and I said, “That’s a hole.” An auspicious start.
My aunty (father’s sister) was the same, apparently. At age three she hadn’t yet uttered a single word, and some visiting relatives joked, “She’s a Dutchman.” My aunt piped up, “I am NOT a Dutchman!”
My son, our second child, had a mild speech delay at the age of two. He was talking and saying some words, but not the wide variety normal for his age.
After much persistence, we discovered he had mild hearing loss due to fluid buildup in his ears. After surgery to insert tubes, he began speaking more and more clearly. He’ll be 4 in October and is on target, now. He wasn’t talking before because he couldn’t hear the sounds well enough.
If you haven’t already, get her ears checked. It couldn’t hurt.
I have no kids and I was known as an early talker.
As was my sister until it turned out she needed tubes in her ears. She talked a lot at first then seemed to stop. She went a bit deaf I think for awhile, she’s very visual.
My Cow orkers son is now three. He has been slow to talk and she’s been worried. He also has had a lot of colds, runny noses, stuffiness. So got him checked for allergies, none. But his adenoids were swollen. They ended up having them removed.
She did some research–evidently swollen adenoids can press on the tongue and make speech difficult.
And he was being watched by her mom, so very much “grunt and point and I get it”.
He had a minor surgery, even though he’s a little guy, and he’s very yacky now.
Really? I had always been told it was the other way around. Second children inherit parents who have already been taught how to speak Toddler once, so they don’t have to put in so much effort themselves (or, alternatively, they’re comparatively ignored by their parents and so don’t get enough practise - take your pick)
Certainly that’s the way it works in my household - my Smaller Girl, about a month younger than Auntbeast’s daughter, is still basically pointing and grunting at an age where her elder sister could respond to her granny’s enquiry about her naptime with the words “Rachel pulled all the wipes out of box. Daddy was not impressed”. However, in her case, she’s up against Second Child Parental Apathy, so we haven’t started to worry yet.
My mom insisted that we have our son evaluated just after his 2nd birthday, because he couldn’t do a puzzle that his slightly older cousin could do. Turned out that the puzzle was no big deal, but his lack of language skills was a problem. His initial diagnosis of autism at age 3 was eventually changed by the pediatric neurologist to Asperger’s Syndrome once he started talking, but the initial diagnosis was probably influenced by the fact that he had talked, but lost most of his seventeen words between 18 months and 2 years of age. He spent a year in early intervention (in Ohio it’s the Help Me Grow program) and then in developmental preschool from ages 3-5.
Once he started speech therapy at age 3, he started singing Disney songs before he would actually talk. Next, from no speech at all to singing only, he went to talking constantly - it became his stim, like flapping hands or running in circles. I remember one vacation when he was 4; he spent the whole week in his own little world talking to Darkwing Duck. Now he’s 13 and chatters away all the time, is in a regular classroom doing exceptionally well, and even plays on his junior high football team.
I wanted you to know that even with a dismal diagnosis, things can turn out okay. And that you don’t have to be an expert to help your child; you just have to do what you are doing - know when to ask for help and follow the recommendations. It will be fine.
If I can help in any way, please pm me. I remember how scared I was and would be glad to do anything I can to help with that feeling, at least.
I’ve also read and heard that second children tend to have built in translators - their older siblings - and so are more prone to speech delays.
Are you in a bi-lingual household? This can lead to delays.
My youngest twin likely has apraxia. She speaks an approximation of maybe 20 words at 2 years and 8 months. We speak only Chinese at home to help keep things simple instead of bi-lingual. The early intervention we had here in China was a disappointment. Serena just started at a Montessori pre-school this week and that seems to be good for her.
Most childhood development studies about language acquisition say it’s the other way around. The younger kids have even more people willing to translate/speak for them than the oldests, since older siblings will “help” them too. There is sometimes a drawback to them learning clear speech if their older sibling is close in age since they’re learning from an imperfect speaker as well as the adults.
That’s the first thing my 17 month old said at about 12 months or so, except it was more like “Wassat?”
I worry about her sometimes because she doesn’t say words, she says syllables. Kitty is Kiiee, Duck is Uck, Ball is Bah, and both my husband and I are “Da-ee”, which sometimes sounds like Die. It’s a little disconcerting to hear her tell me “Die! Die!” 
I work with her on saying “Mama, Mommy, Mom”, but she either won’t or can’t do it yet.
But she seems to understand what we’re saying sometimes. Recently, my husband said, “Come here so I can take your shoes off” and she sat down and tried to take he shoe off. My husband and I looked at each other as though she had discovered a cure for cancer. Those moments are fun, even when she can’t speak very well yet.
