Slow going speech

The boys are 19.5 months now and have five words. Shoes, socks, teeth, nose, and they sign more. They do everything at the exact same time.. yesterday they both said the word "teeth" within 20 seconds of each other. They understand directions really well.. they can point to most of their body parts, they get the right object when we ask them, they will take things to their brother when asked. It's just so frustrating that they're not full out talking yet! I know they're so on the verge, but I have been waiting a LONG time to hear them call me mama!

We're waiting for a speech evaluation, which I think will do wonders for them, but in the meantime we've just been trying to make progress on our own. I name everything, chatter to them all day long, but they mostly just talk to each other all the time. They do seem to understand each other's babbling, which scares me :lol: I am already outnumbered most of the time, I don't need them having a secret language to plot against me!

 

:laughing: I hear ya on being outnumbered! Yes, a speech eval should help. 5 words is more than my twins knew at 2! Sounds like they are just happy being able to communicate with each other. Sounds like you are doing everything you can to help (talking a lot). I did that with Evan and he still qualified for speech. Go figure.

 

you're doing great and yes, a speech evaluation will help, but honestly I think just from what you mentioned here that they are doing wonderfully and are on track. My girls had an evaluation at 18 months and they didn't qualify because their receptive speech was way above average and they could understand basic instructions and said at least 5-10 words. At 20 months, we had an verbal explosion and every week that goes by they talk more and more. Hang in, I'm sure it's right around the corner.

 

I am not sure where I found this but I find this website/survey to be reassuring for speech.

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/speechandlanguage.html#mychild

 

sounds like how ours were... maybe by 18 mo. I was getting "mama"... and at maybe 20 months my ds had maybe 20 words and my dd 7, big difference to me. anyway, by 2 yrs they each had over 50, maybe even 100. I know my ds still was ahead. my pedi told me that by 2.5 yrs they should be speaking with just 2-3 word sentences, and sure enough we hit that mile stone too...

at somepoint they just start exploding with all sorts of words. keep up the good work!

 

Spencer's language totally blossomed this month. He's almost exactly the same age as your boys. He went from about 5 words to a couple dozen in just the last couple of weeks. I've had kids who didn't really talk at all at this age, most had a dozen or 2 words, and one of my boys was talking before 1yo and in complete paragraphs by 2yo. There's such a large range for normal. I think the speech eval is a good idea, if only to put your mind at ease. One of my girls only had a couple of words at 20 months and it turned out her hearing was really bad from chronic ear infections. With tubes, about 2 weeks later words exploded out of her. So getting testing can let you know if there's a issue, but I really wouldn't be worried, at all!

 

My oldest was like this...then suddenly the week he turned 2 he starting talking, a LOT. It was like everything we had been teaching him over the last 2 years finally sunk in. It was crazy. He signed a lot before this and like you said understood commands, he just didn't speak much. I was told to wait until 2 and if things hadn't progressed at that point then to have him evaluated but like all the PP's said it can never hurt to get them looked at.

I feel your pain on the 'mama' thing...I saw all our friends kids around the same age start saying it and then the younger ones start and Dannik still hadn't said it...it killed me! Soon enough it will come and maybe they'll be like my little guy...once they start they won't stop .

 

My twins are 19 months and they have maybe two words and use a few signs!! They were preemies and have had early intervention since they were born. The developmental teacher told me that they have three strikes against them for speech....they are boys, they are preemies, and twins!! They all tend to develop speech later then others. So I try to not get all worked up over it!