18-month-old only has 5 words
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Anonymous
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DD just turned 18 months old. She only has 5 words and has had these words for months.
The pediatrician said she’d reassess at 2 year appointment but that feels like a long time to wait. She says “mama”, “dada”, “no”, “uh oh” and “meow.” That’s it. I know comparison is the thief of joy but our friends 10.5 month old says like 12 words very clearly. Maybe he’s advanced? Is it too early to ask for intervention? |
Anonymous
| Sounds low normal to me. Are the social skills there? Turning head when name is called, eye contact, looking at things you point at, responds to simple commands, etc? |
Anonymous
Yep. I feel like she understands almost everything we say. But only really verbalized grunts and the few words |
Anonymous
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I agree that how they are using the words is more important than how many, but an early intervention evaluation is free and sure to be helpful whether it helps put your mind to ease or helps you to intervene early.
I will say that that’s a great list of words, in that you’ve got multiple functions. If you listed 5 nouns or 5 words for protesting or something it would be more concerning. |
Anonymous
| I’d get an assessment stat |
Anonymous
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On track for normal development. |
Anonymous
| ^^https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/milestones-18mo.html |
Anonymous
| You can directly call your county early intervention if you’re concerned. |
Anonymous
| Is she pointing, making eye contact and responding to her name? |
Anonymous
| Neither one of mine really started saying anything until 18/19 months. The first we did the whole speech therapy thing at home with SLP before covid...the second we went through the evaluation process but decided to skip it (during covid so it would have been virtual and they didnt offer a SLP, it was someone who did social skills or something). Can't say I can tell much of a difference now. They both ended up completely on track by 24 months and are verbally advanced early elementary kiddos now. |
Anonymous
n Yes and yes |
Anonymous
| Don't worry my son didn’t hardly talk tell he was 2 . He was seen by birth to 3 to help him talk better . We had his hearing checked came back normal . Had him checked for tongue tie wasn't tied . At 2.5 he started to carry on good conversation . He's now about to turn 5 and he still sees a speech path once a week a preschool hoping he won't need speech help in elementary. When it happens he will start chatting away our son didn’t really baby talk much . |
Anonymous
| If you are concerned, there is no harm in having your child evaluated. We had a one year old who was saying almost no words and decided to start private speech because he would not have qualified for early intervention. It was a very positive experience overall and gave us a lot of tools as both parents and kiddo to communicate better. He is now just over two and a chatterbox constantly picking up new words, which I’m sure is a combination of development and the year ish he spent in speech therapy. |
Anonymous
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Talk to her constantly. Ms. Rachel models this really well (I'm not saying have her watch them at this age, I'm suggesting you watch the videos and imitate how she talks to kids and shows her mouth when she's talking). You're going to be repeating yourself a lot.
You can of.course get her evaluated. |
Anonymous
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Often takes a while to get a full speech and language evaluation. So if you call to get an appointment when child is 18 mo and don't get the appointment for a bit there may be improvement in language. If not, you'll be happy you have the appointment. Sounds like your child has stronger receptive language than expressive language. Our child was diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech around this age.
As with most parenting- trust your gut. |