Help! Toddler speech development

[Trina]

I think it's too early to worry about speech delay as she is only 16 months old. It may be true that girls generally speak at an earlier age compared to boys but each child is different.


Just sharing my personal experience - I have two girls and the older one started speaking before she turned one. Everyone tells me that it would be faster with the younger one. Ah! they were all wrong. My DD2 could only say \"mama\" at 18 months. Most of the time she would point to what she wanted or use sign language. Importantly, I could see that she understood what was being said to her and obey instructions, hence I was not terribly worried when she was still not speaking at 22 months. Thereafter, she started using monosyllabus words e.g. up, bus, car etc.

My DD2 finally opened her golden mouth the week she turned two and can't stop talking. From monosyllabus at 24 months, she can now string three words together e.g. mama sit down at 25.5 months.

To me, I think it's really up to the child and she will talk when she is ready to talk. Both DDs are looked after my helper, supervised by my parents. I can't really see the correlation between chatty caregivers and age at which toddler speaks. My DD2 is surrounded by at least 3 adults and her older sis all day.

My advice is to just relax and wait for your child to speak when she is ready.

[munchkukie]

Try to get referral from polyclinic to CDU first, cos there is a waiting time for services.


They may work on occupational therapy first so that she learnt how to comply first.

You will also need to persist in not giving in to her until she repeats after you.

[dimsum]

munchkukie:

Try to get referral from polyclinic to CDU first, cos there is a waiting time for services.


They may work on occupational therapy first so that she learnt how to comply first.

You will also need to persist in not giving in to her until she repeats after you.

she is only 16 months. no need to visit CDU lah. my boy started talking late too. Now he is soooo talkative!

[jedamum]

is she still on pacifier? quit if need to.

our therapist encourage that food not be cut too small to encourage the kid to chew to exercise the jaw.

[sharonkhoo]

Trina:

I think it's too early to worry about speech delay as she is only 16 months old. It may be true that girls generally speak at an earlier age compared to boys but each child is different.


Just sharing my personal experience - I have two girls and the older one started speaking before she turned one. Everyone tells me that it would be faster with the younger one. Ah! they were all wrong. My DD2 could only say \"mama\" at 18 months. Most of the time she would point to what she wanted or use sign language. Importantly, I could see that she understood what was being said to her and obey instructions, hence I was not terribly worried when she was still not speaking at 22 months. Thereafter, she started using monosyllabus words e.g. up, bus, car etc.

My DD2 finally opened her golden mouth the week she turned two and can't stop talking. From monosyllabus at 24 months, she can now string three words together e.g. mama sit down at 25.5 months.

To me, I think it's really up to the child and she will talk when she is ready to talk. Both DDs are looked after my helper, supervised by my parents. I can't really see the correlation between chatty caregivers and age at which toddler speaks. My DD2 is surrounded by at least 3 adults and her older sis all day.

My advice is to just relax and wait for your child to speak when she is ready.

My experience is similar, except that it was my older girl who only spoke at around 23mths, and the younger one at 15mths. Both had me as the main caregiver, so no difference there. As it turns out, the late-speaking one is more introverted and doesn't talk much anyway, while the younger one chatters more.

[munchkukie]

dimsum:

munchkukie:

Try to get referral from polyclinic to CDU first, cos there is a waiting time for services.


They may work on occupational therapy first so that she learnt how to comply first.

You will also need to persist in not giving in to her until she repeats after you.

she is only 16 months. no need to visit CDU lah. my boy started talking late too. Now he is soooo talkative!

My Dd1 has speech delay n we are fortunate that the queue is not that long at NUH CDU. I heard it was 6months wait at KKH that time. It's up to the parents confort level how long they wish to wait.

[chickaboom8888]

She has no pacifier, and I have already trained her to eat food in larger chunk. She is also using straw cup to drink or drink from cup directly so I think these are not the factor.

Hi munchkukie, by what age for my bb should I go to polyclinic to get the referral letter if thing does not improve?

[Rio]

My son is currently 21 mths, n he just started calling mama and nothing else. My elder 2 kids started talking only after 2 yrs old. At that time, my pd nearly ordered a speech therapist for them, but I rejected her kind offer. N now, my two kids talk non stop thru the days and I have to keep asking them to shut up. So not to worry, if there is no big developmental problem like hearing problem, n she is responding to you, she will eventually speak up. But if after two n she is not speaking, maybe u may wan to consider looking for a speech therapist.

[sembgal]

chickaboom8888:

Need some advice here. I have a 16 months old daughter who have not started talking yet. she says \"Da\" to his father about 1 year old and after a while stop saying that, I guess probably due to my husband did not always respond to her.

I am a FTWM, and most of the time i try to speak with her in Chinese. My husband and my maid speaks with her in English, but both are not talkative type. I am not sure if bilingualism will cause some delay in talking.

My daugter can understand my simple instruction, like to interact with other people and will point to the things she want. Sometimes she will babble in single syllabus, hum along with songs, but i can see she is not the chatty type.

I understand most girls talk earlier than boys. She is now in terrible two phase, and will throw tantrum whenever her needs are not met, and we have difficulty to decipher as she does not talk yet. I do not wish that speech dev delay to cause behavioural problem. What i am doing with her so far is try to point to thing and name it few times, like showing my picture at photobook and say \" Mama mama ma...\" repeatedly. I notice she is not keen to observe my lips, and definitely not interested to mimic me. I had also try not to pass her anything she want immediately, and ask her to mimic me to say it out, but she refused and threw tantrum.

I had ordered a few books from Amazon as well as Baby Babble DVD, still waiting.I wonder if any kind mummies/teachers/councillors share with me their experience what I can do to do with her for the time being. And when is the right time I need to start bring her for assessment if she does not talk yet.
sometimes i also asked myself did i do a wrong decision to place her under domestic helper care who does not seem like to talk a lot with baby. She will be going to 3-hr preschool next year, and I hope she will pick up fast from there.

I started to worry like you too when I sent my child to Playgroup at 18mth and realized she can't really talk.

I realise through reading lots of stories to my child, it helps to increase her receptive vocabulary.

Your child is developing normally. Some children start talking only after 2years. Don't panic.

Continue to speak to your child using grammatically correct English instead of baby language. Speak in complete sentences.

Pick up baby sign language. It is helpful to communicate with a toddler. I remembered watching baby sign language videos with my kid back then. We picked up a few useful signs such as milk, shoes, more, etc. My child did not start speaking early. Maybe 2+ to 3 years from short phrases to short sentences. After that, she started speaking a lot in full complete sentences that people will compliment that \"Your child can speak well\". It doesn't matter how early the child speaks but more importantly, how good the child speaks.

Talk to your pediatrician about your child's language development progress if you need to seek professional advice.

You only need to be concerned about speech delay when when child can't speak or communicate with peers or teachers at age 4 in Nursery level. That is red flag alert.