Anonymous wrote:
OP, please make sure there’s absolutely zero screen in her environment. This is the #1 cause of language development, in my 40 years of experience with young children.

I have a slew of recommendations, but first eliminate any potential causes of the problem.

Screens cause language development?

What role have you had for 40 years that allows you to make such a proclamation?

OP, please make sure there’s absolutely zero screen in her environment. This is the #1 cause of language development, in my 40 years of experience with young children.

I have a slew of recommendations, but first eliminate any potential causes of the problem.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you reading to her regularly op?

Yes. Every night. She gets read to at daycare too. She has favorite books and I know she anticipates each page but she won’t really repeat any words when we try to work on them.

Np. The not trying to repeat words is something to keep an eye on imo.

At this point, I think you could go either way. Your kid may catch up in the next few months, and if not, you can do speech therapy then.

Or, an SLP could do an assessment now, and find things to work on, like copying sounds. Your kid would benefit from this and you’d have the benefit of knowing that someone with knowledge is monitoring your child’s progress.

Ask your pediatrician. One of my cousin started taking until probably 2-3 yo, while one of my nephew was diagnosed as speech delay at age 1.5 yo, his parents were able to get him help early.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you reading to her regularly op?

Yes. Every night. She gets read to at daycare too. She has favorite books and I know she anticipates each page but she won’t really repeat any words when we try to work on them.

Some of the best ways to work on words include talking a lot to the child, singing finger play songs together, and making lots of animated faces and sounds to draw attention to your mouth.

My son didn’t have a ton of words at the age, but was technically meeting milestones and had strong receptive speech. He’s my first and this was peak Covid in 2020, so I didn’t know I really should have gotten him evaluated even though my pediatrician wasn’t concerned.

My son had a big explosion of language around 2. He has a great vocabulary. He’s 6 now and doing well, but by the time he was 3-4, it was obvious he wasn’t developing on par with his peers in general. In the end, he has ADHD. He needed OT for fine and gross motor skills, and speech therapy for articulation and pragmatic speech. ADHD medication also helped a lot with all of the above once we were able to start that. Moral of the story is to trust your gut and seek early intervention if you’re concerned.

Anonymous wrote:Are you reading to her regularly op?

Yes. Every night. She gets read to at daycare too. She has favorite books and I know she anticipates each page but she won’t really repeat any words when we try to work on them.

I’d be concerned.

Get the evaluation. It will take time to get in. Early intervention is hugely important. I would pursue ChildFind and a private evaluation simultaneously. Where do you live? We can make recommendations.

I'm the immediate PP. I just want to say to the OP: I agree with those who say you still have some time if you don't want to do a speech eval at this stage, if it will only trigger worry. I think it depends on you, and you know best what will ease or cause anxiety. For me, worrying and not doing anything/not talking to a speech therapist just made my anxiety go up. Talking to an SLP and doing private speech therapy was comforting to me. So it really depends on what works best for you! My little one really didn't talk with words until after 2 years old.

I was in a similar situation and I did an evaluation through a private speech therapist (out of pocket, but received some $ back from insurance later). If you are able to go private and not through the county, this can be done very quickly meaning you can get some peace of mind more quickly too!! For what it's worth, my little one now has an excellent vocabulary and won't stop talking haha! But I remember those early months of worry very very well.
It was hard for a while. Hang in there.

PS Ms Rachel has some great youtube videos for speech for babies/toddlers that we would watch together.

My son was similar and got him assessed through Strong Start. He initially qualified and received services for about a year before he was no longer eligible. I definitely recommend - his speech is normal now but it made me feel a lot better.

I am a mom of the two kids you describe—one with 5+ words at 10.5 months and 1 who had few words at 18 months. It was really stressful. DD didn’t make great eye contact either even though she didn’t screen for anything with the pediatrician when we filled out screeners (all her other skills pushed her over the edge to not flagging the system). Fast forward about a year and she was diagnosed ASD (what would be considered high functioning, though people are moving away from those labels).

It’s probably worthwhile to do the early intervention eval just to see what their take is. If you have any reason to believe something else may be going on beyond just a speech delay, children’s hospital child development clinic is great as they look at the whole child, not just speech. This isn’t to worry you—just my own experience! As you can see plenty of posters have kids that catch up rapidly with no issue and little intervention.

We ended up doing private speech for our DD and it was a total game changer (but this was starting more around 2.5 when she had many more words but was not conversational). We have been lucky to find great therapists. She is now 5 and is conversational with adults and peers and quite social!

As for my DS, her older bother, who was saying many words including helicopter by 10.5 months—we just found out he’s gifted and a really poor comparison group for any kid his age when it comes to verbal and other academic skills (but wow is he uncoordinated lol). This helped to really solidify it’s important to not play the comparison game and has helped me and DH realize each of our kids strengths and challenges and what makes them them!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I personally would take a wait and see approach. I think contemporary recommendations for early intervention on all kinds of things add so much unnecessary stress and drama. Everyone is so quick to recommend feeding therapy, OT, speech therapy, etc. when many kids just develop normally at a slightly slower pace.

My oldest didn’t eat solids until around 15 months, just hated all food. By 2.5 was the least picky toddler I know and is still a great eater into childhood. She barely spoke at 18 mons and I worried she was delayed. She spoke full 7-8 word sentences by 20 months with a big vocabulary. Try not to stress.

I totally agree. People say there is no harm to getting evaluated but I think there is harm: unnecessary stress and anxiety and self doubt. Honestly time resolves many childhood issues. And when kids improve with therapy, people attribute it to therapy not thinking that in most cases, the kid would have improved/caught up with or without intervention. Of course there are cases where help is needed but nothing in OP's post suggests anything worrisome, truly.

DP

I disagree. Our child had no words at 16 months. We did the assessment and early intervention services and it reduced my anxiety because I felt like I was doing something. OP can be comforted by the fact that most kids with expressive language delays catch up just fine on their own, but the services are available because some kids don't. IME, the services don't cause the stress, the delays do.

My kid did catch up in terms of speech, but fast forward to age 5 and she has an ASD diagnosis. Having the record of the assessment at an early age was helpful for the ASD diagnosis (even though we had no idea at the time). Getting that diagnosis has been so helpful for us.

Anonymous wrote:I personally would take a wait and see approach. I think contemporary recommendations for early intervention on all kinds of things add so much unnecessary stress and drama. Everyone is so quick to recommend feeding therapy, OT, speech therapy, etc. when many kids just develop normally at a slightly slower pace.

My oldest didn’t eat solids until around 15 months, just hated all food. By 2.5 was the least picky toddler I know and is still a great eater into childhood. She barely spoke at 18 mons and I worried she was delayed. She spoke full 7-8 word sentences by 20 months with a big vocabulary. Try not to stress.

I agree with this. My son had maybe 10 words at 18 months. At three, his pediatrician tells me his speech is significantly above average. I’m sure he’ll even back out with other kids by kindergarten. His development curve just looks a little different from others.