I’m always a little paranoid about speech since my son was not really a talker and he worried me a lot.
He managed to get to his 15 month old check with not a single word… Not a Mum, not a Dad, not a Hi, a Bye or a Ta in sight.
However he would ‘talk’ like you wouldn’t believe. He wouldn’t shut up! Seriously….
But he would converse with you in babbles of sounds. No words.
I blamed myself when Plunket threatened a speech therapist if he didn’t have 20 words at 2 as they should have, so after that 15 month check I decided to get proactive.
I spoke to a speech therapist, who listened to his babble and put my mind at rest.
She told me that he was in fact fine, and had fantastic conversational skills, as well as was very vocal and had a great range of sounds he made, so she didn’t think there was anything wrong. But she did ask me how I spoke to him. And I told her.
As a rule, I (and most people around him followed my lead) spoke to him in wee conversations, as if he was actually talking back to us….
So she told me perhaps it was time to stop that, as she thought he was thinking he was talking and being understood, when really we had no idea what he was on about.
Yes, he had learnt the art of conversation, the he speaks, then he pauses, waits for your response, then he speaks some more, he pauses, waits for your next response, then speaks some more.
But….
He wasn’t putting any effort into learning to communicate as he thought he was already doing it.
So he was being lazy… or we had already given him the impression he had already learnt this stuff!
Now I’ll add in here, that I spent months and months teaching my son baby signs. But he would only occasionally show me he could do them… He would respond to them and knew what he wanted, but he wouldn’t show me them.
So I kind of gave up on them.
Then another thing she told me to stop, was meeting his needs before he needed them……
Ahhhh yes, I am most guilty of this one! I always make sure he has everything he needs, so logically, he has no need to learn how to ask for something, that’s always on offer! Duh!
So I stopped. I stopped offering things, until he started communicating he needed them – which ironically took oh, about a day!
The day I stopped, was the first day he asked me for food, using baby signs and I was just blown away.
Instead of asking him if he needed a snack, I decided to wait and see if he said/did anything to show me he was hungry.
He did.
About an hour after lunch, he was getting stroppy and I told him he needed to tell me what he needed.
So he tugged on my pants, then ran over to the counter, pointed up at the top of it, and made the sign for “eat” and his lunchbox was on top of the counter, so I knew he was asking for a snack!
I was so proud!
And he moved forward in leaps and bounds from that day, doing signs only for about 2 months, then around 18 months he came out with words at long last!
It was a lot of work, and a lot of patience, getting him to speak and teaching him how to use his sounds, but it was so worth it, as he went from being 18 months with no words, to being 2 with over 150 words.
He was learning more and more words everyday! It was amazing to be part of.
He is still learning words on a daily basis and he is now parroting every other thing I say to him which is hilarious, but has me being super careful about what I say to him because of what he might repeat!!!!
I was given this neat list of things that kids learn and when, the sounds and consonant combinations and when they roughly learn to put them together and say them.
I thought I’d post it up here as it could be super helpful to other mums!
Posted on CM by Ange from Christchurch;
This is from a book my boss lent me called “Much more than words” it is published by the Ministry of Education.
This is the age in which children typically acquire consonant sounds
1.5 – 3 years: p, m, h, n, w
1.5 – 4 years: b
2 – 4 years: k, g,d
2 – 6 years: t, ng
2.5 – 4 years: f, y
3 – 6 years: r, l
3 – 8 years: s, st, sp, sm, sn, sk
3 – 5 years: gl, bl, pl
3.5 – 7 years: ch, sh
3.5 – 8 years: z
4 – 7 years: j
4 – 8 years: br, tr, dr, v
5 – 8 years: th
the older age in the section represents the age in most children have achieved each sound.
Hope this helps someone else, as it’s helped me with knowing what I shouldn’t be pushing too hard with and what I should be focusing on with him so that he learns the correct sounds for his age group at the right times!