As another parent who worries about these things, all of these posts have been helpful to me, too.
Whynot was on the ball (as usual) with
Our daughter has always had a bit of what we refer to as Tawkin’ like she was from Brooklyn, capishe? Except we are from Michigan and as flllaaaaat as can be.
We didn’t panic, thought it was just something she had to work through and in Kindergarten we had her eval’d and she does speech a couple days a week in school. We see improvement and know she will be fine.
Our neighbor has a boy that not only rocks when he is bored though he may have outgrown this., he has nervous eye tics and a much more pronounced speech impediment. He really sounds like a baby. They have done NOTHING about any of this. He is a very polite, hyper senstive boy that will probably be about 6’8.
Katie is being evaluated tomorrow at 11am. I spoke with the Speech Therapist/pathologist/whatever yesterday about what is going on. She said that kids learn to speak two different ways, by words or by sentences and since she is babbling a lot and has good (according to me) inflection that she’ll probably just start talking. I suggested her first sentence would be “Let’s take over Ecuador.”
It’s odd thinking there is nothing really wrong with her, but being afraid their might be. At any rate, we go tomorrow and I’ll update the thread then.
I really can’t thank you all enough. This place is so much better than psychotic mommy boards.
I have been paying more attention to the babbling that she does do to see if maybe she is talking, but I just don’t understand it. I’m not well versed in toddlerese, it could be she’s saying crap and I’m clueless.
Now…there is a thought…Maybe it’s me. 
We’ll see.
Well, we got evaluated today with the Battelle Developmental Inventory 2nd Edition. Otherwise known as the BDI II.
There are 5 sections, in Physical and Self-help/Adaptive skills, she scored very high, well within “normal” ranges. Social/Emotional Skills, she scored in mid-range for normal. However, with the Academic/Cognitive skills she was on the low end for normal. And for communicatoin she scored pretty darn low. The cutoff for mild delay is 79, she scored a 61. So she has a significant speech delay.
In a nutshell, she’ll get speech therapy. What they did tell me is that she scored pretty unusually for a girl and that they were surprised her academic/cognitive were so high considering her communication was so low, that typically, they are rather tethered together. The lady said that it was rather unusual to have such a big gap (almost 20 points) between those two scores, but that it tells her along with the other scores that she’s actually doing quite well and does not indicate any other deeper problems that can not be explained by her environment and temperment.
They will have a speech therapist come out once a week until they can get her into a program that meets once a week, films their progress and is a bit more group oriented. One of the ladies said that many parents prefer that program over a private session.
They gave me some pointers on how to encourage her to talk in more effective ways. Encouraged me to use a timer for activities and to start using signs in conjunction with words so that she can communcate, even if she’s not ready to talk yet.
Overall, it was a very positive thing and when they asked me what I wanted to accomplish, I told them that even before I was pregnant, I wanted a strong, inquisitive, independant, happy girl. She spun around the chart and said “You got exactly what you wanted. Now we just need to get her talking.”
I’m not sure how this kid got my hearts desire right, right off the bat, but they were very supportive of how good her other skills were, what a nice kid she was, how easily she was soothed and heck, they laughed at her jokes. They also said that for a kid that doesn’t meet many new people, she certainly wasn’t shy. (Godzilla, my first born)
Now we wait up to 10 days for the therapist to call and set up her appointment.
Thanks for the update. It sounds like it all went pretty well, considering.
Both of my kids are in the normal to bright range too, never had any sort of developmental problems or anything. Both of their problems are just isolated to speech and language, kind of like you are describing.
For me it was both hard and a relief to hear that problems I spotted as a mom are really truly there. Hard because all we want for our kids is for them to have an even playing field. But it also was good to know that there was something real going on and not only that but there are steps to take to address it. I’m not a hysterical overly-worried mom (the feeling I got from family when I decided to take The Butterfly for her first eval) - my kid did need an extra boost, and I’ve got the documentation to prove it.
I don’t know that you feel the same way; it can take time to process hearing that your kid is struggling in such a fundamental area. But again - good on you for doing something about it and not just drifting along, waiting. The stories here of people who didn’t talk at two and suddenly had a language explosion are very inspiring. But some kids really do need extra help, and a good mom goes out to find that help.
I was telling a friend about the evaluation today and she basically called me a hysterical overly-worried Mom. I told her I was doing what my pediatrician said and that if my daughter is saying fewer words than an 11 month old, it’s better I try to fix it now than when she is school aged.
