[Mindybeth6]

Mikayla has been getting OT and Speech since the spring. Have I seen improvement? YES. Have I seen enough? Well...I don't know! She has some words and here is what I can think of offhand:
Bubu (brother)
Mama
Dada
Cup
Ball
Dora
Boots
Elmo
Tutu
Bubble
Thank You
Please
Cat
More
Cookie

Now some of them are not perfect of course, I just know what she is saying. I would say only six of them are clear words. But most are more utterances. For example, some are just the initial sound. Like for Dora it sounds like DO. You know? I mean, please understand, I am SO THANKFUL that we are where we are and she 100% understands what I am telling her. Her receptive speech is FINE, her issues are expressive. So this is like, what age typically? What are we looking at in terms of being delayed here. Alec was talking in complete sentences at this age and to this day has a MASSIVE vocab. I know you shouldn't compare but he's all I have to go on.

My concern is that while she is improving, and she is saying words and TRYING to mimic every word we say, they are very, very unclear and not understandable. I just don't remember. Is this normal? Obviously I know it's not normal for a 2 year old, but is it normal in terms of moving along? No matter what we do she just can't say them clear. BUT...she is TRYING and SPEAKING so that in and of itself is HUGE.

Did anyone else go through this?

[giovanni7460]

Antonio has been in EI for about 4 months. His teachers (has 2 3'x a week) think the sounds he is making is great. He does sign language bacause of his frustration level. Now we find that he is comfortable with only signing.
I think the fact that she is making sounds and you get them is great. She is trying and that little bit of sound makes words later on. I would be very happy with the amount of "words" she has. Mikayla your doing great!!
Patty

[Candace3]

my dd is 23 months old and she only has about 20-30 words and only about 10 of them are clear enough that a stranger would understand. The rest are like you said, sounds that we know indicate a certain word: example: de-de is for her brother Dylan. She has been getting help through EI for about 8 months and they really think she is improving. Like you said, my daughter understands everything i say to her. Her speech theapist said that is really important. she can communicate her wants and needs and they really believe that one of these days it will just 'click' and she will take off. I'm sure it will happen. Hope that helps some.

[angel_bayou]

Patty, My son did this same thing for a while and when it didn't improve he was sent to an ENT for a consult. Yep he needed tubes!! The ENT said he was only saying what he heard and due to the fluid he was not hearing the entire word. So another words he was talking and saying just what he heard us say. I don't know if this may help or not but figured I'd chime in. Oh and I'm not sure it makes a difference but his is our bio son so we didn't have the second language issue.
I hope things get better soon and I get to see the post of why she wants to talk so much!! LOL!

[mommytoEli]

ds 5 was a slow start speaker. at 6 months old we discovered he couldn't hear.....but when he got tubes, everything openned up.....but 6 months of no sounds caused a delay for him. he said few words around age 2...the list was definitely not longer than mikaylas. he went to speech therapy and they said he was making slow, but consistent progress and said we just needed to keep working with him. one day...he just started saying a few new words a day...and the next thing we knew, he was talking.....non stop actually. i'm glad mikayla is in speech.....just keep going and keep working with her. i'm pretty sure i remember that even the doctors try not to freak out about speech until age 3....so she has one year to pump up her vocabulary and speak clearer. but even then...it doesn't have to be perfect. eli is almost 3, and speaks really well....but i find myself ALL THE TIME "translating" what he says to others. lol.

[CaddoRose]

My FD is now 31 months and while she isn't from Guat, she has a delay due to household circumstances. She is speaking exactly the same as your daughter. She understands more than she can communicate back, but is working so hard at talking. We read books to her with two word phrases, particularly those written by Sandra Boynton. "Blue Hat, Green Hat" is a favorite. We also say words and have her say them back to us. Any attempt is good. Our FD is also receiving Speech therapy. Therapist says that she is about 1 yr behind, but will catch up. I put FD in a Parents Day Out program twice a week so she can be with other kids her age. That alone is helping a lot. Little kids talk to each other and it really helps them engage in more conversation. I do know that if they have a speech delay, it does take time to catch up, but with consistent therapy and work they will by school time.

[KJones5]

I worry about speech with our 2nd son who is close in age to your daughter. Our 2nd son's dob is 6/5/06. He came home last Oct at the age of 16 months old.

His speech is very garbled (for lack of a better way to say it). He's made great strides with his speech in the past month. However, our 1st son and I are primarily the only ones who can understand him. He talks constantly but it is hard to understand him.

Here are the words he clearly says and that I can remember that he says!
Mommy
Daddy
Brother's name
McQueen
MINE
NO
Cookie
Elo = cereal and telephone
I want
Poopy Butt (learned from his brother!)
Truck
Car
Elmo
Down
Hello
Bye Bye
Please
Thank You

He'll repeat nearly anything you tell him.

Our first son's speech has always been very clear and he too has a massive vocab for a 3 year old! So naturally that makes us question our 2 year old. Overall, I'm watching it but not concerned enough to do anything about it yet. He goes to daycare and they think his speech is fairly on target for his age.

[LISAKAYE]

I go back and forth with the whole speech thing all the time. Carter is 2 1/2 and he says 2 3 or even 4 words together, but they are not all clear. Can count to 5 & knows some colors. He understand everything we tell him and tries to repeat everything but sometimes does not even sound remotely like what we have said. He always seems to talk loud too. I know he can hear, because I'll whisper and he'll hear me. He has a hard time with the letter "S". Cannot put that letter in front of any words.

I hear people say their 2 year old asks them about this or that and carries a conversation with them and I think, holy cow, Carter is no where near that kind of language capasity.

I am trying not to get too excited about it, the Parent as Teachers says he is doing fine, although he is a little behind, they say it takes a year to catch up with their speech.
I AM JUST WONDERING WHAT YEAR??!!

[SKL]

My 23mo's speech is very inconsistent. She has many words but most often uses "grunt language" to get what she wants.

The other day she pointed to the moon and said "Oh, see the moon?" Last week, to get Sis to move, she said "Excuse me, I want down." But when she wants something from me, she still just points and says "ehn?" I can't get her to say most of the typical toddler words in a functional way. From reading the posts here from time to time, she seems to be the odd one out as far as that goes.

Her pronunciation is inconsistent too. She loves words containing both L and R and will clearly say "Lordy," "circle," "whirl," "tickle." Yet she often substitutes "d" for "b" and "n" for "m" (milk is "nelk"), says "juh" for "stand" and "jah" for "stop," etc. Most people (besides me) can't figure out what she's saying 99% of the time. For that matter, she hardly speaks to most people at all, but that's a different issue.

I think poor pronunciation is very normal at age 2. I've read that other people should be able to understand them starting around age 3.

[Justhavfaith]

Joshua is 31 months old and has been in speech therapy about 6 weeks. I am trying to gain as much knowledge as possible through this so that I can help him EVERY day - not just speech days. He goes once a week right now.

I've realized that while his vocabulary is quite small, he is getting better at trying new words. However, his comprehension of language is further behind his articulation of language. So, we literally narrate our entire days events. Example - - We are walking down the hallway, You are eating, Red Apple - yummy. Etc, etc. He is just now moving to two word phrases and will do some three word phrases. I am very impressed with his improvement in a short amount of time but, again we are working more with comprehension at this point. After the evaluations, he was determined to be 6 months behind in articulation and 1 yr behind in comprehension.

Another thing that has worked wonders for us is to not work a word more than twice. If he cannot say it, fine we move on. We may try again later but, we don't overwork words.


I should add that we decided to move forward with speech therapy when we realized that he couldn't express all of the things that he knew and would be very frustrated by this.

[Alexismandyjr]

All my (7) childrens language skills have taken off at different ages. J.R. came home at 17 months and only said "agua" at that age. He turned three in July and can have a full blown conversation with someone. Julian is 17 months old, came home at 8 months and only says mama, dada, and agua. I'm not concerned about his language skills.

We are a bilingual family. My children are being exposed to both English and Spanish at the same time, so it's not uncommon for them to take longer in grasping words but they eventually catch up.

[kim wski]

My friends son (32 month) was very delayed in starting to speak and then suddenly he is talking in full sentences and very clear. He did have lots of ear infections and they talked tubes, but they tried taking him to a chiropractor as a last resort...and the ear infections cleared up, and then suddenly he was talking. If talking about tubes worries anyone, it may be worth a try. Chiropractors have a special adjustment they do to the ear to help clear the fluid (I'm not a doctor, so this is my understanding).

Just another ideas for those mom's scared about the tube talk.

Kim

[angelkisses0102]

My first question is what are her specific speech issues? Is it just a delay or does the ST suspect something else is going on (she is still very young however...like articulation typically doesn't get addressed until age 4 or 5 I believe...so they may not know much more yet.)

DS has speech impairment...not delays...worlds of difference. He has motor planning issues as well as articulation issues. An example of his motor planning issue is using the letter sounds in the proper placement in the word. We have been working on G and K for one year now. He currently uses G's and K's in the first letter and internally in the word correctly (sorry I am not well versed on motor planning issues so hopefully this makes sense.) He is also able to use it at the end of the words...but he doesn't. So his ST thinks it is more of a habit than a continuing motor planning problem. But when he was younger he said 'ba' for ball...'ba' for bat...'ba' for almost all words that started with 'ba'.

Good luck...it is a very slow process in some cases. But you are doing the right thing and as long as you are seeing improvement I "think' you are on the right track.

[wildboyz2]

I've attached a chart that has "typical" language development. Somethings to look at are hearing (did she have any issues such ear infections, etc.), environment (is she being stimulated to speak), and motivation (is she content to not speak). Make sure that you ask your Speech path about any concerns you have and ask for any excercises that you can do at home to help stimulate things at home. You may want to try baby signs, sometimes by using the signs and speaking to her, it stimulates them to pick up the verbal words also.

Usually they don't address speech sound production until age 3 or 4.
Language and Speech Development In Children

PM me if you have any questions that I can answer.

[Dmitry'smom]

When did you decide that your child needed ST? I am asking because I am not sure with our daughter. She is two (Today!!) and says words but only a handful (maybe 15-20) but most of them are not very clear. She is very stubborn and sometimes I catch her saying something much clearer but then she will not say it again.

Right now she says Clearly
mama
Dada
baba
Sponge Bob (seriously)
bye
gross
yucky
meow
Ta-Ta (cousins nickname)
PaPa
Juice

Not easy to understand
Elmo
Dora
B@@bie
Belly Button
Dmitry
Grandma
No
I Love You

That is all I can think of right now

My son didn't come home from Russia until after two so I don't have much to judge this by but I am not sure if she is on target or needs help. She has her 2 yr appt on Monday so I am going to ask but what do you guys think?