I am pretty paranoid of being psychotic about her and do try to temper my worry and understand that I am a first time Mom. That does not mean I’ll ignore a problem even if a bunch of other Moms tell me about Einstein.
Since she was premature, I haven’t been too worried about her milestones being right on the money and have allowed for leeway. This is one milestone she is missing in a big way. I know every kid learns at their own pace, variation, blah blah blah, but sometimes kids do need help. Mine does and I’m glad that I have received so much support here for getting it. It is as important as the reassurances.
Once again, I thank you all. I will update as things progress. I can’t be the only one. Maybe there is one lurker parent out there reading this and learning from my experience.
Auntbeast:
Sounds like good things. Just to give you a bit of encouragement, here’s my kid speech adventure stories:
Kid number one was always ahead of the game in child developement type things. Was interested in what went on around him and played well alone. Didn’t talk in anything but kid “burble” for over two years. Didn’t even say Mommy or Daddy. Extended family thought “problem” but it was clear to us that he was very intelligent. At about 2.5 years he started talking in full sentences and started quoting dialogue from “Star Wars” that he had seen when he was 2. Had a bit of a problem saying “L” words. Did speech therapy for a couple of years in grammar school. Is getting a PhD in math this year. Hasn’t stopped talking since he turned 3.
Kid number two; we thought had no problems at all. Registered her in a pre-school to socialize kids with neuro-problems (she was one of the non-neuro kids) and were told by the resident speech therapist that she might have a problem too. So, we paid a bit more attention and discovered that whenever kid 2 said something kid 1 had to interpret what she said. How dumb were we? :smack: She did intensive speech therapy for several years, including 3 private lessons a week and an all day kindergarten designed for kids with speech problems. She also has not stopped talking for decades. She is getting a PhD in Psychology this year.
The hardest thing we did back in the day was to admit that kid 2 had a problem because we didn’t want her to get “labeled”. This was a way bigger thing 20 years ago than it is now.
It sounds like you have a handle on what is going on and that things should go well. 
Oh and I forgot to mention:
I felt all of this for both kid one and kid two. It’s a Mom thing, it’s what we do. Trust me things will go well. 
This is very good info. For the record, I served for quite some time as a behavioral therapist that specialized in speech evocation.
You need to go back and read that again, and then think about what it says.
I cannot emphasize this too strongly: there’s nothing wrong with your daughter. She’s fine. A bunch of experts just told you that. She’s a good kid, she’s not shy, she’s not retarded, “slow”, or just “stupid”, she’s not deaf, she’s not autistic, she doesn’t have Asperger’s or ADHD. She’s fine. Really.
She’s just a late talker, is all, and you’ve got a two-page thread here full of many kids, in both first-person accounts and otherwise, who were otherwise “normal” but who simply didn’t talk until age 3, 4, or 5.
But…what if it’s not fixable–by you? Or by speech therapists?
Of all the people who posted anecdotes here about kids who talked late and turned out fine, how many of them also posted, “The kid got speech therapy, and the parents worked with her–and that was what did the trick”?
Not many.
The VAST majority of anecdotes here go like this: “The kid suddenly started talking one day–all by herself.”
And so it will prove with your kidlet. All of sudden, one day the floodgates will open, and she will never shut the fuck up. You wait.
What can you do to help her? Nothing more than what you’re already doing. You’re not raising her in isolation, are you? She’s exposed to normal, everyday conversation from the time she wakes up until the time she goes to bed, right? And people talk to her, and around her, and over her head, so she hears human conversation all day every day, yes?
Well, that’s all that’s required. You can put her in day care if you want to, but all it will do is expose her to more conversation, and exposing a child to additional conversation may help her, but it isn’t necessarily a guarantee. All the kids in this thread who were otherwise normal but who merely talked late were exposed to normal amounts of human conversation, and they started talking by themselves just with that. You could accomplish the same thing by keeping her at home and simply talking to her more. Or read books to her–that counts as “language development” even if it isn’t back-and-forth chitchat. It can be taxing to have a “conversation” with a preschooler, so just read to her.
Or you could simply find a twice-a-week playgroup or “Mother’s Day Out” program for her. It would enhance her other skills besides language development, like social skills and cutting with scissors. It doesn’t have to be classic, expensive “Day Care” with problematic employees and a host of runny-nosed kids who have to be there because their parents both work. A playgroup or Mother’s Day Out program can be more selective, both about who works for them, and about which sick kids are not allowed to come that day.